Lesson 61 - One of THOSE Days

Today's task, a flight out to Limon, CO using GPS and VOR navigation in addition to visual landmarks. This was going to be an easy day. My last flight was my "long cross country," which I had flown with my second instructor, so I was pretty confident in that part of things. Today was going to work more on electronic navigation, using GPS and VOR navigational aids. The weather was cold, and we had just had a fresh snowfall, but other than that, a regular walk in the park.

Yeah, right. I wouldn't have written that if it were true.

This was my first flight with my original CFI after a long time flying with my second CFI. This was mostly just due to scheduling, as I tried to alternate between the two so to balance both styles. I found I'd learn things with one, but be able to better practice them with the other. Weird dynamic, but it got me through my landing difficulties and onto my solo flight, so--hey--whatever works.

Anyway, the first hint today was going to be strange was when I got to the airport and there was a note attached to the book for the plane. "Engine break-in period." The plane had just received a new engine. This meant that we were to fly the plane with the throttle at 100% for every stage of the flight except landings. That also meant no touch-and-goes, which wasn't really in our plans anyway. Second, we had to de-ice the plane, which is somewhat a pain. Plastic bags of warm water to melt and loosen the ice, then wipe it off with a towel. Fortunately being in Colorado, the sun does a pretty good job of melting frost and ice by mid-morning, but that only works where the sun hits. I pulled the plane out and turned it around so the sun could shine on the shady side of things, but it still took a bit to get things clean. And for whatever reason, I simply wasn't clicking on all cylinders today. Nothing major, just forgetting stupid things like my run-up checklist and just being a bit behind in thought. 

We took off and headed east. When you're climbing in a small plane like a Grumman, you have the throttle full as you need all the power you can get. Once you're at altitude, you back the throttle off a bit, set your pitch and fly straight and level. This plane today did not want to fly level for love or money. It just wanted to climb. Maybe the cold air had something to do with it, but it seemed every time I looked at the altimeter, I had climbed 100'. Trim? Didn't matter. No amount of nose-down trim kept this bird from climbing. 

Once en route, the plan was to pick up flight following from Denver control on our way out to Limon. Flight following is just an extra set of eyes on you as you fly to your destination. They'll alert you to traffic nearby and things like that. They don't necessarily tell you where to fly, though they will if you're in a congested area to keep you out of the way of other traffic. You call them up on the radio, they give you a unique code to punch into your transponder so they can identify you specifically on their screens, and you go about your flight. They were rather busy today, so they first took forever to get back to us when we called them. When they did, they gave us a code to enter. Simple. Nope. The transponder in the Grumman is a touch screen. I don't know whose brilliant idea it was that touch screens in a bumpy airplane cockpit were a good idea, but I'm pretty sure they were also responsible for screen doors on submarines. But, noooo.... that wasn't enough. In addition to having trouble hitting the right buttons on the touch screen, said touch screen decided it was going to malfunction. When you did finally land your finger on the "5" button, "3" showed up on the screen. It was a mess. All the while ATC is getting increasingly frustrated with us because we're not yet showing the requested code. After about two minutes of trying, we gave up and cancelled our request for flight following. So much for that.

Back to the task at hand, flying to Limon via GPS. It's simple, right? You have GPS. You enter your destination. You press "go to." A magenta line shows up on the screen. You follow the magenta line. Apparently not. You follow the magenta needle that shows up on your heading indicator. I did not know that, and my instructor was a bit annoyed at that. "What has your other instructor been teaching you?" he asked rather incredulously. Apparently it's not enough to fly the same heading as the magenta line though you're maybe a mile or two one side or the other of it. "Fly the needle" means you keep the plane directly on that magenta line. Yes, that's definitely how you want to do things when flying on instruments, and maybe this was a difference in expectations where my CFI was looking for instrument precision on this flight and I was using them as general references in conjunction with VFR rules. 

Be that as it may, we made it out to Limon. This was my first time flying to an un-towered airport. That means there's no air traffic controller telling you where to go. You have to make your own decisions on which runway to use, identify other traffic that's also flying around the airport, and most importantly, don't hit anyone in the process. I have the opposite problem from a lot of students. Many who fly out of un-towered airports cannot grasp radio calls to air traffic control. I'm the opposite. Communications at un-towered airports to me seem a bit wild west. There's structure, but there's no readback. It's all on you. And while it's not quite a foreign language, it's certainly a very distinct dialect. There were a few planes in the pattern at Limon today, so it was definitely an experience.

Landing at Limon was okay. We opted for a full stop/taxi back landing due to the wet runway conditions thanks to melting snow. No big deal. The runway was plowed. The taxiway, on the other hand. I got the nosewheel stuck in a pile of slushy snow that took some doing to get out of. Just one more thing to knock me off my game. 

We decided we were both frustrated enough for one day, pointed the nose west, and headed home. Not my best outing. Lots of little things. Some out of my control, some that I simply didn't execute. But in the list of unproductive lessons I've had, this one sits high on the list.