Today my instructor decided to shake things up just a bit and instead of more stalls and slow flight, we opted to work on ground reference maneuvers. This means flying patterns based on what you as a pilot see on the ground. You pick a spot to use as a reference, and fly to it, beside it, or around it depending on what you’re trying to do picking other reference points along the way. Ground reference maneuvers—particularly flying a rectangular course—are necessary skills to develop in order to learn how to fly a pattern to land the plane.
After analyzing (over analyzing?) my previous two take-offs, I made sure to be very cognizant of what I was doing with regard to flying straight over the runway once I lifted off the ground. That paid off, as I did a much better job of staying on centerline of the runway on departure. But today’s departure introduced something new. Bumpy air. Gusty winds and showers were expected to move into the area later in the afternoon, and the air was already starting to get just a bit unsettled. We hit some pockets of bumpy air which had a nasty tendency to pitch my nose up. I didn’t compensate as I should, and lost a fair amount of airspeed as a result. I did correct—eventually—but I wasn’t taking the lead on flying through the bumps, instead letting the air move the plane and then figuring out how to correct after the fact. That will come with time and experience. Now that I know what the “standard” is, it will be easier to work towards it.
In any case, ATC had us fly a roundabout route out of the airport rather than our usual “fly straight out and turn west” that we’ve flown many times before. My guess is that they were routing us around traffic in the area, but it gave me experience listening and making more turns per ATC’s instructions. It was also a reminder that ATC has a habit of giving instructions relative to local landmarks such as roads, lakes, large buildings, power lines, etc. Flying out of the same airport all the time, I’m learning those local landmarks as we reference them. (Being local to the area helps too.) From this, I would suspect that it’s probably quite a good idea for a pilot flying to a new area to do his/her homework not only on the airport itself, but the local surroundings. If ATC tells you to fly to report over such-and-such road, you need to know where on the ground such-and-such road is. Even flying in the practice area today, I learned new roads. “Who needs a roadmap when you’re flying?” Well, there’s a good reason why you do.
Back to the task at hand—ground reference maneuvers. These are so far (to me) the most tangible example of “flying” the plane in that you’re directing the plane where you want to go and making constant adjustments to get it there. (In retrospect, this would also apply to my rather bumpy climb-out as well, so I’ll have to remember that for next time.) For purposes of training and certification, there are steps required to set up each maneuver and complete it within requirements. The first step is to establish which way the wind is blowing, because you want to start these with the wind at your back (downwind). If you can see flags, wind socks, or other visual references on the ground, that will give you an idea of which way the wind is blowing where you are. You can also use the weather info you got when you took off, though that may change depending on how old it is and how far from the airport you are—especially in places where the topography will direct the winds. You can also compare your airspeed to your groundspeed. If you fly a circle, your groundspeed will increase when compared to your airspeed on the downwind leg of the circle. It will be less than your airspeed if you’re flying into the wind. (Yes, in some planes in slow flight configurations in a strong enough headwind, your groundspeed may well be next to zero.) Note the changes in groundspeed relative to airspeed with respect to heading, and you’ll have the direction of the wind.
The direction of the wind is important to know in ground reference maneuvers because the wind will be blowing you one way or the other relative to the ground and you’ll have to compensate for that with the controls. For example, in a turn around a point (circle), when you enter on the downwind leg, your groundspeed will be the fastest, so you will need to bank the plane steeper to make a tighter turn in the air because it is moving you relative the ground. As you proceed around the circle, you will need less of a bank angle as you transition from moving with the wind to against it (headwind).
We did three different ground reference maneuvers. The first was an S turn across a road. You find a road, and as soon as you cross it, you start a 180-degree turn to cross it again, then reverse your turn again to cross it a third time. The idea is that every time you cross the road, you’re wings level and crossing perpendicular to the road. The key to this is to just transition directly from one turn to the next smoothly, as opposed to stopping one turn, holding straight and level while you’re crossing the road, then beginning the next (which is what I was doing as I was thinking step-by-step again).
Turns around a point were next on the agenda. The trick here is to maintain a consistent distance from a given point on the ground while you fly around it. The easy way to do this is to pick a point, then pick a half dozen or so identifiable points equidistant from that point every 60 degrees or so, then basically fly from each point to the next. When you look at the flight path from my lesson, you’ll see that I did pretty well on my first attempt, but not quite as good on my second. The difference was that on my first attempt, I had easily identifiable points on the ground to fly to; a stand of trees, a building, a road, etc. For my next point, I picked a small building in the middle of a field with really not much that really stood out as a reference a set distance away. As such, my ground track got a bit wonkier than ideal. I still managed to keep it close because I spent a lot of time looking out the side window judging my distance from the point that way.
And therein lies the hiccup in the process. Remember the title of this chapter, “the three second rule.” No, that doesn’t apply to M&Ms which fall on the cockpit floor. It means that as a pilot, your eyes should never be focused on any one thing for more than three seconds. They need to be constantly moving around. One of the goals of these ground reference maneuvers is to perform them with less than a 100’ change in altitude through the maneuver. For the S curves and the first turn around a point, I did surprisingly well on that front. This second turn around a point was not as consistent. The reason? Because I had definite points to fly to during my first run-through, I spent more time looking out the front of the plane to find the point and fly to the next one. This meant I had a good sense of what the nose of the plane was doing. On my second one, with no real discernable equidistant points from the center to fly to, I spent more time looking at the point itself from the side of the plane. Did you know that when you’re looking out the side of the plane, you lose track of what the nose of the plane is doing? Yeah. Strange. Who knew??? The upshot was that my altitude wasn’t nearly as consistent as it was on the first run. I’ve written “outside, outside, check the gauges” before as a visual flow for your eyes. With ground reference maneuvers, it’s “side, front, check the gauges.” You have to keep tabs of what the plane is doing across all three axes.
Last on the agenda was a rectangular pattern, which on the ground track looks more like a very long oval. This simulates flying a rectangular approach pattern to a runway. I picked a road to be the “runway,” and another point to serve as my downwind leg reference point. The idea is then to fly the downwind leg, then make the turn to base, followed by the turn to final. With the downwind leg less than a mile from the upwind leg, the turn to base then to final was more of a constant 180-degree turn as opposed to two separate 90-degree turns. I thought I did pretty well on these, though my altitude still fluctuated more than I had hoped. Part of that was me trying to correct for altitude gains and losses as opposed to just resetting and continuing. When I start chasing altitude, I tend to make matters worse.
After a few goes with rectangular patterns, I dialed in the weather information, butchered the call to the tower letting them know we were inbound to the field, and started our trek back east to land.
