Lesson 39 - A Few More Like That

Today was a good day. Today, I walked away with a bit of a spring in my step that I've not had in a while. Today, my landings were consistent. Not perfect by any measure, but I felt comfortable--even confident--with each of them. For the first time, I felt in control of the entire process. For me, it was another small, but personally significant milestone.

My previous two lessons had been with a secondary instructor who framed landings in a slightly different way than I had flown previously. We tweaked some techniques and integrated some new skills. While there was still considerable room for improvement, his fresh perspective on my technique allowed me to become much more comfortable with the process, with a better feeling for how to control the various aspects of the landing process. My lesson today was actually with a third instructor. I was supposed to fly with my primary instructor, but he and this instructor swapped students for the day so that a stage check could be performed for the other student. (Instructors cannot stage-check their own students.) 

Unlike my secondary instructor who was brought on partly to actively ferret out weaknesses in my technique and correct them, this instructor seemed to take a bit more of a passive approach. From the get-go, it seemed he was comfortable letting me do my own thing, fly the plane my way. He met me at the plane, we taxied, and after a circuitous tour of the taxiways because ATC decided to change runway directions causing us to have to taxi to the opposite end of a 2-mile-long runway, we were up in the air and heading northwest to Rocky Mountain Metro airport for touch-and-goes. We could have stayed at Centennial, but I was in the mood for a change of scenery.

The 15-minute flight out was smooth and uneventful. I set radios, got weather information, contacted the tower, all the stuff pilots need to do. It felt natural and un-rushed. Metro ATC vectored me in for our first landing. Flaps 10 degrees, pitch for 85 knots, set trim accordingly. Base turn, add flaps, airspeed drops to 75 knots. Turn to final, add full flaps, and if all is right, airspeed will slow to 65 knots while I use power to control my descent to landing. Hold centerline. Okay, I'm drifting. Slip. Drop left wing, add right rudder to keep nose aligned. Too much. Back a little bit. Back on centerline. Good. Pull power to idle, level the wings, and (wait! I'm moving sideways, crap! More left aileron, right rudder.) Hold it, hold it, set down. Not bad. We did another, and another. By my third one, I felt a sense of consistency to these landings I hadn't experienced before. My instructor offered assistance and guidance, but it was more in the form of reminders to do what I know to do, not to try anything different. It began to build my confidence, prompting a few "that was good. let's do another like that" comments from him. As a student who's struggled mightily with landings over the past 6 months, hearing "that was good" as opposed to "what happened??!!" is a welcome change of pace. 

With the exception of seemingly always being blown a bit sideways at the last minute when I rounded out to touch down, I felt like I could control the plane and make it do what I needed it to do. Too high? Drop power and trust that it will drop. Too low, add just a bit of power. Not too much. In past lessons, I'd be troubleshooting each approach asking myself "what did I forget to do?" which caused the landing to not be so good. This lesson, it seemed it was more a matter of tweaking things a bit here and there but no major problems with technique. My patterns were not as tight as I would have liked, but I'll blame that on a lack of familiarity with the airport. At Centennial and Space Port, I have recognizable things on the ground which I use to set my downwind leg. At Metro, I didn't have that. Next time I'm out that way I'll look for something on the ground as a reference and they'll tighten up. I was also following other planes which may or may not have been as consistent in their downwind leg spacing either. (I know, excuses...) 

I'll be brutally honest, I didn't really make the connection that I was fighting a crosswind until after we landed at the end of the lesson. The weather report had winds at 5 knots at 50 degrees. 5 knots isn't that heavy of a wind, so in my mind I think I subconsciously discounted its effects. We were landing on runway 12, which is 120 degrees, meaning the wind was coming at about 70 degrees relative to our direction of travel. That makes it pretty much a full-on crosswind. It was probably blowing a bit harder than that from time to time. Regardless, I was working to hold centerline on my approach (with varying degrees of success and accuracy) but in my mind, that was just me keeping the plane on centerline, not fighting a crosswind. When it came time to touch down, I'd level the wings and straighten the nose, which meant I'd get blown sideways. Where'd that come from??? 

Takeaway? When you write down the weather info (including winds) take the time to make a mental note of wind direction relative to runway direction. They tell you that kind of stuff for a reason. Make it part of your weather briefing as you're setting up for your arrival. Get it in your head. Compensating for a light crosswind when landing is not necessarily difficult--simple enough apparently that I was doing it without really knowing I was doing it. I think had I made that connection that I was fighting a crosswind in addition to everything else, I would have been more successful. 

After 8 touch-and-goes, we headed back to Centennial. Again, smooth flight, I got radio and weather information, set us up for landing with a sense of confidence, and landed. I got a little sideways when braking for the runway exit, but that's inexperience with the braking on the Grumman as this is only the 4th time flying it. 

Only 5 days until my next lesson (weather permitting), so we'll see if this confidence carries over to my next outing. I sincerely hope so. 

Lessons 37 and 38 - A New Perspective

 

My instructor and I agreed that I needed to get up in the air more than once a month, so we brought in a second instructor whose schedule was a bit more open in the hopes that given the luck we'd been having with cancellations due to weather and maintenance, more dates booked would translate into more time in the air to hone my landing skills. I have read often through this process that going up with a new instructor once in a while is a good thing as it brings in fresh eyeballs on the process, perhaps being able to see things that are otherwise being missed. I was hoping that would be the case.

My "fresh set of eyes" has been teaching for four years, having retired from the medical appliance industry. We chatted on the phone prior to meeting in person, where he asked me what I had been doing in terms of training, etc., to get a feel for where I was at. (Logical.) I knew our first flight together was going to be as much "show me what you know" as it would be "teach you what you don't know," so I was ready to roll with however we wanted to progress. 

I meet the instructor at the field, and we sit down in a room to talk. One of his first questions - "How often do you use trim when landing?" To be honest, it's always been an afterthought. Once I get the plane stable, I'll add trim. If I'm working too hard to keep the plane stable, I don't add trim because I'm busy working to keep the plane stable. That wasn't quite what he was hoping to hear, but I had a sense he was leading somewhere with this. He also asked about forward slips. (This is where you bank the plane's wings one direction, but use opposite rudder to keep the nose pointed opposite to how the plane wants to turn.) I knew the theory, but it wasn't something my primary instructor and I had yet spent a whole lot of time on. These two things seemed to my new instructor to be significant, so a plan was hatched to address them. (None of this is to slight my primary instructor in any way, as he was anticipating this fresh perspective helping me.) 

We took off and headed southeast towards the practice areas. There were already planes in that area, so we continued further southeast to a small grass field in Calhan, CO. We weren't going to land there (club insurance rules prohibit landing on grass fields) but since it was untowered, we could buzz the runway at 50' and practice approaches, etc. On the way out, we did some slow flight and stalls so my instructor could get a sense of how I handled them. We then moved onto setting up slips so I could put theory into practice. They're not hard to do, but the biggest thing is to be 100% in synch when entering and exiting them so the nose of the airplane doesn't go crazy as you relax the rudders. That will take some finesse. 

As we approached the strip at Calhan, my instructor asked me again about how I used trim. He then explained that in a stable approach to landing, consistent airspeed is critical. He then said the easiest way to keep consistent airspeed is to use trim, so you're not having to constantly apply pressure to the yoke to maintain pitch. This made sense, but I was always so busy trying to maintain pitch with pressure that I never had the presence of mind to use trim. He had me do some exercises. First, we set a decent rate of 85 knots with 10 degrees of flaps, and trimmed off the pressure on the yoke. He had me then lower flaps to 20 degrees and watch what happened to the airspeed without doing anything to the yoke. It dropped to about 75 knots. He then had me add full flaps, again not adjusting the yoke, just letting the trim hold things. Airspeed dropped to about 65 knots. In essence, with power being constant and the plane trimmed properly, the addition of flaps will control your airspeed at each phase of the landing. This shouldn't have been a revelation to me, but it was the first time that I actually flew a practical demonstration of it. We proceeded to fly a handful of approaches to the grass strip at Calhan, and using trim, I found it easy to control my airspeed at each stage (downwind, base, final), ending up crossing the runway threshold at right about 65 knots. 

At this point, we decided to head back to Centennial to put this to the test actually touching down on the runway. I was expecting a full-stop landing, but we asked for touch-and-goes on our way in, and ATC obliged. Using trim definitely made my landing a bit more controlled, but my altitude control was rough, and when you make large adjustments in power, it also affects pitch, which affects airspeed, so things didn't go quite as smoothly as I had hoped. The landings weren't "bad," but the last 30' of vertical elevation was rough. We floated, bounced, all the fun things you're not supposed to do. Having said that, though, I felt something had changed just a bit mentally. I wasn't fighting the plane near as much as I had been. I could see where this would be of help.

Our next lesson was a week later. I was supposed to fly with my primary instructor one day, then my secondary instructor the next. Weather cancelled the first lesson, so my next lesson was again with my secondary instructor. This lesson would be more of the same, almost a duplicate of the previous lesson except that we did not fly all the way down to Calhan. We just flew to the southeast practice area to set up some work on slips (still need to work on that recovery), some slow flight, then back to Centennial for touch-and-goes. Things went pretty much the same as they did the previous week. My set-up was fine. I had pretty good control of my airspeed via the trim, but my power applications to control elevation induced more changes than ideal, thus my touchdowns were problematic. I suppose it didn't help that I was back in a Cessna for this as opposed to the Grumman I had been flying the previous few lessons. They handle similarly, but the Cessna is a bit more sluggish than the Grumman, so you have to be a bit more patient with changes to controls. Failure to do so leads to larger corrections than necessary, and then you're again playing catch-up. Too low, then too high, then a touch too fast as a result, so I floated... Almost, but only almost. Consistency was lacking. Still, there was something different. I felt I had a better handle on airspeed for the most part, it was just a matter of making smaller adjustments. That would take more repetition.