Lessons 8 and 9 - Context is everything.

I’m combining lessons 8 and 9 because they occurred on back-to-back days. I’m not sure how I managed to schedule that as it was quite by accident, but I wasn’t going to complain. I figured flying two days in a row would probably help from a consistency standpoint. And it did, but I’m getting ahead of myself.



First, it had been 10 days since my last flight, but in that time I (finally!) devised a way to remember the flippin’ safety briefing. It stems from the notion that a lot of what I’ve been learning has to do with a flow of things. The preflight inspection is a flow. You start here, end up there. Pre-maneuver checks are a flow. You start by checking the fuel selector by your feet, then move up and around the non “six-pack” gauges to check engine oil temperature, vacuum pressure, fuel flow, etc. I figured I’d work the safety briefing to likewise be a flow. I start next to my seat with the fire extinguisher, then across to my seatbelt and seatback, then to the door (emergency exits). From there, it’s the yoke to remind me to talk about positive exchange of controls between my instructor and me. Between the two yokes is the radio, so that’s my reminder to talk about keeping conversation to a minimum during critical stages of flight so we can communicate with ATC. From there it’s up to the GPS to talk about hotspots (congested traffic areas) we may encounter, then looking out the front window to talk about general safety concerns during the flight. And by gumby it worked. I got through the safety briefing without missing anything or getting tongue tied. I still think I want to polish things up a bit, but at least I’m not forgetting anything.



Despite that success, I definitely had some cobwebs on taxiing and take-off. When I hit the throttle to take off, I (may have?) over-corrected on the right rudder and it took some doing to get back on centerline. Apparently I took my left hand off the yoke during this, too, much to the bewilderment of my instructor. I vaguely remember trying to turn the yoke to get the plane back on centerline (it doesn’t work that way), and when I remembered that minor detail, I took my hand off the yoke as a reminder. I forgot to put it back on the yoke until it was time to roll out. Once airborne, the plane started drifting to the left of the runway. This is not necessarily a good thing in any situation, but particularly dangerous when you’re taking off on the right runway of two parallel runways. Drifting to the left puts you in danger of flying over the other runway. That’s kinda frowned upon. My instructor got us back where we should be, and I then continued the climbout.



After some “routine” maneuvers to clear the rest of the cobwebs, we set about working on slow flight again. For some reason, this has been a mental hurdle that I to this point was having trouble getting past. I knew the steps, but making them happen smoothly? I think part of that has to do with the nature of slow flight itself. It’s not something you do when you’re cruising. It’s primarily a condition when you’re landing, during which time you’re also controlling your descent and focusing on lining up with the runway. Doing these maneuvers at 1500’ above ground level while maintaining altitude is just different enough to where it wasn’t clicking with me. Nevertheless, we spent the better part of the lesson plowing through slow flight then recovery, then more slow flight, then more recovery. On one hand, a lot of review, but on the other, is it review if you’re still struggling with it? Keep plugging away.



That’s not to say my instructor didn’t throw some new challenges my way through all this. This time, it came in the form of setting the radios and getting weather information for our flight back to the airport while cruising and turning. Remember back a few lessons when I wrote about walking and chewing gum? All things considered, I fared pretty well though I gained about 300’ altitude while turning and listening to and writing down the ATIS (weather) information. I’ll get there…



Anyway, I set us heading back to the airport before my instructor took the controls to set us up to land. Because landing is slow flight, I kept an eye on what he was doing. We were on final to land when ATC instructed us to abort the landing and go around. Neither of us know why, but there had to be something ATC didn’t like. Without blinking an eye, my instructor cruised through the same slow flight recovery steps I was stumbling through, getting us climbing again and out of harm’s way. Two things came clear to me. First, the “real-world” demonstration of how it’s done. There was no step-by-step explanation or hypothetical. Full throttle (with a little right rudder), reduce flaps, build airspeed, climb. THAT’S how—and why—it’s done. It made sense. Second, this is something that I will want to master. It may take me 100+ hours to get to the smoothness with which my instructor pulled things off, but when ATC tells you there’s a threat, your response has to be automatic. You can’t pause and pre-think the steps before you do them.



We landed, sat down and chatted about the day’s flight—the good, the bad, and the ugly (take-off)—and called it a day. Tomorrow was another day, and we’d be back at it soon enough.

 



“Tomorrow” arrived, and it was time to get back going again. We chatted again this morning about what we noticed last flight, and I mentioned the newfound context in which I saw slow flight and recovery. My instructor reassured me that as a student who had all of 10 hours under his belt, I should not compare myself to someone who demonstrates slow flight recovery techniques many times a day every day of the week with regard to the smoothness with which he acted the previous day. In an emergency, form follows function. Just get the steps down and worry about polishing them later.



Out to the plane, prepped it and set off on the day’s adventure. I didn’t get 200’ down the tarmac before I encountered something I hadn’t dealt with before. Up to this point, I was actually taking a bit of pride in how much improvement I had in keeping the plane taxiing (more or less) on the yellow line. I was having a bugger of a time today. Hello “crosswind!” On the ground, this has a tendency to turn the plane into a weathervane. The wind was coming from the right, causing the plane to want to constantly turn that direction. Ailerons turned into the wind to stabilize the plane, and a whole lot of left rudder and brake to keep the plane rolling where you want it to. And—yes—it changes every time you turn a corner. It wasn’t my prettiest taxi. Definitely a challenge, but I’m glad I had already gotten somewhat of a handle on taxiing before throwing this monkey wrench into the works.



Speaking of challenges, my take-off was a bit ugly today, too. This time I had my hand on the yoke and had no trouble keeping us centered on the runway, but—again—once airborne, the plane wanted to slide to the left. I’m gonna have to figure out what’s going on there. I’m honestly not sure. Was it the wind? Am I pulling the ailerons slightly to the left when pulling back to lift off? It’s something I’m going to pay close attention to next time out of the gate. That has to get better. Alas, until I’m landing, doing touch-and-goes to get repeated take-offs in order to troubleshoot isn’t going to happen. I would also expect this to have to be corrected before getting to landing, so we’ll take it one take-off at a time. I think just knowing the tendency, figuring out what the probable causes of it might be, and getting ahead of it should clear it up.



Southwest to Chatfield Reservoir. Slow flight and stalls were on the agenda today. On our way out there, we got talking about cruise power levels, cruise descent power levels, and climbs. In the process of that discussion while having my eye on the horizon thinking I was in level flight, I managed to lose 500’ in elevation because I had the power set too low. I think I was just gradually pitching my nose up to keep the horizon at the same place on the windshield, meanwhile slowly bleeding airspeed and altitude. Gotta watch outside the window but confirm with the gauges. Look outside, look outside, check inside (gauges). Lather, rinse, repeat. Not the shining start I was hoping for.



In lessons past, whenever I had something of a befuddling moment like that, it had a tendency to knock me off my game. My instructor and I would work through things step by step again. Do this, check that, do this, check that… This time, something different happened. I’m not entirely certain how it came about, but it was cool how it worked out. Instead of going through mental checklists of what steps 1, 2, and 3 would be, I just flew the plane. Need to climb? Full power, let the nose come up. If you need to climb faster, apply more back pressure to the yoke. Less focus on mentally going through the step-by-step checklist in my head allowed me to just feel my way through what the plane was doing as I made control adjustments. My instructor would say say “climb to 8000” or “descend to 7500,” and leave it to me to figure out how to get there and make corrections along the way. (Hint – when descending only 300’ or so, don’t worry about rolling in trim. You’ll have to level off too soon.) I was able to work a lot of things out in my mind just flying here, there, and around. I felt comfortable. I would like to think this more relaxed approach stemmed in part from my instructor’s faith that I actually know what to do, but need to put things together in my own way.



After a bit of flying circles, climbing, and descending, I felt plenty confident to start setting up for slow flight and recovery. This time, I didn’t focus on the individual steps in process (which I know), but thought about the end result and the best way to get me there. It’s difficult to describe in words the difference in these two approaches because either way it ends up reading like an instruction book on how to fly the maneuver. The closest I think I can come is that today’s approach focused on the “why” as opposed to the “what.” The “what” is the step-by-step description of how to fly the maneuver that my instructor and I had talked about numerous times. “What’s the first thing we do? What’s the second thing…” and so forth. Today I looked at it from the perspective of “why” those are the steps we take. Why do we reduce power? Why do we increase pitch? Why do we lower flaps? What effect do each of those actions have on the plane? That’s what I was figuring out in my mind in the first part of today’s flight—feeling the action and reaction so I can put them together to get the plane to do what I want it to do. They’re not so much individual steps as actions taken in concert to get the plane where you want it to go.



I set us up for slow flight, flew a few turns, recovered, climbed, set up more slow flight, recovered… Sometimes it wasn’t pretty, sometimes it was “textbook.” Where things weren’t pretty, though, there was realization of why it wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t watching my airspeed. I was pitched up too high. All easily corrected for a better job the next time. The difference in my mindset was most noticeable. I was ahead of the curve because I wasn’t thinking about what came next. I was still plenty shaky because of inexperience, but I felt better about it, if that makes any sense.



With that renewed confidence, I proceeded to setting up stalls and stall recovery. These weren’t quite as clean, but I haven’t done many of them yet. Probably most of the roughness here came from the stall itself, not setting it up or getting out of it. I’m wondering, too, if I was picking up well enough on what the stall felt like to know when to recover from it. We’ll do more of that next time. 

On top of all of this, my instructor had me making more radio calls and multitasking with respect to flying, setting up radios and getting weather info. I think I made sense for the most part on my calls, but don't quote me. Probably forgot a few words here and there. On one hand I could probably write things out on my kneeboard before saying them, but on the other hand, that would require writing on my kneeboard while flying, which at this stage would probably introduce more chaos than having to repeat radio calls because I flubbed a line. My handwriting is bad enough without having to read what I just wrote at 8000' in bumpy skies. 



I think the takeaway from today’s lesson is that I’m learning. I’m doing less and less guessing of what to do, instead starting to draw on experience of knowing what happens when I do this, that, or the other and applying that to different aspects of flight. It’s a good feeling. Today was definitely an “I may actually be able to pull this off” kind of day. With any luck, this will continue next lesson.