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.  

Lesson 11 - Repetition

My instructor texted me at 6 in the morning to tell me that due to expected very hot temperatures later in the day, he bumped our lesson up an hour to meet at 9 instead of 10. That way we could be up and back down before the temperature (more to the point density altitude) really started to affect airplane performance. Fortunately I was already somewhat awake thanks to our new puppy and our efforts to potty train her, but that doesn’t make me a morning person. Between that and the fact that our previous two flights got cancelled due to weather meant I was sure I was going to be battling a few cobwebs. Yes, I’m gaining confidence with every flight, but without the constant repetition, unfamiliar skills undoubtedly slip.



In an effort to get going as quickly as possible, my instructor and I headed straight out to the plane and did our pre-flight briefing while getting the plane ready to go. The biggest concern with the plane itself was a note in the plane’s file about the engine running hot (sadly no “A Little Hot” warning light, just the gauge) and also noting oil pressure on the low side. (“I forgot to check the oil pressure! When Kramer hears about this, the s***’s going to hit the fan…”) Fortunately, that scene from my favorite movie serves as a reminder to keep an eye on those things anyway. The oil was a bit low when I checked it, so I added another quart, and made a mental note to pay solid attention to the oil temperature throughout the flight. Fortunately the “pre-maneuver checklist” which we do before doing any kind of training exercise includes checking those gauges, and we were going to be doing a fair number of different exercises today.



Still a little rusty on keeping the plane centered on the yellow line, but getting much better at keeping the plane on a straight path and smoother turns on the ground in spite of not being directly over the line. It’s a perspective thing that I will eventually work out. My instructor taxied us out from the run-up area to the queue for take-off so I could get the Foreflight app set up and tracking our flight today. Don’t text and drive, don’t mess with your phone and taxi, either. Busy, busy day at the field; we were 4 deep to take off, so I got a bit of practice in what amounts to stop-and-go traffic taxiing from the queue to the runway. I have to say today’s take-off was probably my best yet. I felt fully aware of what the plane was doing in terms of where it was on the runway, what the airspeed was, when to start rotating, and keeping the plane lined up with the runway once in the air. (Until ATC told us to turn left 20 degrees.) We were expecting a few bumps with the wind today, but it wasn’t as bad as expected.



There was a fairly steady breeze blowing off the mountains today, so our lesson covered stalls and ground reference maneuvers with a wind. Stalls, I’ve decided, are the bane of my existence at the moment. They’re a condition of flight that one tries to avoid, but a pilot needs to induce in order to learn how to recover from one. If there was a place for cobwebs today, this was it. I wasn’t smooth on the stalls at all. Inducing them took more effort than I thought it should. I think that’s actually a good thing since they’re generally to be avoided, but I think struggling to get into them was affecting my mind in getting back out of them smoothly. Throttle full, right rudder, nose to horizon, reduce flaps all in one fell swoop. That’s what the textbook says. The trick is to do them in just the right amounts to keep the plane from moving around too much. That’s where I was having trouble today. At 1000’ above the ground, it’s okay to be a little shaky. At 50’ if you stall on landing or takeoff, not so much. We weren’t at 50’ today, but that will come soon enough. We did four or five stalls; enough to shake off the cobwebs and get my mind back in the groove. None were “textbook,” but we had other things to work on today, too. All of this is geared towards getting me ready to start flying “in the pattern,” AKA getting ready to learn how to land the plane.



I mentioned the steady breeze coming off the mountains, which makes ground reference maneuvers much more of a challenge than flying them on calm day which I had done previously. If you paddle a boat across a still pond, you point your boat towards your destination and paddle directly to it. If you paddle your boat across a moving river, you have to adjust the course of your boat to account for the speed of the current in order to get to where you’re going. You need to point the boat a little bit upstream because the current will push you downstream as you cross. That’s ground reference maneuvers in the wind. You have to keep adjusting your course, the steepness of your turns, etc. in response to whether you’re flying into the wind, across it, or with it. We started with doing “S” turns across a road. My first turn was an abysmal failure, but things did improve. The key is that the steeper you bank the plane, the more surface area of the wing is exposed to the wind, causing them to act as much like a sail as a wing. The balancing act comes when you’re turning from downwind to crosswind. You need a steeper angle to compensate for the wind, but the steeper you turn, the more the wind wants to blow you from your course.



We then went to doing rectangular patterns, such as what you fly when setting up your landing. We focused on maintaining heading and altitude today, not trying to control airspeed in any kind of attempt to simulate an actual landing. The goal was to get a feel for how the wind affects the plane on each of the legs. Unlike the S turns (where we are constantly turning one way or the other), the rectangular pattern theoretically has straight-and-level segments on all four sides of the pattern. This allows you to feel the turn and what the wind is doing before getting set up for the next turn. While my “rectangles” were more like ovals, I definitely got to where I could predict the point on the turn from crosswind to upwind (base to final) where the wind really caught the plane and could compensate for it. And that’s the name of the game… predict what’s going to happen and compensate with the controls for when it does.

A footnote - the oil pressure was good. We ran the mixture a bit richer than we would otherwise do, and that kept things well in check. Quirk of the plane, I think.