Scheduling conflicts and vacations meant that it had been three weeks since the last time I was up in the air. At 30+ hours into my training, I've developed enough muscle memory and routine to where I don't worry about forgetting every last little thing if I don't repeat doing it often enough. This is a good thing since once I do finally get my license, there will very likely be long periods of time where I do not have a chance to fly and it's good to know that even at this early stage in the game, there are aspects that are indeed much like riding a bicycle. I'm still quite a ways off from where I'd consider myself polished, but I'm no longer a menace to everything in the air.
The weather report showed some low-altitude turbulence, which was confirmed by one of the other instructors telling us it was bumpy up to about 7,500', then it smoothed out nicely. (Note that our field elevation is 5,885'.) Bumpy skies below 7,500' aren't perhaps the best conditions to work solely on take-offs and landings, so we opted to head to the southeast practice area for some ground reference work, stalls, and emergency procedures. Once we ran through those, we'd head back to the airport and see if they would be agreeable to let us do some touch-and-goes. That "mixed bag" approach to this lesson gave me a chance to sit back afterwards and reflect on where I am in the process and places I need to maintain focus. Note that what I'm calling a "strength" in no way implies mastery of the skill, just that it's something that seems to have found a firm nest in my mind to where I don't worry about losing the skill from lesson to lesson.
Strength: Radio communications. Despite my instructor calling me "mean" for boldly staking my claim to the most scenic practice box in the practice area without first asking if anyone was actually already in there (they were. My bad.) my radio communications are going smoothly. (And I politely flew to an unoccupied practice box instead.) I'm not getting any more tongue-tied than I do in normal conversation (which is why professionally I'm behind the camera) and I'm getting much quicker at picking up instructions, repeating them, and (most importantly) remembering them after I repeat them. I do need to work on being a bit more informative and precise in terms of position, and need to work on getting my ducks in a row sooner so when I contact ATC when returning to the airport I have more time and distance to adjust to their instructions, but overall I'm happy with how communications are going. I read about a lot of students struggling with radio communications, so I'm glad to not suffer from that deficiency.
Strength: Pilotage. Perhaps it's because I'm something of a map geek, or I just drive around a lot and know what's where, but I'm pretty good about looking out the window, knowing where I am, and having a fairly good general idea of where I need to point the nose of the airplane to get where I want to go. It will be interesting to see how this goes once I start working on my cross-country stuff, especially if we head east where landmarks are much fewer and further between. I still know the roads rather well, so there's that, but if the ATC at the destination airport uses landmarks I'm unfamiliar with, it could get interesting.
Weakness: Multitasking. We were doing S-turns and turns around a point today. I had no trouble maintaining elevation doing those maneuvers. I'm focused on the task at hand with few distractions. Now, tell me to make a 90 degree turn to the left while getting weather information, and I'll climb 500' in that turn before I have the first half of the ATIS frequency dialed in. If my attention is divided, things get shaky. I've got to get better at maintaining flight attitude out of the periphery of my vision and making quicker back-and-forth glances between outside and inside when I need to split my attention like that. I quipped that we needed a heads-up display for checklists so I wasn't constantly looking down. My instructor simply held the checklist up at window level and said "we have that already." Simple, yet elegant. On the ground, I need to be able to look left or right at things going on around me without drifting off the yellow centerline. This is definitely one of those "comes with time" skills, but it's also something I know to keep on top of.
Strength: General "getting there" flying; straight and level, controlled climbs and descents, maintaining heading, turns to new headings, etc. Granted these are probably the most basic flying skills and if I hadn't gotten a firm handle on these after 30+ hours of lessons, I should probably stay out of the sky.
Weakness: Landing. This is probably too broad of a term since there are so many things that have to come together for a smooth landing, but in the most general sense, I ain't there yet. Granted I only just started working on landings over the past half dozen or so lessons. There are things I'm doing fairly reasonably well such as airspeed control and staying in position in the pattern, but other areas where I'm still getting by on sheer luck. My altitude control remains uneven stair steps. Too high, then I descend too much, then I need more power to get back on glide slope, and back and forth. I think like anything when it comes to flying, smaller adjustments are better than large ones, but I'm not confident enough (patient enough?) that my small changes are doing what they need to do so I make them bigger, which then starts the cycle over again.
My biggest challenge with landing comes with the introduction of any kind of crosswind. Today, it was a 7 knot crosswind from the east. In the grand scheme of things, 7 knots is not much, and I'm getting better at compensating for it right up to the point where I'm supposed to be setting the plane on the ground. That's where things go (quite literally) sideways. I watch videos on crosswind landings. I know the theory of the control movements, but this is one area where the gap between theory and action remains fairly wide. It's just going to take repetition to get there. If I can get a couple of fairly calm days, I should get a good enough feel for things to where I can make better adjustments.
Strength: Mindset. My instructor typically will ask me after a lesson how I'm feeling. After a particularly rough lesson, it's human nature to be disappointed, and I often step out of the plane grumbling in my mind about what I screwed up. Yet my answer to his "how are you feeling" question is seldom "lousy" or similarly negative response no matter how poorly I may have done on specific tasks. Yeah, I may be frustrated, and maybe I'm mad at myself for a particularly bone-headed something-or-other. But I've learned not to let that define the lesson. Take today's landings as an example. They were abysmal. I touched down on one out of three attempts. But on the other hand, my go-around execution was rather smooth. Once we decided we were way out of bounds for a safe landing, it was full throttle, right rudder to match, nose to horizon, flaps to 20. I had struggled miserably with that my first time in the pattern. This time, it was much more natural. That's a tangible display of my skills improving, so while I remain frustrated about my landings, I'm given confidence in realizing I felt just as bad about my go-around skills not too long ago, and they've gotten better.
Weakness: Foreflight. It's the software on my phone that I use for maps, airport info, etc. Today, my instructor asked me how I knew how far above the ground I was. I could look at the altimeter and know my altitude above sea level, but I hadn't a clue how to tell the elevation of the ground beneath me. GPS doesn't tell you that, nor are printed charts that accurate (and you would have to know where you were.) On Foreflight, you just put your finger on the screen and it will tell you the ground elevation. New skill learned. The company's web site has a bunch of tutorials on how things work. I've got to sit down and watch them. It's very powerful software, used by pilots across the spectrum. Certainly once I start doing cross-country planning, I had best be familiar with it.
In skiing, they say if you're not falling down, you're not getting better. Learning to fly is similar. If you fly every maneuver in your lesson perfectly, if you know the answer to every question your instructor asks, you're not being pushed out of your comfort zone, not learning anything new. My instructor will not let me sit in my comfort zone very long at all. He's always layering new things in the lessons for me to work on. This means that there's always going to be stuff within the lesson that I just flat out mess up. As a student, you can't dwell on that. You have to see one lesson's weakness as the next lesson's challenge. If your instructor asks a question you don't know the answer to, realize that's precisely why your instructor asked you that question. Don't be afraid to say "I don't know." They're asking you questions to get your mind ready to absorb new information. Learn it this time, practice it next time.
I wrote early on in this process that there's nothing natural about flying. But it's important for students to keep one important thing in mind. You're flying! That in and of itself is something that few people get to do. Enjoy it no matter how frustrating it might get. Take 30 seconds in every lesson to just look out the window and take in what you're experiencing. That's why you're doing this. Keeping track of those little victories along the way--large and small--will keep the wind under your wings.
