I will never fault game show contestants for not knowing obvious answers ever again. I knew what we were going to be working on today. I went over in my mind the necessary steps. This wasn’t uncharted territory. I was ready. Then performance anxiety set in. The ability to retrieve that which I had been practicing went completely askew. But I’ll get to that in a bit.
The first takeaway of the day was the importance of density altitude. In my ground school, I learned what it was and how to calculate it. For those wondering, density altitude is what the air feels like to the airplane. We all know the air in the atmosphere gets thinner the higher you go. The air also gets thinner the warmer it gets. Airplanes have a “ceiling,” which is the maximum altitude the plane can fly. This is a function the wings, weight of the plane, and power of the engine. That ceiling is also dependent on the density of the air. When it gets hot out, the heat makes the air thinner. As a result, the plane will not perform as well as when it’s cooler out.
Today, it was hot outside—90 plus. The density altitude at the airport was 8,700 feet. That means even though the true elevation of the airfield is 5,885 feet, planes flying today would behave at take-off the same as they would behave on a “standard day” (59 degrees) at 8,700’. To keep the math simple, that’s a technical loss of about 3,000’ of elevation. The practical working ceiling of the Cessna is 12,000’ on a standard day. Losing 3,000 from that means we’ve got a practical working ceiling of only 9,000 feet. We typically maneuver between 7,500 – 8,500’, so we were pushing the upper limits of that ceiling today. When I was just crunching the numbers for ground school, I did the math and didn’t think about how it actually affects things in the air. Today at 8,500’, we were hard pressed to be able to climb faster than 300 feet per minute. If there’s a mountain at 10,000’, you’re not going to be able to get over it very easily (if at all). That’s why density altitude is important.
The second takeaway from today is that I’m getting more confident with the airplane. The preflight checklist material is getting easier. I need to come up with some kind of mnemonic device for the safety briefing. I gave myself the safety briefing in the car before leaving for the field. I got tongue-tied in the plane. (I did get through the take-off briefing, so there’s that.) My taxiing is improving, despite what felt like a right brake that was sticking every once in a while. Don’t know if that was my imagination or just a quirk of the plane I was flying. Today’s take-off went (relative to previous take-offs) very smoothly. I’m feeling better about those. I need to work on trimming the plane once we’re off the ground, because I felt like I was having to pull back on the yoke harder than necessary on climb-out. If flying the plane is best done with subtle control movements, having to apply that much pressure to the yoke to maintain climb runs a bit counter to that. However, I was concentrating on listening to ATC tell me where to fly and when I could start my turns that I wasn’t worrying about trimming the controls. That will come.
Today’s lesson focus was slow flight and stalls. (Wing stalls, not engine stalls.) As I hinted at the beginning of this entry, things didn’t exactly go as smoothly as I had hoped. I had practiced these maneuvers in my chair fairly often since my last flight. I felt confident after my last lesson that I could do these things without prompting. I felt pretty good, but somehow my mind went blank. I grew up doing community theater, so I’m generally immune to stage fright. Generally, but perhaps not completely?
A few things tripped me up, I think. On our first slow-flight, I had the plane’s nose pitching up way too much. In retrospect, I think I may have forgotten the flaps were extended on this exercise, and was pitching the nose for a “clean” slow flight configuration, which is a lot higher than flaps extended. I don’t know that I ever fully realized that, as I kept having a tendency to pull the nose high through the drills. At least I recognize it now, so when I drill in my head over the next week, I’ll paint a clearer mental picture.
The second thing was that whole “action-reaction” thing. Every action on the controls has a predictable reaction. Because the reaction is predictable, you as a pilot have the ability to counter that reaction as it happens so the reaction does not interfere with the maneuver. For instance, when one applies full throttle, the plane tends to pull to the left. This is easily countered by gently applying a bit of right rudder to counteract that tendency. I learned this on the runway. You’d think I’d remember it in the air. On my first slow-flight recovery, I pushed the throttle full forward, put the nose to horizon, reduced flaps, and after all was said and done, realized I was about 15 degrees off course (to the left). Well, yeah, dummy. You forgot the right rudder. Next time went better. Apply throttle with right hand, step on rudder with right foot. Maintain heading. They’re related.
The other action/reaction thing which tripped me up was reducing the power to idle to practice stall recoveries. Part of the stall drill includes flying a descent with the throttle set to idle. However, that descent needs to be a controlled descent. When you reduce power, the nose of the plane wants to drop. You don’t just let the plane drop and recover by pulling back on the yoke. We’re simulating a landing maneuver, and the last thing you want when you’re close to the ground landing is to do anything which would make the distance between you and the ground get closer faster. That’s where “controlled” comes into play. You know the nose is going to drop when drop power to idle. You have to counter that by pulling back on the yoke. You want to descend, but on your terms, not the planes. Since you as a pilot know what is going to happen, similar to stepping on the right rudder pedal when increasing the throttle, you can pull back a bit on the yoke when decreasing the throttle so you maintain control of the rate of descent. It can’t be a “step one – reduce throttle. Okay, that’s done, onto step 2. What’s step 2…” The reaction happens simultaneously with the action, so your control inputs to counter the reaction have to be equally simultaneous. A mental checklist of the steps is good, but the steps have to come quickly and naturally. I wasn’t quite there on that aspect today. I was thinking about each step one after another after another. Fortunately my instructor was rather accommodating to my requests of “well, that sucked. Can I try that again?” Improvements each time, thankfully, but anything but smooth.
A side note about the stall horn. It’s not loud. It starts off very quiet, a pitch and frequency best described as “mildly annoyed mosquito.” When you’re working with your instructor through these maneuvers, it’s sometimes easy to miss through the conversation. It does get louder as the stall deepens, but if your headphones are especially good at blocking out exterior noise, you’re still going to have to listen carefully. I think by the time the stall horn gets to the “HEY IDIOT!!!” stage, the plane will have let you know by other means that it’s stalled. Early in your lessons, though, it’s okay to fly and hear that annoyed mosquito during these maneuvers so you know what it sounds like. That way you know what to listen for and can correct earlier once you get used to flying and you’re not flying specifically to get the airplane close to stalling.
The last impromptu lesson on today’s flight dealt with low level wind shear and gust factors. I fly in Colorado. Colorado summers are known for their ability to spawn severe weather at a moment’s notice. We actually had a tornado touch down north of town this afternoon, which should give some indication to the unstable nature of the air on the way back to the airport. The practical lesson in low level wind shear come from flying below a developing storm cell with a considerable down draft that we didn’t see coming. Sure felt it, though. Fortunately we were still 1,500’ above the ground when we hit it. The winds at the field had become very gusty while we were out and about, too. Weather reports had them gusting nearly 20 knots above the reported wind speed. Fortunately the winds were still pretty much out of the north, so that meant they were a direct headwind for our runway, but to compensate for the gusting winds, we had to fly about 10 knots faster on landing, and only set 10 degrees of flaps so the flaps wouldn’t act like sails in the gusts. I haven’t gotten to where I’m landing the plane yet, so I was just “enjoying the ride” at this point. Enjoying, but observing at the same time.
Next time, a review of stalls, and also steep turns. I’ve done a few steep turns, but not on purpose.
