Lesson 15 - Just Fly the Plane

 

Due to continued smoke and wind making conditions unpalatable, it had again been more than a week since my previous lesson. Since that lesson was hamstrung by wind and weather, it had been more than a month since my last decent lesson. I was looking forward to getting up and in the air again. Today we had fairly steady, but light winds, and the threat of early afternoon storms boiling up over the mountains. My instructor texted me prior to me leaving for the airport to see if I had checked the forecast. I told him I noticed the chances for afternoon storms, but at that point they were not going to hit until we would have landed. The forecast kept changing every time I looked at it, so "fickle as the wind" seemed to be a fitting metaphor. We agreed to head to the field and play it by ear. I went out, pre-flighted the plane, had the tanks topped off, all the while watching the clouds build over the mountains. My instructor joined me, and the storm cell that was initially tracking to the north had changed direction, headed pretty much straight for us. Ugh. We decided to keep going with the pre-flight, pulled the plane out to the line, did our safety briefing, and checked the weather one last time before finally deciding whether to turn the key (thus the meter). The storm had resumed its original northward track, so I decided to go for it. It was bouncy last lesson, so we figured if it were as bad today we could always return home. I felt the need to get into the air, though, because I was worried about my skills really regressing with only one decent flight in a month's time. The winds weren't too bad, out of the north at 8 knots. The skies were scattered with clouds, but the lowest at 3500', which was still above where I would be flying. The storm was still a threat, but not heading our way. Clear prop, turn the key, and let's go fly. 

The first thing I noticed when taxiing (headed west) was that the plane was not responding to my left rudder pedal. I had it to the floor, but the plane would only continue straight at best. I had my instructor take the controls to see if it felt odd to him. Of course it didn't. He knew exactly what was going on. 

"Where are your hands?" 

Right hand on the throttle, left hand, um, on my knee, not on the yoke. (I think I do this subconsciously so I don't try to steer with my hands. Bad habit. Well, both are bad habits. One bad habit to break another? Probably not the best plan. But I digress.) Did I mention the winds are from the north? Did I mention we were taxiing west? I've run into this before, I just didn't make the connection. Word problem - North wind hits tail of plane heading west. Which way does the nose want to turn? Hint - it ain't to the left. Step 1 - put hand on yoke where it belongs. Step 2 - turn ailerons into the wind with hand that is now on the yoke. Step 3 - apply more left brake to help plane turn left when needed because that north wind is going to keep hitting the tail. Ahh, much better.

I chose to learn on the Cessna 172S because my school has about a dozen of them. That means if one goes down for maintenance, there's a good chance I can book another in its place. While I have one that I seem to gravitate towards, I rotate through three or four of them for my lessons. They all fly more or less the same, but none of them have the same radio and navigation set-up. This means if there's one thing I kinda have to feel my way through each time, it's setting the radios up. All I'm going to say is that it's a good thing ATC is trained not to respond to idiot pilots who are talking on the wrong frequency. Having said that, once I was actually on the correct frequency, I did probably my best job of talking to ATC today, and handled the majority of the calls myself. 

I heard ground control clear a business jet to taxi, then cleared me to taxi on the same taxiway. He was about 2000' up from me on the taxiway, so if I were to pull in front, I would have had plenty of separation. I was a bit unsure as to whether I should wait for him to pass since he was cleared first, but my instructor said "move" with the same intonation as we give someone in front of us at a green light after about half a second. He then explained that while the business jet was cleared before me, a) I was closer to the end of the runway, and b) the controller knew where I was and wanted me in front of him despite him clearing me second. His wake turbulence would be greater, so better to have the smaller plane go first. Sometimes the lessons you learn aren't found in textbooks.

Lined up on the numbers, applied power, and we were off and flying. Once we were 500' above the ground, we turned to the southeast towards the practice area. On the agenda for the day, pilotage (aka, getting where you're going based on landmarks) slow speed and stalls, and after our last flight, altitude and speed control in general. 

I can't explain the difference between this flight and the last. The winds weren't as bumpy and the skies were just a bit clearer, but they were still factors to be dealt with. I just felt so much more on top of my game today than perhaps I have thus far in this entire process. Maybe it was the confidence of handling the radio communication. Maybe it was because it was my call on the weather to go flying in the first place. Whatever it was, there was a sense of ownership of the process. I definitely hope I can tap into that going forward. It will make my life (and my instructor's nerves) much easier. Our slow flight and stall training went very smoothly. The first one was a bit rough because I forgot how quickly the plane slows down when you reduce power and introduce flaps. I was taking too long to talk through the steps as opposed to just doing what needed to be done. Once that rust was quickly removed, things went cleanly. 

After a few bouts with that, my instructor turned and said "just fly the plane. Go wherever you want." I thought briefly about doing ground reference maneuvers or things like that, but that wasn't the mood. I wasn't frazzled by anything we had been doing. There wasn't the (figurative) cloud hanging overhead saying "you could have done that better, try again." I was just up there having fun and feeling good about how I was flying. I pointed the nose to the east and just enjoyed being in the air. After all, that's why I'm doing this--to be able to just fly where I want to and have fun doing it. I turned south, then when I came to highway 86 below us, I turned west to follow that back towards Franktown before heading back to the airport. Once I figured out that ATC wasn't responding to me because once again I didn't have the right radio punched up, I fixed that, told them where we were, and they gave me my routing back to the airport. 

I flew the plane until we were on the last part of the final approach because we had a bit of a gusty crosswind (the storms were beginning to roll in with their impact), and my instructor figured that was probably going to be a bit problematic if this were to be my first go at setting us on the ground. (I wasn't going to argue with him. My last time "in the pattern" lining things up wasn't the smoothest.) 

We parked the plane and walked back to the terminal both feeing very positive about things. I'm not going to say "it clicked." It wasn't that kind of a moment. If there's anything that can be said about my lessons, there are good days and there are bad days. Consistency, while being key, is still proving somewhat elusive. Hopefully today's experience will change that, and hopefully my planned schedule of flying twice a week will greatly reinforce the good while eliminating the bad. We talked about stage checks and figuring out which boxes still yet need to be checked to get me ready to solo. We hadn't had that conversation yet, so whether it was pure coincidence that we were having that today or not, it felt good to see a tangible sign of progress towards my goal. 

P.S. I left the field at 1:30pm. By 3pm, we had reports of funnel clouds and 1" hail in the area. Yeah, I think we got the last decent air of the day. Glad we decided to go up.