Lessons 29 and 30 - Airspeed is King (and don't forget your checklists!)

 I'm combining two lessons, partly because with the Holiday madness I haven't had time to write the first one up, but also because the two lessons ended up being remarkably intertwined. The two lessons aren't so much a matter of "night and day," but more one of "questions and answers." 

Let's start with the first lesson. First, it was cold, around 28 degrees. It was the first day I've flown in sub-freezing temperatures since I started back in April. In fact, I don't think it's ever been cooler than 45 degrees for any of my flights, and certainly my most recent ones have been in 60-degree temps thanks to an unusually warm Fall. Anyway, one of the first things you learn in ground school when learning about airplane performance is the effect temperature has on performance. Planes fly better in the cold because the air is denser. I was about to learn how much better, and learn it very quickly. Like as soon as I pulled back on the yoke to take off, and we lifted up so quickly I almost stalled. Oh crap! Nose down a bit, find that nice 75 knot climb-out speed. 

I did find that sweet spot for a proper 75 knot climb-out. Problem is, in cold air, that meant a very nose-high pitch attitude and darned near 1000 feet per minute rate of climb! I was not used to that, and I found it easy to lose sight of my alignment with the runway because my nose was pitching so high above the horizon. Fortunately I was consistently veering off to the left, away from the parallel runway. I was reminded later to lower the nose periodically to make sure you were still pointed where you want to be pointed. Still, with that very robust rate of climb, I found myself at pattern altitude about halfway through my crosswind leg of the pattern, if not before, and it got my rhythms off just a bit. 

I mention this because in hindsight, I didn't realize that's what was happening at the time; I just knew my airspeed/pitch control was definitely off kilter all day. If there's one piece of advice that is almost universal when it comes to landing, it's "start with a stabilized approach." If you've got that, the rest is "easy!" A stabilized approach to landing means that you've got your airspeed under control and are on a good, predictable glide slope. Airspeed is controlled primarily by the pitch of the airplane--how high (or low) the nose is relative to the horizon. Glide slope is controlled by power. It stands to reason that if I had to pitch my nose way up to maintain 75 knots under full power on climb-out, then what would have been a "typical" pitch attitude on warmer weather days would result in a slightly faster airspeed on the descent. They say "Airspeed is king" (or "... key" depending on who's saying it.) It was obvious today why. On landings where I had my airspeed more-or-less in check, I had an easier time on the approach. For my scientific mind that likes to dissect cause/effect of control movements in the airplane, this was pretty clear-cut. I did better when I had good control over my airspeed, which was something of a rarity today. 

More frustrating to me this lesson was my inability to properly time the "flare" (aka "roundout," or "transition" from CFIs who don't like the term "flare"). I floated. A lot. I ballooned. I gave the landing gear a proper stress test. There was absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind when I was on the ground. Seismometers detected it. The line "I may bend your precious airplane, but I'll get it down" kept replaying in my mind, because I was sure I bent something. It was not pretty. They say "any landing you can walk away from and still use the airplane is a great landing." Perhaps that's true in the purest sense of the term, but my instructor has higher standards. On the plus side (I always try to find at least one gem), I'm getting better at trimming the plane for climbing and descending. That, and upon inspection at the end of the lesson, I actually didn't bend anything.

That night, I lamented to the student pilot group on Facebook about my rather dismal landing performance of the day, and asked for advice from other students and instructors in the group for getting things right. The answers were varied in terms of techniques to try the next time up, but one thing was abundantly clear--I was not alone.

I was eager to try some of these new techniques on my next lesson. Alas, wind gusts to 25 knots grounded us that day, so my anticipation would have to wait another week.

The day of my next lesson dawned equally cold. Because the lesson was at 9 am and we were the first to fly the plane, we had to preheat the engine with a hot air blower. This warms the engine to get the oil flowing faster. By the time I got onto the ramp to get the plane prepped, there were a dozen or so other folks warming up their engines, so I had to wait my turn for the heaters. I finally got my plane warming up, and I watched as one by one, the others left the ramp for the clear blue skies. 

Alas, because I was the last horse out of the barn, that meant that the pattern at Centennial was full, so no touch-and-goes for me here today. No problem. We'll fly east and head to Colorado Space Port. Yeah we weren't the first one with that idea either, and Spaceport nixed us for the day as well. So no touch-and-goes for today, despite that being pretty much the sole point of what we wanted to do. We opted instead to head south to the practice area to work on slow flight, since that's pretty much what pattern flying is. It turned out to be a good exercise. I spent pretty much the entire time working to maintain a given airspeed and maneuver around, climbing and descending without changing the airspeed too much. After a bit of that, we decided to head back to Centennial on the off chance the pattern had opened up and we could do touch-and-goes there. No such luck. They vectored us in direct to the east/west runway for a full stop. 

So, here was my one chance at working a landing today. It was a straight-in approach to runway 28. Straight-in approaches are nice in that you have the runway in sight for pretty much the entire time you're landing. This makes it easy to make sure you're pointed the right direction. The downside is that in a typical pattern approach, there are mental targets for altitude and airspeed on each leg of the pattern. Your downwind leg, you start by dropping your engine to a low RPM and extend flaps to start slowing you down. You begin your descent, make your turn to the base leg of the pattern, meeting your airspeed and altitude targets for that leg, which for the Cessna is 75 knots and 500' above the ground. From there, you make your turn to final, extend more flaps, slow to 65 knots, and land the plane. 

On a straight-in approach, your benchmarks for airspeed and altitude don't change, but you do it all while flying the same heading. This was only the second or third time I've flown the approach to 28, so I didn't have a good sense on visual landmarks to gauge distance from the field. For instance, when I'm landing on 17, I know when I pass over Arapahoe Road, I better be at no more than 500' above the ground and 75 knots or slower with flaps being extended to slow me down to 65. If I'm landing from the south on 35, Lincoln Avenue is my landmark for that. Nope, no such mental landmarks on 28 for me today. (I will be looking at the map before my next lesson.) The end result, my speed was okay-ish, but I was way too high. My instructor put us into a forward slip to bleed altitude and get us back on a proper glide slope, then handed the controls back to me for the final approach. With a stable approach re-established, I worked through some of the mental reminders I had read from my Facebook group for that final transition onto the ground. Easy, but firm on pulling the yoke back. Wait for the runway to get wider quicker in your periphery, transition your eyes from the aiming point to further down the runway and aim your nose there instead. And I managed to pull it off. My second "that was all you" landing. And it wasn't even that rough, not like the seismometer-rattling hits of the last time. I was really bummed that I wasn't going to have a chance for a second landing this lesson, but at least I was walking away from the lesson with a feeling that I was able to land the plane because of conscious actions I was making with the controls. I felt in control of things. Perhaps not confidently in control, but it was a landing where I felt I was flying the plane, as opposed to it flying me. 

I was feeling pretty good about things after this lesson, and my instructor shared my sentiment about how things went. However, he's also a stickler for details. And he has a way of catching and correcting bad habits in a way you don't easily forget. He spends a lot of time watching me fly; counting seconds between when he notices something happening and when I notice it, or watching my eyes and my head to note where I'm looking or not looking. He's very observant of mannerisms and things which affect how I fly; things I don't necessarily think about as having much of an impact. It's actually quite fascinating to me the things he picks up on. I don't know if they teach that in CFI school, but when he says "this is what I've noticed," it's rarely something blatantly obvious, but small things that have big impacts. Correcting them pays dividends. During today's debriefing, he says "I'm going to send you a picture I took while you were landing." Okay, I think to myself. He's taken some cool scenery pics while I've been flying, because--let's face it--I'm learning in a pretty scenic place. Or maybe he got a cool shot of me looking intent while landing or something.

 

He continues, "I want you to tell me what's wrong with it."  That wasn't what I wanted to hear. Oh, s***. What'd I do now?  I look at the photo. My hand's in the proper place on the yoke (which he taught me by slapping my wrist like my old piano teacher used to). I had the weather written down, my right hand was on the throttle, my fly was zipped. He stumped me. "Zoom in," he says. "Look at your checklist." 

Yep, that's my pre-takeoff checklist. He took that photo as I was on short final. That little piece of laminated paper we're supposed to refer to during various stages of flight was still clipped to my kneeboard, undisturbed from before we took off--a clear sign I hadn't referred to it in a good long while. Checklists exist for a reason. They're there so we have a written description of what needs to be done at various stages of flight. It might be something as simple as calling out your engine RPM and airspeed when cruising in straight and level flight, or making sure your fuel tank selector is still set to "both" and that your seatbelts are still fastened. Did I run my checklists? The proof was right there. No denying I had not. It wasn't that I hadn't thought about those things, but I didn't run the checklist which serves as a reminder to think about all of "those things" so that nothing gets missed. 

So, yep, another bad habit I need to break. And hopefully one I break before he resorts to slapping me topside the head with it mid-flight. Though I wouldn't put it past him, nor would I remotely blame him.