Lesson 36 - Back in the Saddle Again

 

They say that the key to learning how to fly is to fly as often as you can. Twice a week or more if you can swing it. That way you retain more of what you learn from lesson to lesson, so less time is spent trying to figure out what you learned last time. Alas, most folks who work 40 hours a week are lucky to get up once a week, so we're already at something of a disadvantage. Then, there's the weather and other issues. It's June. Prior to today, I have flown a grand total of 4 times this year! That's not even once a month. February and May were "no-fly" months for me. Not exactly the repetition one would like for honing important skills (like, you know, landing?) No, you can't control the weather, but this was getting ridiculous. 

When today dawned with sunshine and no perceptible wind, I was jazzed. No weather cancellation today. No sir-ee-bob. We're getting up in the air and will hammer away at landing. Then I check Foreflight, which is the software I use to check airport conditions, navigate, log my lessons, and track my flights. Big red screen: NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) - Runway 17L/35R closed. Crap. This meant no touch-and-goes at Centennial, and everyone and their brother will be headed over to Space Port instead. Seriously??? I'm finally back in the air, and the universe has found another wrench to throw into my plans. 

My instructor and I decided to fly east and see if we could get in at Space Port anyway. If not, he'd put me through a mock stage-check to make sure I know all the other maneuvers. Better than nothing, but not working on what I need to work on. Having said that, I was in the Grumman today, and today was only my second time flying the Grumman so a little more time in the left seat of a new airframe wasn't going to be wasted time. I prepped the plane and we struck out east towards Space Port. 

As suspected, when I called Space Port, everybody and their brother had already beaten us there, so they did not have room for us in the pattern to practice landings. Okay, so much for that. Let's head south and work on maneuvers. Stalls and slow flight to get things started. We did a few of each, and I didn't have much trouble with them at all. My instructor suggested we check in again with Space Port and see if they could squeeze us into the pattern. As luck would have it, they could. I'd get my landings! We turned back north, and I got set up for a series of touch-and-goes.

I did 5 touch-and-goes at Space Port. They ran the gamut from pretty decent to abysmal. Flying the pattern worked well for me. The Grumman handles very nicely and I felt I was able to get lined up with the runway without much trouble, better than I have in the past. Granted we didn't have much wind, so that helped. I had two buggers to work out today, and both had everything to do with not having done repeated landings for a few months. 

First was altitude control on final. That's partly a "getting used to the plane" thing, and figuring out how much power to apply. If I was high, I found it relatively easy to add flaps, drop power, and get back on glide slope. Granted I shouldn't have been that high in the first place, but that was me trying to figure out landmarks on a 5-mile straight-in final to set my altitude. But that far out, you've got time to compensate for being high. Where I needed work today was the fine power applications on the last 100' of elevation to keep you on the glide slope. I'd add too much power then be a bit too high then pull out too much power and drop like a rock, and back and forth. I can't really blame that on flying a new type of plane since I have had the same issues in the Cessnas. It's just a finesse thing and comes with practice. 

The second thing to work on is the final flare, and that's a bit of a "feel" thing. I felt better about where I was flaring in terms of being the right height off the runway (at least mostly), but it was more a matter of controlling how much. I wasn't as smooth as I needed to be in transitioning from the nose-down decent to the nose-up touchdown. I wouldn't pull back enough and land flat, or I'd pull back too quickly and balloon up a bit before pushing the nose down to level off. I seriously bounced one attempt prompting my instructor to add power and just go around. But again--the last time I was in the pattern was three months ago! I'll take that. We left Space Port to return to Centennial. My landing there was pretty decent by today's standards. 

I will note that although I hadn't been up in the air flying touch-and-goes "for real" in three months, I have been flying a thousand or more landings on my home simulator. It is not the same, but it does help to keep the muscle memory from waning too much. How much of today's landings were the result of me working the simulator as hard as I have been versus a new airframe that may be simply easier for me to land versus just skills developing, I really can't say. All-in-all, I felt pretty satisfied with how I flew today.

Due to my instructor's desire to get me in the air more often, and his increasingly full schedule, I have signed on with a second instructor, with whom I will start flying next week (weather permitting). This way I can play the averages a bit better. Even with weather cancellations, if I book twice as many flights, I will hopefully be able to get airborne more than once every 4 or 5 weeks and I can get through this process sooner. Both instructors suggested that I pick one airframe or the other as I work through the solo stage check process. After today's flight, I opted to focus on flying the Grumman for the foreseeable future. The Grummans and Cessnas are very similar in many ways and I could have gone either way, but the majority of my scheduled lessons over the Summer months were already in the Grumman, so I switched the three or four that were in the Cessna over to the Grumman for consistency. I can always go back, and may opt for the Cessnas for my cross country stuff if they have better GPS navigation equipment. But--hey--green is my favorite color, so there's that.