Lesson 6 - Confidence is Key

I was a bit nervous going into this lesson, just based on the pattern of good lesson, bad lesson, good lesson, bad lesson up to this point. Last week was a good lesson, so if the pattern held, today was going to be a rough ride. It wasn’t all sunglasses and autographs, but by and large, things went well today. It was a good confidence booster.

That’s not to say there weren’t some minor goofs. I missed a wing access panel that was only hanging on by one screw on my walkaround, and my safety briefing needs polishing. I also forgot to check flight controls during my run-up check. (I had checked them previously, but it’s on the checklist—I need to do it.) And I’m going to buy my own fuel tester, because the thimble-sized one that was in the plane I flew today splashed more on my hands than what got in the cup.

Taxiing is starting to feel more natural. I’m still a little wobbly on the line and a still a rather poor judge of where the line is underneath me. (Can I get a glass-bottom plane?) For the third flight in a row, I did not accidentally move the throttle the wrong way during any of the maneuvers. Take-off went well. I’m glad I was on the secondary runway so I didn’t feel pressure with a whole lot of traffic behind me; it calmed my nerves. I mean, airplanes don’t have horns, but at the same time, you can’t dawdle on the runway if there’s someone on final waiting for you to leave.

Today’s lesson brought us back to slow flight operations. We did these a few lessons back and I felt okay-ish with the concept. Today went better. Like last time, my instructor covered my instruments with a sheet of paper so I had to maintain altitude and airspeed by looking outside and listening to the plane as opposed to watching my instruments. For the most part, I was able to maintain my altitude within 100’ for everything, which I will consider impressive given how sluggish the controls are in slow speed flight. One thing I keyed in on for myself was being able to keep a constant pitch attitude by watching the angle of the horizon versus the wing since the nose was so high, especially during clean slow flight. Dirty slow flight (flaps down), your pitch angle isn’t quite as steep because the flaps create more lift, but I was at near full throttle just to maintain 55 knots.

I’m just starting to get the hang of trimming the plane. It’s been hard for me to get a good sense of how much to turn the trim wheel to make the necessary adjustments, and I need to get better at setting the pitch attitude with yoke then trimming off to match that, as opposed to using the trim wheel to set the pitch attitude. Set the pitch attitude with the yoke, trim off the pressure, then you can make minor adjustments with the trim wheel as needed.

The winds were calm today, so as a bonus, we worked on ground reference maneuvers, specifically S-turns. Not great, but not bad for the first time out of the gate. I think I was a little nervous to get us into too steep of a turn, but I was reasonably close to wings level whenever I got to the road we were using as a reference, though perhaps not exactly at 90 degrees to the road.

I’m also working the rudder more in flight than I have in the past. Part of that has to do with not having to concentrate so hard on other aspects of flight that I forget that there is a rudder on the plane, but the other part is that the rudder plays a significant part in these maneuvers, so you really have to use it.

Next time, more slow flight, stalls, and recovery—without prompts from my instructor. So between now and then, lots of chair flying to get the steps clear in my mind. And I’ll get the safety briefing.