Lesson 12 - The Second Introduction

 

Let me start off by saying that when your instructor wryly asks you if you’re forgetting anything, you’re probably forgetting something.



After pre-flighting the plane and getting ready to pull it out onto the line to start up…



Instructor: “Did you forget anything?”
Me: “No, I think we’re good. Ready?”

(pulls on tow bar, plane doesn’t move.)

(looks at wheel chock still firmly against left wheel.)

Me: “You were waiting for that, weren’t you?”
Instructor: “yep.”



Today’s lesson (besides double check the chocks), an introduction to flying in the pattern, setting us up for touching down. My instructor was quite candid about this lesson, telling me that I wasn’t likely to be all that successful today. This is where everything we had been practicing with respect to stalls, recoveries, and ground reference maneuvers come together so you can get the plane safely back onto the ground. As the saying goes, “taking off is optional. Landing is mandatory.” And like that first introductory flight a few months ago, this one would prove almost equally overwhelming when tasked with putting everything together. I wasn’t expecting greatness by any means, but I was certainly excited to start putting the pieces together. And whooooo boy… Yeah, birds make it look easy. I didn’t fail miserably, and I have every confidence I’ll get it soon enough, but there were definitely a few “oh crap!” moments.



Today’s first task was getting to where we were going. We flew out to the airport formerly known as “Front Range Airport,” but now has the rather lofty name “Colorado Air and Space Port.” (Yes, one of a small handful of FAA-recognized sites designated for commercial flights into space.) This lies east of Denver, right in the shadow of Denver International Airport. (More on the special challenges that brings in a bit.) To get there, we needed to skirt Buckley AFB’s airspace as well as DIA’s, which took us east for a fair distance before turning north. I will say I was very comfortable navigating and flying that leg of the journey. Climb up to 7500’ for most of it, then a slow descent to 6500 to get below DIA’s shelf and pattern altitude for the *ahem* spaceport. Aaaannnddd that’s where the comfortable part ended.



Let’s talk about the Colorado Space Port for a bit. First, it’s in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but farms and open fields all around it. As a result, landmarks are few to come by. Second, it’s in the shadow of DIA, which is also out in the middle of nowhere. The sticky part here is that DIA’s airspace starts at the surface just to the west and north of the runways at Colorado Space Port. The folks at DIA are rather strict about which planes it allows into its airspace, and we ain’t one of ‘em. So rather than getting on the losing end of an argument with them, we have make an almost immediate turn once we’re off the runway to avoid breaking their airspace. There is thankfully a road which serves as a boundary marker for reference on that end of things.



There were a handful of planes in the pattern as we approached, so ATC had us fly a long final on our first approach. This was good for me so I could get a sense of lining up with a runway from a distance, then get a better sense for speed and glide slope. We were doing “almost” touch-and-goes today, so we’d fly within 50’ of the runway surface then go around. I felt okay about keeping lined up with the runway, though my speed was definitely fast coming in so I was higher than I should have been. I initiated the go-around, but it was sloppy. “Sloppy” and “50 feet above the ground” don’t mix well. I had the plane trimmed completely wrong on climb-out, so I was having to really push the yoke down to keep the nose to the horizon. That shouldn’t be the case. I knew it was trimmed wrong, but I also didn’t do anything to correct it. Too busy fighting the yoke and worrying about making the right turn before getting to the airspace boundary. My instructor took the controls for the turn, re-trimmed the plane, and got me set up for the downwind leg. I climbed to pattern altitude, set my speed, then once ATC cleared us to turn base, began my right turn. The problem with extended downwind legs is that you lose site of the runway. In an ideal pattern, you begin your base turn with the end of the runway about 45 degrees behind you. We were well past that point. Also, the lack of visual references surrounding the field meant I was guessing where the runway was as I was turning. I was rather timid in my turn, so by the time I got headed on base and lifted my right wing to look for the runway, I was already darned near across its centerline. Oops…



At this field and at the distance we were from the runway, there was plenty of time and room to correct this. At Centennial with parallel runways, I’d have been in a whole lot of trouble, being lined up with the parallel runway instead of the one I was supposed to be landing at. The impulse is to quickly correct the alignment, but that’s not always the best course of action. The danger is that when you’re making the turn from base to final, you’re already flying slow, so control is not as precise and you’re dangerously close to stall speed. You’re also low to the ground. A stall at this point is not a good thing. This is statistically where and how a lot of crashes happen, and the outcomes are usually not positive. The preferred solution in such cases would be to go around and try again. Since we had been on an extended downwind leg in this case, we had ample time (and elevation) to safely adjust our position.



The second pass at the almost-touch-and-go approach went a bit smoother in terms of keeping lined up with the runway and managing airspeed (“a bit smoother” being relative; it was still anything but textbook), but my go-around was no less sloppy than the first. The nose danced around far too much when I applied power. Throttle, nose to horizon, rudder, reduce flaps. All pretty much simultaneously and in degrees to keep the nose of the airplane as stationary as possible. Looks easy when you see it in black and white. And it’s something I’ve done at altitude. It sure wasn’t coming smoothly here.



The next few passes weren’t much improvement. Part of that was just due to the mentally overwhelming aspect of setting up the landing, part of that was thinking about what I had just screwed up on the previous attempt, but not really having time to properly analyze in my head because I had to get ready for the next. Analysis of the steps I was missing would have to wait for the flight back to Centennial and debriefing afterwards. There was so much to absorb anyway, it was probably for the best. I call this my “second introduction,” because like my first lesson, so much more made sense once I was on the ground and able to think through everything that happened.



We headed back to Centennial on a flight path that coincidentally took me over my neighborhood (cool factor!). My instructor reassured me that my performance was on par with pretty much every new student their first time in the pattern. He also added that the wind was a bit bumpier than he anticipated, so that affected things as well. I think I was too busy trying to line things up and watching my airspeed and altitude to notice the bumps may have been wind and not control movements. I thought I was just fighting myself. My co-worker who is also a private pilot and has been keeping tabs on my progress likewise reassured me that my experience was not out of the norm.



I viewed today’s lesson as something of a pre-assessment a student might take the first week in class just to see where they are with the material. There’s no expectation they’re going to do well at all, but it gives the student an idea of what the material is, how it works, and what they have to work towards. Next lesson we’re going to do much of the same thing, but take it up a few hundred feet. This will allow me to work on managing airspeed, altitude, and recovery with a little bit larger of a margin for error when my recoveries go askew while I work to fine-tune working everything together.



Learning to fly is a piling on of layers. Every time there’s a new layer added to the equation, the comfort level decreases until you begin to get used to that new layer. And that’s when it’s time to add another new layer. Today’s lesson in many ways felt like a very thick new layer. At first blush, it’s easy to look at what happened today and be discouraged. That’s not the case, because this new layer isn’t really all that thick at all. It’s not a new skill that needs to be learned. It’s a matter of managing existing skills together at the same time. Think of it as an orchestra. You learn the flute, you learn the violin, you learn the drums. Now it’s time to learn how to conduct them all together to play the symphony. And like getting to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.