Lesson 11 - Repetition

My instructor texted me at 6 in the morning to tell me that due to expected very hot temperatures later in the day, he bumped our lesson up an hour to meet at 9 instead of 10. That way we could be up and back down before the temperature (more to the point density altitude) really started to affect airplane performance. Fortunately I was already somewhat awake thanks to our new puppy and our efforts to potty train her, but that doesn’t make me a morning person. Between that and the fact that our previous two flights got cancelled due to weather meant I was sure I was going to be battling a few cobwebs. Yes, I’m gaining confidence with every flight, but without the constant repetition, unfamiliar skills undoubtedly slip.



In an effort to get going as quickly as possible, my instructor and I headed straight out to the plane and did our pre-flight briefing while getting the plane ready to go. The biggest concern with the plane itself was a note in the plane’s file about the engine running hot (sadly no “A Little Hot” warning light, just the gauge) and also noting oil pressure on the low side. (“I forgot to check the oil pressure! When Kramer hears about this, the s***’s going to hit the fan…”) Fortunately, that scene from my favorite movie serves as a reminder to keep an eye on those things anyway. The oil was a bit low when I checked it, so I added another quart, and made a mental note to pay solid attention to the oil temperature throughout the flight. Fortunately the “pre-maneuver checklist” which we do before doing any kind of training exercise includes checking those gauges, and we were going to be doing a fair number of different exercises today.



Still a little rusty on keeping the plane centered on the yellow line, but getting much better at keeping the plane on a straight path and smoother turns on the ground in spite of not being directly over the line. It’s a perspective thing that I will eventually work out. My instructor taxied us out from the run-up area to the queue for take-off so I could get the Foreflight app set up and tracking our flight today. Don’t text and drive, don’t mess with your phone and taxi, either. Busy, busy day at the field; we were 4 deep to take off, so I got a bit of practice in what amounts to stop-and-go traffic taxiing from the queue to the runway. I have to say today’s take-off was probably my best yet. I felt fully aware of what the plane was doing in terms of where it was on the runway, what the airspeed was, when to start rotating, and keeping the plane lined up with the runway once in the air. (Until ATC told us to turn left 20 degrees.) We were expecting a few bumps with the wind today, but it wasn’t as bad as expected.



There was a fairly steady breeze blowing off the mountains today, so our lesson covered stalls and ground reference maneuvers with a wind. Stalls, I’ve decided, are the bane of my existence at the moment. They’re a condition of flight that one tries to avoid, but a pilot needs to induce in order to learn how to recover from one. If there was a place for cobwebs today, this was it. I wasn’t smooth on the stalls at all. Inducing them took more effort than I thought it should. I think that’s actually a good thing since they’re generally to be avoided, but I think struggling to get into them was affecting my mind in getting back out of them smoothly. Throttle full, right rudder, nose to horizon, reduce flaps all in one fell swoop. That’s what the textbook says. The trick is to do them in just the right amounts to keep the plane from moving around too much. That’s where I was having trouble today. At 1000’ above the ground, it’s okay to be a little shaky. At 50’ if you stall on landing or takeoff, not so much. We weren’t at 50’ today, but that will come soon enough. We did four or five stalls; enough to shake off the cobwebs and get my mind back in the groove. None were “textbook,” but we had other things to work on today, too. All of this is geared towards getting me ready to start flying “in the pattern,” AKA getting ready to learn how to land the plane.



I mentioned the steady breeze coming off the mountains, which makes ground reference maneuvers much more of a challenge than flying them on calm day which I had done previously. If you paddle a boat across a still pond, you point your boat towards your destination and paddle directly to it. If you paddle your boat across a moving river, you have to adjust the course of your boat to account for the speed of the current in order to get to where you’re going. You need to point the boat a little bit upstream because the current will push you downstream as you cross. That’s ground reference maneuvers in the wind. You have to keep adjusting your course, the steepness of your turns, etc. in response to whether you’re flying into the wind, across it, or with it. We started with doing “S” turns across a road. My first turn was an abysmal failure, but things did improve. The key is that the steeper you bank the plane, the more surface area of the wing is exposed to the wind, causing them to act as much like a sail as a wing. The balancing act comes when you’re turning from downwind to crosswind. You need a steeper angle to compensate for the wind, but the steeper you turn, the more the wind wants to blow you from your course.



We then went to doing rectangular patterns, such as what you fly when setting up your landing. We focused on maintaining heading and altitude today, not trying to control airspeed in any kind of attempt to simulate an actual landing. The goal was to get a feel for how the wind affects the plane on each of the legs. Unlike the S turns (where we are constantly turning one way or the other), the rectangular pattern theoretically has straight-and-level segments on all four sides of the pattern. This allows you to feel the turn and what the wind is doing before getting set up for the next turn. While my “rectangles” were more like ovals, I definitely got to where I could predict the point on the turn from crosswind to upwind (base to final) where the wind really caught the plane and could compensate for it. And that’s the name of the game… predict what’s going to happen and compensate with the controls for when it does.

A footnote - the oil pressure was good. We ran the mixture a bit richer than we would otherwise do, and that kept things well in check. Quirk of the plane, I think.