Today was supposed to be a fairly long day. We planned to fly east to Limon to spend some time in the pattern at Limon Municipal Airport. Limon is an airport that does not have a control tower, so that makes it a bit easier to start drilling into how to land the airplane because there's not as much traffic and you may even have the field all to yourself. Limon's about 40 minutes away by air, so we we planned some cross-country skills building and some maneuvering on the way as well. That's what was supposed to happen.
Instead, the front desk changed my plane at the last minute because something went screwy with the plane I was supposed to fly on its first flight of the day. They grounded it and gave me a replacement that had only 1.4 hours until its next mandatory servicing. The flight to Limon and back would have put at least 1.8 on the plane. Even if that had not been the case, we were fighting what looked to be some sketchy weather moving in a bit faster than what was originally forecast. The winds had already increased significantly. When I was planning things at 10AM, the weather at the field had the winds listed as "calm." When I got to the field at 11AM, they had picked up to a steady 11 knots, gusting to 18. Whatever we did today, it would have to be fairly quick because the weather and the required maintenance schedule mandated it.
My instructor and I thought briefly about just scrubbing because the radar already showed big green blobs of precipitation over the southwest practice area. Conditions were still well within our minimums, so flying wouldn't be unsafe. We would just want to be back before things deteriorated. I had a theory that I wanted to test, and even if that was all we had time to do today, it would be worth it. If you remember my last lesson, you'll recall that my stall recoveries were abysmal (to put it mildly). Upon reflection, I figured that the likely cause of my difficulties lay in the fact that I applied power almost instantly when I went to recover from the stall. This would not give me sufficient time to get the necessary control movements in place to counteract the forces created by increasing the throttle. If I were to try to do that just a bit slower, then I would be able to keep ahead of the curve. That was the theory, and I wanted to test it. The winds hadn't gotten any worse and the green blobs were tracking north (away from us) so we decided to go ahead and fly.
Aside from the engine backfiring when I started it scaring the living daylights out of me, the preflight and taxiing was pretty routine. I have to admit there's a level of confidence tied to the notion that these things are beginning to become "routine" to the point where I'm mostly skipping over them in my posts. My taxiing still isn't 100% centered on the yellow line, and I'm still learning how to deal with crosswinds on the ground, but I'm recognizing it and correcting for it. I'll take that for the win. Take-off went smoothly, though I drifted a bit to the left (towards the parallel runway) once I was off the ground. I swear, planes need rear view mirrors. I thought I was good based off of what I saw out of my side window, but nope. I drifted so I was probably in line with the taxiway between the two runways. Corrected, and continued the climb out and headed towards the southeast practice area. This was one of the first times I really felt like I had the airplane trimmed well for climbing to altitude by skill rather than luck. We continued flying southeast while I climbed to 8,500'.
Clouds were rolling in around us, and I could feel the air getting a bit bumpy. I was able to keep things mostly consistent in altitude, but the plane I was flying in today had a throttle that wasn't quite as sensitive as the throttles in the others I've flown, so my "small adjustments" to the throttle didn't result in the RPM drops I was accustomed to on the other planes. Lesson learned - adjust RPM by listening to what the engine is doing, not by the feel of the throttle lever.
Once in the practice area, I got the plane trimmed for straight and level flight, then set up for a power-off stall drill. I got it set up, stalled the plane, and went through the recovery quickly but carefully. And, yes, the key to successful stall recovery is just that--work through the steps with a sense of urgency, but not panic. Give yourself about 2 seconds from idle to full throttle, and you'll have time to adjust the yoke, rudder, and flaps to give yourself a much more controlled recovery. I was happy with that recovery, as was my instructor. Anything was an improvement after my last attempts. In this case, it was a matter of me finding the critical element that was causing the trouble and correcting it for much better results as opposed to just blindly trying stuff and hoping for success.
Happy with that, my instructor looked at the big green blobs showing precipitation on our weather radar and the visible virga that was now encroaching upon us, and said "take us home." Virga (rain falling from clouds but evaporating before hitting the ground) often comes with downdrafts. Those are dangerous, especially at low altitudes. My instructor took the controls while I dialed in the radios, got the latest weather info, contacted ATC, and ran checklists. On the approach, we talked through the steps we were taking especially with gusty winds adding to the fun, such as little to no flaps and landing at a higher speed than normal. I was just along for the ride on this one given the adverse conditions, but we talked about the what and why of what my instructor was doing in the process. We landed, taxied back to the ramp and tied things down for the day, but not before admiring some Colorado National Guard planes that had stopped for refueling on our way back to the pad.
Once on the ground, my instructor and I talked about where I am in the process overall. At this point, the big unchecked checkbox is the landings. He told me my take-offs, maneuvers, and pilotage are good. I'm just missing the mandatory part of flying--the landing. The challenge will be finding calm days to do pattern work. My flights in the coming weeks are scheduled for the late morning/early afternoon when weather like what we had today is possible. That makes it difficult to learn the basics because you can't tell whether the plane is reacting to the wind or control movements. On one hand, if you can learn in that environment, you can land in almost anything, but it's gonna take a whole lot longer. We'll see what the next lessons bring. Maybe if we can't do pattern work, we'll do some cross country work or who knows. And practice that other stuff because I need to keep that fresh as well.
