Lesson 18 - Turn on the Hose!

 If you're trying to drink from a fire hose, does the size of the hose really matter?

Today's lesson was simple in scope. Get me in the pattern and teach me to land an airplane. Landing, it seems, is something that different instructors do differently. For instance, some folks write of landing the plane on their introductory flight. Now, I don't know how much of that is actually understanding what's going on with the plane or just pulling on this or pushing on that per your instructor tells you to do to achieve the desired goal of setting the plane back on the ground. I'm inclined to believe in that case it's the "what to do" followed by the "why you do it" later on in the process. Suffice to say that if I'm just learning to land on my 18th lesson, that this is clearly not the approach my instructor is taking with things.

Instead, my instructor's philosophy is to make sure the student understands exactly how the various controls make the plane behave in the various aspects of flight, then ultimately tie them all together because when you land a plane, you're using all your tricks. Turns, slow flight, stall avoidance, altitude control, airspeed, wind correction... there's a lot going on in landing a plane. That's why it's taken me this long to finally get to landing the plane. We wanted to make sure I knew what the heck I was doing so when I got in trouble on a landing, I'd have the skills to get myself out of it. I'm not here to debate one method versus another. This is how I'm learning, and I'm quite happy with the results. That having been said, it doesn't make the process of landing the plane any less mentally taxing. All that stuff coming together to get the plane on the ground means you're thinking through all that stuff while landing the plane. And my brain was pooped at the end of today's lesson. 

We flew out to Colorado Spaceport for today's lesson. My last time out here (which was my first time out here) we did "near" touch-and-goes where I would fly within 50' of the runway then go around. It wasn't my best performance, as my slow-flight recovery that day stank like three day old sushi. This prompted a return to the practice areas and more slow flight and stall work to better hone those skills for a few lessons. But that was behind me. I've become more comfortable with slow flight recovery, so I felt good heading back out here. I at least had the advantage of having flown out here already so I knew the lay of the land. 

The flight out to the airport was uneventful. East from Centennial for a while, then turn north. We can't fly directly northeast because of Denver International's airspace. Winds were a little bumpy, but common for a hot day in Colorado. If you're going to fly in the Summer in Colorado, you deal with bumpy air. The downside to that is that this being my first time setting the plane on the ground, I was going to try to figure out in the process which movements of the plane were caused by my control inputs versus the wind. An extra layer of complexity, but if I waited for perfect conditions, I'd be on the ground a long time. You play the hand you're dealt. 

Landing an airplane is a matter of controlling airspeed and altitude as you approach the runway. "The pattern" is essentially a rectangular flight path that you and other aircraft generally follow so to not hit each other (very bad) and give you benchmarks along the way against which to check your airspeed and altitude. If you think of the runway as the long side of a rectangle, then the "downwind leg" of the pattern is the opposite side. This is where you will typically begin preparing for a landing. You then turn to the base leg, which would be the short end of the rectangle, then "final" is when you're lined up with the runway to set the plane on the ground. The opposite end on departure in the pattern is called the "crosswind" leg. "Pattern altitude" refers to the elevation above the runway. For general aviation (small planes), that's usually 1,000' above the ground. The field elevation at Colorado Spaceport is 5,515', making the pattern altitude 6,500'. There are altitude and airspeed steps for each of the legs of the pattern. The downwind leg in the Cessna, the downwind leg is flown at 1,000' above the ground (AGL) at around 90 knots. When you get to the end of the runway you'll be landing on, you decrease power to begin descending. Halfway through your base leg, you want to be 500' AGL, and at around 75 knots. You continue descending, turn to the final leg, and fly such that your airspeed is around 65 knots when you cross the threshold of the runway, At that point, you decrease your power to idle, let the plane glide, and start your "flare" to land on the runway as the airspeed and altitude decreases. If the stars are smiling, you set down nice and easy. Child's play. And if you believe that, let me talk to you about your car's extended warranty.

"Pitch for airspeed, power for altitude." That's the rule. (I remember it by the fact that "i" is the second letter in both "pitch" and "airspeed.") If you're flying too high, decrease your power and let the plane sink for a bit. If you're flying too fast, raise the nose of the plane to bleed off the airspeed. You can add flaps at various stages to increase drag and slow down as well but pitch and power are the key players. It's really a dance between the two. You will set your pitch for a given airspeed, but you won't be sinking, so you reduce power, which lowers the nose, which may increase your airspeed, so you have to raise the nose to lower the airspeed, which means you're not sinking as much, so you have to lower again, but you can't pitch up too much or you'll stall... Oh, and you're dealing with wind bouncing you around, too, and trying to stay lined up with the centerline of the runway... did I mention the firehose? The reality is that there's no way to introduce this concept gently. This is being thrown to the wolves, grasping everything you've learned and applying it. 

As I approached the airport on an extended final (about 5 miles from the east), I got us lined up, but then my instructor flew the landing to demonstrate how the landing itself was done. He described what he was doing (as he's done on our landings of late) so that I could get a feel for the control movements and their effects on the plane. After he flew this one, I did 4 subsequent landings. They were about as good as you might expect from a student pilot landing for his first time. Which is to say they were rough. But truthfully not as bad as I had anticipated. And I was very happy with my transition from landing to take-off. Flaps up, throttle full, keep us on centerline. pull back on yoke, rotate, go again. 

I think my approaches were rougher than actually setting the plane down on the ground over the runway. The biggest challenge to me was setting that mental sight picture of the glide slope, and reacting to how it changed when I was too high versus too low. I need to be faster to react, especially to "too low." That's an experience thing. The other thing that caught me was trying to gauge how quickly my control inputs would affect the plane. If I drop the motor to idle, how long would it take for my altitude to drop back on glide slope, and how much would it take increase the throttle to re-establish that proper slope once I was back on track. I don't think I let my airspeed get too slow through any of this, but my instructor was probably keeping a closer eye on that and reminding me in the process if it started getting too slow. Overall, I think I tended to be too fast, which prompted a go-around on one of the attempts. (Which was probably one of my smoother recoveries except for not pitching up more when I retracted the flaps, causing me to lose a bit of altitude.) I can't say there was any improvement across the board from my 4 attempts today, but I was able to get a feel for the process. Now that I know what to look and feel for, through, I'll be able to start making better adjustments. Like many things in this process, it's a matter of identifying the key things that are tripping me up and addressing them one at a time as I put this together.

We headed back to Centennial, but don't think it was an easy cruise. The afternoon winds had gotten bumpier, and my instructor has a bit of an evil streak in him to where he doesn't like me to ever be 100% comfortable in the cockpit. As I was flying back, he had me climbing, turning, tuning the radios to Centennial's tower frequency and giving him briefings of what we're going to be doing pretty much at the same time. I have a tendency of focusing on one aspect to the exclusion of another, so I managed to climb 300' while trying to tune in a radio frequency. I'll shift some of the blame for that to the smoky skies and lack of a horizon, so I didn't have as clear of a marker as I might otherwise have, but that's an excuse and I have to do better regardless. 

Things to work on... First off, I need to be better at calling out what I'm doing as I'm getting set up. "Below 110, flaps 10," and other call-outs for flight configurations. I need to call these out not only so my instructor knows what I'm doing, but because it's a good mental exercise to tell myself what I'm doing. I have a habit of talking to myself anyway, so you'd think this would come naturally. I'll chalk that up to landingus overwhelmus today, but if I write it here, I'll hopefully remember to do it next time. Also, on go-arounds, it's critical to call out what you're doing in terms of airspeed, flaps, etc. 

Second, I need to be ready for go-arounds at any given moment. My instructor warned me that I may be flying my best approach ever, and he's going to shout "coyote on the runway, go around!" to keep me on m toes. That's a mental piece of the puzzle that I need to integrate into the process--that at any given time, I may have to 100% shift gears and do something else, and when you're that low to the ground, you have to execute quickly and firmly. 

Overall, I was happy with how I did today. It wasn't pretty by any stretch, but I wasn't expecting it to be. When I look back at my other "first time doings" I've had so far, my demonstrated (lack of) skills is really on par with how poorly I did in those other areas as well, and I've come a long way in those areas. This, too, shall improve. Hopefully cooler weather in the coming weeks will give me calmer skies so I can feel "my" flying versus the wind's flying. 

Oh, and walking out to the plane, I spied this old warbird. Alas, he went the other way instead of taxiing by me, so this is as close a pic as I could get.

Lesson 17 - Short, but Sweet

 

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.

Lesson 16 - Stall and Recovery

 

First off, I apologize for no scenery pictures on today's post. My phone mount fell off the windshield, so I just tossed it in the back seat rather than try to reattach it mid-lesson. So this representation of what the nose of the airplane was doing during my stall recovery drills will have to suffice. 

Seriously... Stall recovery is the bane of my existence at the moment. Some days I get it very smoothly. Others it gets me. And today was an "other" day for that. I'm not going to dwell too much on that, but for students who are hitting brick walls or plateaus in their training, this seems to be mine at the moment. There are four components to a proper stall recovery. First, apply full power. Second, keep the nose to the horizon to get air moving over the wing and reestablish lift. Third, right rudder to counter the left-turning tendency of applying full power. Lastly, retract flaps. All four of these things have to happen pretty much simultaneously. Today seemed to be "pick three of the four." I did a half dozen or so drills, and only one was even halfway decent. I'd forget one element, and all hell would break loose. In retrospect, I think my successful stall recoveries in the past have been done with a firm, steady, but not rapid application of power. This allowed me to balance the right rudder and counter the desire for the nose to buck up with a bit more smoothness because the throttle increase was fast enough to get the job done but slow enough to still be able to stay ahead of it. In today's drills, I think perhaps my application of power was far more of an immediate jamming of the throttle into the dashboard. As that happened, I was then playing catch-up with the plane and overcorrecting. Nothing good ever comes of overcorrecting.

Fortunately, my instructor realized that for whatever reason, this wasn't clicking for me today, and decided to move on to other things. Today, he introduced me to steep turns. Did I mention steep turns are friggin' fun??? I hadn't done one yet (at least not on purpose). In steep turns, you bank the plane to around 45 degrees to make the turn. You lose a lot of your vertical lift component when you do this (mathematically, half of your vertical lift component is now horizontal "lift." That component is allowing you to turn, but it's not helping you stay in the air. You have to increase your throttle and add some back pressure on the controls to increase the vertical component of the lift to keep you from losing altitude. You then have to remember to take that back out when you exit the turn. One thing with steep turns, you will also really feel it in your seat. They can also be disorienting, mind you, since you're looking at the world zip by. The key is to keep the horizon at a given point on the glare shield as you're turning. What surprised me, though, was looking at the flight path and seeing how tight those steep turns really are compared to the broader more typical 30-degree bank turns I do when maneuvering in the practice area. They're like less than half if a third of the diameter. These were a pleasant (and successful) diversion from my dismal stall recovery, so that helped get my mind back in the game.

Partway through today's flight, my instructor pulls my throttle to idle and says "you just lost your engine. Now what?" First, let me say that for those new students who are kind of dreading this, I was surprised at how controllable the plane is. You don't just fall out of the sky. First step is to pitch for best glide, then look for a place to land. Check to make sure you have fuel, the key is still on, the choke hasn't been pulled out, and all the "should be obvious" things. If it's one of those, correct it and restart the engine. If it's not, try the fuel pump to get fuel flowing again. If you can do all of that quickly, you will not have lost too much altitude in that time. That way if you can't get the engine to start, you still have plenty of airspeed and altitude to formulate ideas. Because my instructor pulled the throttle to idle for this exercise, I dismissed that as a cause, but it can be something that simple. (And--really--who decided the throttle and choke should be right next to each other? It's a good thing the knob on the choke has a different physical feel to it.) I have to work on verbalizing my checklists a bit more, but overall I felt comfortable in my ability to control the plane and try to troubleshoot. 

We were hoping to get some pattern work in at the airport today, but ATC was having nothing to do with that. So we flew a few more circles, got our weather info, and started heading back to the airport. The past few times, I've flown the approach with my instructor handling the landing. Today the winds were calm so I got to handle the landing as well--my first time with my hand on the yoke and throttle as we landed. Don't misunderstand--my instructor's hand was also on his yoke, and he was dancing the rudder pedals as we came in as well, so to call this landing the product of my efforts would be akin to saying the waterboy won the Super Bowl. However, it was a good introduction to pitch and power management for landing, and likewise a good introduction into really burning into my mind the sight picture of what the runway should look like on approach. Yeah, I paid attention the previous landings, but things get a whole lot clearer when it's your hand advancing the throttle to gain altitude because you've got 4 red lights on the PAPI. I'm looking forward to this next phase of the process.

One quick side comment about communication. Instructors aren't mindreaders, so as a student when you're flying, be very communicative about what you're doing so your instructor knows why the plane is doing what it's doing. For instance, when we were returning to the airport, my instructor pointed out that 2000 RPM wasn't a cruise speed. I knew that, I wasn't cruising. I was doing a slow descent into pattern altitude. I didn't tell him that's what I was doing, so he thought I wasn't paying attention to straight-and-level. Likewise, ATC told us to join midfield right pattern. There's an IKEA store at the midfield point of the pattern. I wasn't flying towards the IKEA, rather I was headed a bit south, towards the south end of the runway. My instructor asked me why I wasn't flying to the midfield point. I wanted to enter the pattern at a 45-degree angle as is common, so I was flying further south before turning northeast so I could join midfield at that 45-degree angle. Had I told my instructor that's what I was doing, it would have cleared up his concerns. Aviate, navigate, communicate. 

Oh, and make sure not to leave your headset in the plane. Thankfully they'll be waiting for me at the front desk next time. That could be part of the reason I didn't spring for the $1,200 Bose headsets. I lose stuff. I just ordered prescription sunglasses for flying. I'm gonna have to put a GPS tag on those.

Lesson 15 - Just Fly the Plane

 

Due to continued smoke and wind making conditions unpalatable, it had again been more than a week since my previous lesson. Since that lesson was hamstrung by wind and weather, it had been more than a month since my last decent lesson. I was looking forward to getting up and in the air again. Today we had fairly steady, but light winds, and the threat of early afternoon storms boiling up over the mountains. My instructor texted me prior to me leaving for the airport to see if I had checked the forecast. I told him I noticed the chances for afternoon storms, but at that point they were not going to hit until we would have landed. The forecast kept changing every time I looked at it, so "fickle as the wind" seemed to be a fitting metaphor. We agreed to head to the field and play it by ear. I went out, pre-flighted the plane, had the tanks topped off, all the while watching the clouds build over the mountains. My instructor joined me, and the storm cell that was initially tracking to the north had changed direction, headed pretty much straight for us. Ugh. We decided to keep going with the pre-flight, pulled the plane out to the line, did our safety briefing, and checked the weather one last time before finally deciding whether to turn the key (thus the meter). The storm had resumed its original northward track, so I decided to go for it. It was bouncy last lesson, so we figured if it were as bad today we could always return home. I felt the need to get into the air, though, because I was worried about my skills really regressing with only one decent flight in a month's time. The winds weren't too bad, out of the north at 8 knots. The skies were scattered with clouds, but the lowest at 3500', which was still above where I would be flying. The storm was still a threat, but not heading our way. Clear prop, turn the key, and let's go fly. 

The first thing I noticed when taxiing (headed west) was that the plane was not responding to my left rudder pedal. I had it to the floor, but the plane would only continue straight at best. I had my instructor take the controls to see if it felt odd to him. Of course it didn't. He knew exactly what was going on. 

"Where are your hands?" 

Right hand on the throttle, left hand, um, on my knee, not on the yoke. (I think I do this subconsciously so I don't try to steer with my hands. Bad habit. Well, both are bad habits. One bad habit to break another? Probably not the best plan. But I digress.) Did I mention the winds are from the north? Did I mention we were taxiing west? I've run into this before, I just didn't make the connection. Word problem - North wind hits tail of plane heading west. Which way does the nose want to turn? Hint - it ain't to the left. Step 1 - put hand on yoke where it belongs. Step 2 - turn ailerons into the wind with hand that is now on the yoke. Step 3 - apply more left brake to help plane turn left when needed because that north wind is going to keep hitting the tail. Ahh, much better.

I chose to learn on the Cessna 172S because my school has about a dozen of them. That means if one goes down for maintenance, there's a good chance I can book another in its place. While I have one that I seem to gravitate towards, I rotate through three or four of them for my lessons. They all fly more or less the same, but none of them have the same radio and navigation set-up. This means if there's one thing I kinda have to feel my way through each time, it's setting the radios up. All I'm going to say is that it's a good thing ATC is trained not to respond to idiot pilots who are talking on the wrong frequency. Having said that, once I was actually on the correct frequency, I did probably my best job of talking to ATC today, and handled the majority of the calls myself. 

I heard ground control clear a business jet to taxi, then cleared me to taxi on the same taxiway. He was about 2000' up from me on the taxiway, so if I were to pull in front, I would have had plenty of separation. I was a bit unsure as to whether I should wait for him to pass since he was cleared first, but my instructor said "move" with the same intonation as we give someone in front of us at a green light after about half a second. He then explained that while the business jet was cleared before me, a) I was closer to the end of the runway, and b) the controller knew where I was and wanted me in front of him despite him clearing me second. His wake turbulence would be greater, so better to have the smaller plane go first. Sometimes the lessons you learn aren't found in textbooks.

Lined up on the numbers, applied power, and we were off and flying. Once we were 500' above the ground, we turned to the southeast towards the practice area. On the agenda for the day, pilotage (aka, getting where you're going based on landmarks) slow speed and stalls, and after our last flight, altitude and speed control in general. 

I can't explain the difference between this flight and the last. The winds weren't as bumpy and the skies were just a bit clearer, but they were still factors to be dealt with. I just felt so much more on top of my game today than perhaps I have thus far in this entire process. Maybe it was the confidence of handling the radio communication. Maybe it was because it was my call on the weather to go flying in the first place. Whatever it was, there was a sense of ownership of the process. I definitely hope I can tap into that going forward. It will make my life (and my instructor's nerves) much easier. Our slow flight and stall training went very smoothly. The first one was a bit rough because I forgot how quickly the plane slows down when you reduce power and introduce flaps. I was taking too long to talk through the steps as opposed to just doing what needed to be done. Once that rust was quickly removed, things went cleanly. 

After a few bouts with that, my instructor turned and said "just fly the plane. Go wherever you want." I thought briefly about doing ground reference maneuvers or things like that, but that wasn't the mood. I wasn't frazzled by anything we had been doing. There wasn't the (figurative) cloud hanging overhead saying "you could have done that better, try again." I was just up there having fun and feeling good about how I was flying. I pointed the nose to the east and just enjoyed being in the air. After all, that's why I'm doing this--to be able to just fly where I want to and have fun doing it. I turned south, then when I came to highway 86 below us, I turned west to follow that back towards Franktown before heading back to the airport. Once I figured out that ATC wasn't responding to me because once again I didn't have the right radio punched up, I fixed that, told them where we were, and they gave me my routing back to the airport. 

I flew the plane until we were on the last part of the final approach because we had a bit of a gusty crosswind (the storms were beginning to roll in with their impact), and my instructor figured that was probably going to be a bit problematic if this were to be my first go at setting us on the ground. (I wasn't going to argue with him. My last time "in the pattern" lining things up wasn't the smoothest.) 

We parked the plane and walked back to the terminal both feeing very positive about things. I'm not going to say "it clicked." It wasn't that kind of a moment. If there's anything that can be said about my lessons, there are good days and there are bad days. Consistency, while being key, is still proving somewhat elusive. Hopefully today's experience will change that, and hopefully my planned schedule of flying twice a week will greatly reinforce the good while eliminating the bad. We talked about stage checks and figuring out which boxes still yet need to be checked to get me ready to solo. We hadn't had that conversation yet, so whether it was pure coincidence that we were having that today or not, it felt good to see a tangible sign of progress towards my goal. 

P.S. I left the field at 1:30pm. By 3pm, we had reports of funnel clouds and 1" hail in the area. Yeah, I think we got the last decent air of the day. Glad we decided to go up. 

Lesson 14 - Cobwebs and Wind Gusts and Smoke, Oh My!

 

Due to vacations and airplane maintenance issues, it had been over three weeks since my last time in the air. I fully expected a few cobwebs, so I wasn't necessarily surprised by the roughness of today's flight. That was only one of the issues I dealt with today. "Ideal conditions" were not the order of the day. Still, I spent as much time fighting myself as I did the elements, and that has to improve.

Preflight inspection, run-up, and taxi to the runway went well. I'm getting much more confident on my radio calls, and handled a good load of the communication today. Take-off went okay until I just started to rotate, at which point the plane veered to the right. I may have over-corrected with too much right rudder, or didn't have the yoke as firmly gripped as I thought I did, but I certainly didn't have an answer for what happened at that moment. I quickly had my instructor take things to get us off the ground and then took over once we were clear of the runway. 

Climb-out went well, though right out of the gate, we hit some wind gusts which bounced us around a bit. Welcome back to the sky. But wind is part of flying, so I took this as a lesson in making adjustments and working through it. The bigger issue for me today was the lack of a clearly-defined horizon. If you look at the photo at the top of the article, that's what the skies looked like today. Smoke from the California wildfires has been drifting into Colorado for the past week, and our skies are dismal as a result. A few days ago, it was so bad that many airports went IFR. Today was clearer than that, but visibility was not much more than VFR minimums.

Today's lesson was altitude control and trim exercises, since last time I was having trouble getting a true feel for how to properly trim the plane. I'm not going to pawn my poor performance today off on the wind and smoke--a lot of it was me--but the two certainly combined to keep me a little off balance. My altitude control s-t-a-n-k today. There's no other word for it. (Well, there is, but I'm keeping this blog polite.) Yes, part of that had to do with gusts pushing me up and down. And not having a distinct horizon to gauge my pitch played a role as well. It's hard to gauge where your nose is pointing when it's all a mostly grey blob. So I relied a bit more on my instruments today, which if you've read my earlier blog entries can guess how well that went.

Before I beat myself up too much, I will say that today's trim lesson went well. We did some exercises where my instructor put the plane in a random pitch attitude and had me recover. This let me get a sense for how to gauge what the plane wants to do in terms of nose up or down without the plane going full nose up or down. I got to where I could sense the trend by just a little movement (at least when we weren't being bounced a bit), and during a reciprocal exercise where I put the plane in a trim pitch to have my instructor recover, I really felt the pressure change on the yoke as I randomly spun the trim wheel up and down while holding the pitch with the yoke. I'll chalk that up to be a success, perhaps not as stellar as I would hope, but a success nonetheless.

No, what hung me up today more than anything else wasn't trim or wind or smoke, it was airspeed, as in not enough of it. I wonder if I am just so used to slow flight exercises that I'm just used to holding altitude with pitch that I don't pay as much attention to airspeed as I should, I don't know. Whatever the cause, the result is a tendency to not be flying near as fast as I should be. Cruise speed should be around 90 kts. As you can see from the graph, I was all over the place on airspeed, and altitude bounced around as a result. I wasn't clean in keeping altitude, I wasn't clean in correcting for it, and I think it came down to not using power properly. I'd pull back power to descend, then forget to add it back in once I got to the desired elevation. I don't think I did a single turn today without gaining or losing 100'.

On top of these challenges, my instructor--ever wanting to keep me on the outside edge of my comfort level--had me tuning radios, getting ATIS information, and contacting ATC while going through these maneuvers. There's part of me that was cursing him for this, but multitasking is part of flying, and I need as much practice with that as I do every other aspect. And let's be realistic; if we can't handle adversity in the air, we have no business flying airplanes. 

Overall, not my best outing, but a challenging one. Nothing I did poorly today was because I wasn't able to do it, it was because I was fighting myself as much as the environment in which I was flying. Thursday's another day, and we'll be doing more pattern work similar to my previous lesson. Now that I have a better feel for trim, and I know the bumps I hit today and how to avoid them, I think I'll do a lot better.

Lesson 13 - More Days Like This

 

 

I need more days like this. Not just because things went well (which for the most part they did), but because there were also enough stupid little errors made to remind me that I need to be on my game in every aspect of this process and really prompt me to do better next time. 

 

After my previous lesson doing almost touch-and-goes at a smaller airport, we decided that working approaches and recoveries at a higher altitude over landmarks designed to simulate an airport was probably a wise idea. My dirty slow flight recoveries last time were not what you want 50' off the ground, so I wanted to get better at that. I've done it, I can do it, I just need to get much more consistent at doing it. So we took things up a bit higher and just worked drills on plane control in the various phases of landing, with an extra 500' between us and the ground below. 

 

ATC cleared us to take off on 35 Left. I read it back, wrote it down, and we started taxiing to the taxiway. After momentarily forgetting that 35L was to my left with a quiet "which way you going?" from my instructor, I proceeded down the taxiway (the correct way) with a long line of planes in front of me. ATC told me to take take A16 and hold short, which momentarily threw me for a loop. Oh yeah... 35L. That long line of business jets was lining up for 35R. I had to cross to get to the parallel runway. I remembered that once I got ATC's instructions, but I had I double checked the airport diagram when getting the instructions, I would have anticipated those instructions, not been smacked back into reality by them. Dumb. That's why we have airport diagrams on our kneeboards, so we can trace where we're going.

Dumb moment #1 put aside, we left and headed to the practice area. My radio calls are getting better, more natural. Once in the practice area, we started with slow flight and recovery drills so I could get my feet under me on those. That went well. We then started on simulated patterns, using a roadway as a reference runway. This went okay, though I seemed to alternate between two different roads. Not ideal, but I got to feeling pretty good about being more on top of my airspeed and altitude than I have been in the past. How I was doing on a glide slope with an extra 500' between me and my ground reference was a bit iffy, but I got a good handle on that whole "pitch for airspeed, power for altitude" thing. But there's one other part of that equation, and it's a four-letter word. T-R-I-M. Once you establish your glideslope, you trim the airplane to relieve pressure on the yoke so you can make a smoother decent, allowing you to concentrate more on crosswinds, etc. Well, I'm having a devil of a time setting trim properly in this environment, possibly because I'm focusing on pitch to control my airspeed, and those adjustments themselves aren't fluid yet. But whatever the reason, I'm working too hard and my recoveries are, well, rough.

So next on the agenda was an exercise where my instructor put the plane in a random pitch/trim attitude, handed me the controls, and said "fix it." Well, first off, when your instructor's aim is to teach you to trust the airplane to fly so you can feel the controls then adjust with your primary flight surfaces (rudder, aileron, elevator), DO NOT reach for the trim wheel to correct things. My instructor seldom (if ever) yells at me, but I deserved it this time. My first instinct was to do precisely what he is teaching me not to do. I'm pretty sure whatever he said verbally was a diplomatic version of "did you not listen to a bloody word I just said, you blithering idiot??" After being justifiably scolded with an impromptu lesson the difference between primary flight control surfaces (Ailerons, elevator, rudder) versus secondary (flaps and trim) we set off on a few more of similar fixes, where I did a bit better. Not great, but better. I'll get it. It's a "feel" thing, and you have to feel it often enough to know what it's supposed to be.

We headed back to the airport. I called into the tower and we got our landing instructions. I watched our airspeed and altitude at various landmarks to make mental notes of where I need to be at which stage on landing. 

Got on the ground and began taxiing back to the pad. The plane I was flying today did not have a GPS screen which displayed my ground speed, which I usually try to keep around 10 - 12 kts on the ground. It's okay. My ForeFlight app displays that, and I've got that pulled up on my phone which is on my window. Except the screen was not the right screen. I instinctively reached to tap the screen to bring up the map page, but in looking at that, I had veered off the yellow line far enough for my instructor to ask (again) where I was going. Don't text and drive, dummy.

So, all in all a good day. Lots went well, lots to work on, and a smattering of really dumb moments which will (hopefully) never be repeated.

 

Lesson 12 - The Second Introduction

 

Let me start off by saying that when your instructor wryly asks you if you’re forgetting anything, you’re probably forgetting something.



After pre-flighting the plane and getting ready to pull it out onto the line to start up…



Instructor: “Did you forget anything?”
Me: “No, I think we’re good. Ready?”

(pulls on tow bar, plane doesn’t move.)

(looks at wheel chock still firmly against left wheel.)

Me: “You were waiting for that, weren’t you?”
Instructor: “yep.”



Today’s lesson (besides double check the chocks), an introduction to flying in the pattern, setting us up for touching down. My instructor was quite candid about this lesson, telling me that I wasn’t likely to be all that successful today. This is where everything we had been practicing with respect to stalls, recoveries, and ground reference maneuvers come together so you can get the plane safely back onto the ground. As the saying goes, “taking off is optional. Landing is mandatory.” And like that first introductory flight a few months ago, this one would prove almost equally overwhelming when tasked with putting everything together. I wasn’t expecting greatness by any means, but I was certainly excited to start putting the pieces together. And whooooo boy… Yeah, birds make it look easy. I didn’t fail miserably, and I have every confidence I’ll get it soon enough, but there were definitely a few “oh crap!” moments.



Today’s first task was getting to where we were going. We flew out to the airport formerly known as “Front Range Airport,” but now has the rather lofty name “Colorado Air and Space Port.” (Yes, one of a small handful of FAA-recognized sites designated for commercial flights into space.) This lies east of Denver, right in the shadow of Denver International Airport. (More on the special challenges that brings in a bit.) To get there, we needed to skirt Buckley AFB’s airspace as well as DIA’s, which took us east for a fair distance before turning north. I will say I was very comfortable navigating and flying that leg of the journey. Climb up to 7500’ for most of it, then a slow descent to 6500 to get below DIA’s shelf and pattern altitude for the *ahem* spaceport. Aaaannnddd that’s where the comfortable part ended.



Let’s talk about the Colorado Space Port for a bit. First, it’s in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but farms and open fields all around it. As a result, landmarks are few to come by. Second, it’s in the shadow of DIA, which is also out in the middle of nowhere. The sticky part here is that DIA’s airspace starts at the surface just to the west and north of the runways at Colorado Space Port. The folks at DIA are rather strict about which planes it allows into its airspace, and we ain’t one of ‘em. So rather than getting on the losing end of an argument with them, we have make an almost immediate turn once we’re off the runway to avoid breaking their airspace. There is thankfully a road which serves as a boundary marker for reference on that end of things.



There were a handful of planes in the pattern as we approached, so ATC had us fly a long final on our first approach. This was good for me so I could get a sense of lining up with a runway from a distance, then get a better sense for speed and glide slope. We were doing “almost” touch-and-goes today, so we’d fly within 50’ of the runway surface then go around. I felt okay about keeping lined up with the runway, though my speed was definitely fast coming in so I was higher than I should have been. I initiated the go-around, but it was sloppy. “Sloppy” and “50 feet above the ground” don’t mix well. I had the plane trimmed completely wrong on climb-out, so I was having to really push the yoke down to keep the nose to the horizon. That shouldn’t be the case. I knew it was trimmed wrong, but I also didn’t do anything to correct it. Too busy fighting the yoke and worrying about making the right turn before getting to the airspace boundary. My instructor took the controls for the turn, re-trimmed the plane, and got me set up for the downwind leg. I climbed to pattern altitude, set my speed, then once ATC cleared us to turn base, began my right turn. The problem with extended downwind legs is that you lose site of the runway. In an ideal pattern, you begin your base turn with the end of the runway about 45 degrees behind you. We were well past that point. Also, the lack of visual references surrounding the field meant I was guessing where the runway was as I was turning. I was rather timid in my turn, so by the time I got headed on base and lifted my right wing to look for the runway, I was already darned near across its centerline. Oops…



At this field and at the distance we were from the runway, there was plenty of time and room to correct this. At Centennial with parallel runways, I’d have been in a whole lot of trouble, being lined up with the parallel runway instead of the one I was supposed to be landing at. The impulse is to quickly correct the alignment, but that’s not always the best course of action. The danger is that when you’re making the turn from base to final, you’re already flying slow, so control is not as precise and you’re dangerously close to stall speed. You’re also low to the ground. A stall at this point is not a good thing. This is statistically where and how a lot of crashes happen, and the outcomes are usually not positive. The preferred solution in such cases would be to go around and try again. Since we had been on an extended downwind leg in this case, we had ample time (and elevation) to safely adjust our position.



The second pass at the almost-touch-and-go approach went a bit smoother in terms of keeping lined up with the runway and managing airspeed (“a bit smoother” being relative; it was still anything but textbook), but my go-around was no less sloppy than the first. The nose danced around far too much when I applied power. Throttle, nose to horizon, rudder, reduce flaps. All pretty much simultaneously and in degrees to keep the nose of the airplane as stationary as possible. Looks easy when you see it in black and white. And it’s something I’ve done at altitude. It sure wasn’t coming smoothly here.



The next few passes weren’t much improvement. Part of that was just due to the mentally overwhelming aspect of setting up the landing, part of that was thinking about what I had just screwed up on the previous attempt, but not really having time to properly analyze in my head because I had to get ready for the next. Analysis of the steps I was missing would have to wait for the flight back to Centennial and debriefing afterwards. There was so much to absorb anyway, it was probably for the best. I call this my “second introduction,” because like my first lesson, so much more made sense once I was on the ground and able to think through everything that happened.



We headed back to Centennial on a flight path that coincidentally took me over my neighborhood (cool factor!). My instructor reassured me that my performance was on par with pretty much every new student their first time in the pattern. He also added that the wind was a bit bumpier than he anticipated, so that affected things as well. I think I was too busy trying to line things up and watching my airspeed and altitude to notice the bumps may have been wind and not control movements. I thought I was just fighting myself. My co-worker who is also a private pilot and has been keeping tabs on my progress likewise reassured me that my experience was not out of the norm.



I viewed today’s lesson as something of a pre-assessment a student might take the first week in class just to see where they are with the material. There’s no expectation they’re going to do well at all, but it gives the student an idea of what the material is, how it works, and what they have to work towards. Next lesson we’re going to do much of the same thing, but take it up a few hundred feet. This will allow me to work on managing airspeed, altitude, and recovery with a little bit larger of a margin for error when my recoveries go askew while I work to fine-tune working everything together.



Learning to fly is a piling on of layers. Every time there’s a new layer added to the equation, the comfort level decreases until you begin to get used to that new layer. And that’s when it’s time to add another new layer. Today’s lesson in many ways felt like a very thick new layer. At first blush, it’s easy to look at what happened today and be discouraged. That’s not the case, because this new layer isn’t really all that thick at all. It’s not a new skill that needs to be learned. It’s a matter of managing existing skills together at the same time. Think of it as an orchestra. You learn the flute, you learn the violin, you learn the drums. Now it’s time to learn how to conduct them all together to play the symphony. And like getting to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.  

Lesson 11 - Repetition

My instructor texted me at 6 in the morning to tell me that due to expected very hot temperatures later in the day, he bumped our lesson up an hour to meet at 9 instead of 10. That way we could be up and back down before the temperature (more to the point density altitude) really started to affect airplane performance. Fortunately I was already somewhat awake thanks to our new puppy and our efforts to potty train her, but that doesn’t make me a morning person. Between that and the fact that our previous two flights got cancelled due to weather meant I was sure I was going to be battling a few cobwebs. Yes, I’m gaining confidence with every flight, but without the constant repetition, unfamiliar skills undoubtedly slip.



In an effort to get going as quickly as possible, my instructor and I headed straight out to the plane and did our pre-flight briefing while getting the plane ready to go. The biggest concern with the plane itself was a note in the plane’s file about the engine running hot (sadly no “A Little Hot” warning light, just the gauge) and also noting oil pressure on the low side. (“I forgot to check the oil pressure! When Kramer hears about this, the s***’s going to hit the fan…”) Fortunately, that scene from my favorite movie serves as a reminder to keep an eye on those things anyway. The oil was a bit low when I checked it, so I added another quart, and made a mental note to pay solid attention to the oil temperature throughout the flight. Fortunately the “pre-maneuver checklist” which we do before doing any kind of training exercise includes checking those gauges, and we were going to be doing a fair number of different exercises today.



Still a little rusty on keeping the plane centered on the yellow line, but getting much better at keeping the plane on a straight path and smoother turns on the ground in spite of not being directly over the line. It’s a perspective thing that I will eventually work out. My instructor taxied us out from the run-up area to the queue for take-off so I could get the Foreflight app set up and tracking our flight today. Don’t text and drive, don’t mess with your phone and taxi, either. Busy, busy day at the field; we were 4 deep to take off, so I got a bit of practice in what amounts to stop-and-go traffic taxiing from the queue to the runway. I have to say today’s take-off was probably my best yet. I felt fully aware of what the plane was doing in terms of where it was on the runway, what the airspeed was, when to start rotating, and keeping the plane lined up with the runway once in the air. (Until ATC told us to turn left 20 degrees.) We were expecting a few bumps with the wind today, but it wasn’t as bad as expected.



There was a fairly steady breeze blowing off the mountains today, so our lesson covered stalls and ground reference maneuvers with a wind. Stalls, I’ve decided, are the bane of my existence at the moment. They’re a condition of flight that one tries to avoid, but a pilot needs to induce in order to learn how to recover from one. If there was a place for cobwebs today, this was it. I wasn’t smooth on the stalls at all. Inducing them took more effort than I thought it should. I think that’s actually a good thing since they’re generally to be avoided, but I think struggling to get into them was affecting my mind in getting back out of them smoothly. Throttle full, right rudder, nose to horizon, reduce flaps all in one fell swoop. That’s what the textbook says. The trick is to do them in just the right amounts to keep the plane from moving around too much. That’s where I was having trouble today. At 1000’ above the ground, it’s okay to be a little shaky. At 50’ if you stall on landing or takeoff, not so much. We weren’t at 50’ today, but that will come soon enough. We did four or five stalls; enough to shake off the cobwebs and get my mind back in the groove. None were “textbook,” but we had other things to work on today, too. All of this is geared towards getting me ready to start flying “in the pattern,” AKA getting ready to learn how to land the plane.



I mentioned the steady breeze coming off the mountains, which makes ground reference maneuvers much more of a challenge than flying them on calm day which I had done previously. If you paddle a boat across a still pond, you point your boat towards your destination and paddle directly to it. If you paddle your boat across a moving river, you have to adjust the course of your boat to account for the speed of the current in order to get to where you’re going. You need to point the boat a little bit upstream because the current will push you downstream as you cross. That’s ground reference maneuvers in the wind. You have to keep adjusting your course, the steepness of your turns, etc. in response to whether you’re flying into the wind, across it, or with it. We started with doing “S” turns across a road. My first turn was an abysmal failure, but things did improve. The key is that the steeper you bank the plane, the more surface area of the wing is exposed to the wind, causing them to act as much like a sail as a wing. The balancing act comes when you’re turning from downwind to crosswind. You need a steeper angle to compensate for the wind, but the steeper you turn, the more the wind wants to blow you from your course.



We then went to doing rectangular patterns, such as what you fly when setting up your landing. We focused on maintaining heading and altitude today, not trying to control airspeed in any kind of attempt to simulate an actual landing. The goal was to get a feel for how the wind affects the plane on each of the legs. Unlike the S turns (where we are constantly turning one way or the other), the rectangular pattern theoretically has straight-and-level segments on all four sides of the pattern. This allows you to feel the turn and what the wind is doing before getting set up for the next turn. While my “rectangles” were more like ovals, I definitely got to where I could predict the point on the turn from crosswind to upwind (base to final) where the wind really caught the plane and could compensate for it. And that’s the name of the game… predict what’s going to happen and compensate with the controls for when it does.

A footnote - the oil pressure was good. We ran the mixture a bit richer than we would otherwise do, and that kept things well in check. Quirk of the plane, I think.

Lesson 10 - The Three Second Rule

Today my instructor decided to shake things up just a bit and instead of more stalls and slow flight, we opted to work on ground reference maneuvers. This means flying patterns based on what you as a pilot see on the ground. You pick a spot to use as a reference, and fly to it, beside it, or around it depending on what you’re trying to do picking other reference points along the way. Ground reference maneuvers—particularly flying a rectangular course—are necessary skills to develop in order to learn how to fly a pattern to land the plane.



After analyzing (over analyzing?) my previous two take-offs, I made sure to be very cognizant of what I was doing with regard to flying straight over the runway once I lifted off the ground. That paid off, as I did a much better job of staying on centerline of the runway on departure. But today’s departure introduced something new. Bumpy air. Gusty winds and showers were expected to move into the area later in the afternoon, and the air was already starting to get just a bit unsettled. We hit some pockets of bumpy air which had a nasty tendency to pitch my nose up. I didn’t compensate as I should, and lost a fair amount of airspeed as a result. I did correct—eventually—but I wasn’t taking the lead on flying through the bumps, instead letting the air move the plane and then figuring out how to correct after the fact. That will come with time and experience. Now that I know what the “standard” is, it will be easier to work towards it.



In any case, ATC had us fly a roundabout route out of the airport rather than our usual “fly straight out and turn west” that we’ve flown many times before. My guess is that they were routing us around traffic in the area, but it gave me experience listening and making more turns per ATC’s instructions. It was also a reminder that ATC has a habit of giving instructions relative to local landmarks such as roads, lakes, large buildings, power lines, etc. Flying out of the same airport all the time, I’m learning those local landmarks as we reference them. (Being local to the area helps too.) From this, I would suspect that it’s probably quite a good idea for a pilot flying to a new area to do his/her homework not only on the airport itself, but the local surroundings. If ATC tells you to fly to report over such-and-such road, you need to know where on the ground such-and-such road is. Even flying in the practice area today, I learned new roads. “Who needs a roadmap when you’re flying?” Well, there’s a good reason why you do.



Back to the task at hand—ground reference maneuvers. These are so far (to me) the most tangible example of “flying” the plane in that you’re directing the plane where you want to go and making constant adjustments to get it there. (In retrospect, this would also apply to my rather bumpy climb-out as well, so I’ll have to remember that for next time.) For purposes of training and certification, there are steps required to set up each maneuver and complete it within requirements. The first step is to establish which way the wind is blowing, because you want to start these with the wind at your back (downwind). If you can see flags, wind socks, or other visual references on the ground, that will give you an idea of which way the wind is blowing where you are. You can also use the weather info you got when you took off, though that may change depending on how old it is and how far from the airport you are—especially in places where the topography will direct the winds. You can also compare your airspeed to your groundspeed. If you fly a circle, your groundspeed will increase when compared to your airspeed on the downwind leg of the circle. It will be less than your airspeed if you’re flying into the wind. (Yes, in some planes in slow flight configurations in a strong enough headwind, your groundspeed may well be next to zero.) Note the changes in groundspeed relative to airspeed with respect to heading, and you’ll have the direction of the wind.



The direction of the wind is important to know in ground reference maneuvers because the wind will be blowing you one way or the other relative to the ground and you’ll have to compensate for that with the controls. For example, in a turn around a point (circle), when you enter on the downwind leg, your groundspeed will be the fastest, so you will need to bank the plane steeper to make a tighter turn in the air because it is moving you relative the ground. As you proceed around the circle, you will need less of a bank angle as you transition from moving with the wind to against it (headwind).



We did three different ground reference maneuvers. The first was an S turn across a road. You find a road, and as soon as you cross it, you start a 180-degree turn to cross it again, then reverse your turn again to cross it a third time. The idea is that every time you cross the road, you’re wings level and crossing perpendicular to the road. The key to this is to just transition directly from one turn to the next smoothly, as opposed to stopping one turn, holding straight and level while you’re crossing the road, then beginning the next (which is what I was doing as I was thinking step-by-step again).



Turns around a point were next on the agenda. The trick here is to maintain a consistent distance from a given point on the ground while you fly around it. The easy way to do this is to pick a point, then pick a half dozen or so identifiable points equidistant from that point every 60 degrees or so, then basically fly from each point to the next. When you look at the flight path from my lesson, you’ll see that I did pretty well on my first attempt, but not quite as good on my second. The difference was that on my first attempt, I had easily identifiable points on the ground to fly to; a stand of trees, a building, a road, etc. For my next point, I picked a small building in the middle of a field with really not much that really stood out as a reference a set distance away. As such, my ground track got a bit wonkier than ideal. I still managed to keep it close because I spent a lot of time looking out the side window judging my distance from the point that way.



And therein lies the hiccup in the process. Remember the title of this chapter, “the three second rule.” No, that doesn’t apply to M&Ms which fall on the cockpit floor. It means that as a pilot, your eyes should never be focused on any one thing for more than three seconds. They need to be constantly moving around. One of the goals of these ground reference maneuvers is to perform them with less than a 100’ change in altitude through the maneuver. For the S curves and the first turn around a point, I did surprisingly well on that front. This second turn around a point was not as consistent. The reason? Because I had definite points to fly to during my first run-through, I spent more time looking out the front of the plane to find the point and fly to the next one. This meant I had a good sense of what the nose of the plane was doing. On my second one, with no real discernable equidistant points from the center to fly to, I spent more time looking at the point itself from the side of the plane. Did you know that when you’re looking out the side of the plane, you lose track of what the nose of the plane is doing? Yeah. Strange. Who knew??? The upshot was that my altitude wasn’t nearly as consistent as it was on the first run. I’ve written “outside, outside, check the gauges” before as a visual flow for your eyes. With ground reference maneuvers, it’s “side, front, check the gauges.” You have to keep tabs of what the plane is doing across all three axes.



Last on the agenda was a rectangular pattern, which on the ground track looks more like a very long oval. This simulates flying a rectangular approach pattern to a runway. I picked a road to be the “runway,” and another point to serve as my downwind leg reference point. The idea is then to fly the downwind leg, then make the turn to base, followed by the turn to final. With the downwind leg less than a mile from the upwind leg, the turn to base then to final was more of a constant 180-degree turn as opposed to two separate 90-degree turns. I thought I did pretty well on these, though my altitude still fluctuated more than I had hoped. Part of that was me trying to correct for altitude gains and losses as opposed to just resetting and continuing. When I start chasing altitude, I tend to make matters worse.



After a few goes with rectangular patterns, I dialed in the weather information, butchered the call to the tower letting them know we were inbound to the field, and started our trek back east to land.

Lessons 8 and 9 - Context is everything.

I’m combining lessons 8 and 9 because they occurred on back-to-back days. I’m not sure how I managed to schedule that as it was quite by accident, but I wasn’t going to complain. I figured flying two days in a row would probably help from a consistency standpoint. And it did, but I’m getting ahead of myself.



First, it had been 10 days since my last flight, but in that time I (finally!) devised a way to remember the flippin’ safety briefing. It stems from the notion that a lot of what I’ve been learning has to do with a flow of things. The preflight inspection is a flow. You start here, end up there. Pre-maneuver checks are a flow. You start by checking the fuel selector by your feet, then move up and around the non “six-pack” gauges to check engine oil temperature, vacuum pressure, fuel flow, etc. I figured I’d work the safety briefing to likewise be a flow. I start next to my seat with the fire extinguisher, then across to my seatbelt and seatback, then to the door (emergency exits). From there, it’s the yoke to remind me to talk about positive exchange of controls between my instructor and me. Between the two yokes is the radio, so that’s my reminder to talk about keeping conversation to a minimum during critical stages of flight so we can communicate with ATC. From there it’s up to the GPS to talk about hotspots (congested traffic areas) we may encounter, then looking out the front window to talk about general safety concerns during the flight. And by gumby it worked. I got through the safety briefing without missing anything or getting tongue tied. I still think I want to polish things up a bit, but at least I’m not forgetting anything.



Despite that success, I definitely had some cobwebs on taxiing and take-off. When I hit the throttle to take off, I (may have?) over-corrected on the right rudder and it took some doing to get back on centerline. Apparently I took my left hand off the yoke during this, too, much to the bewilderment of my instructor. I vaguely remember trying to turn the yoke to get the plane back on centerline (it doesn’t work that way), and when I remembered that minor detail, I took my hand off the yoke as a reminder. I forgot to put it back on the yoke until it was time to roll out. Once airborne, the plane started drifting to the left of the runway. This is not necessarily a good thing in any situation, but particularly dangerous when you’re taking off on the right runway of two parallel runways. Drifting to the left puts you in danger of flying over the other runway. That’s kinda frowned upon. My instructor got us back where we should be, and I then continued the climbout.



After some “routine” maneuvers to clear the rest of the cobwebs, we set about working on slow flight again. For some reason, this has been a mental hurdle that I to this point was having trouble getting past. I knew the steps, but making them happen smoothly? I think part of that has to do with the nature of slow flight itself. It’s not something you do when you’re cruising. It’s primarily a condition when you’re landing, during which time you’re also controlling your descent and focusing on lining up with the runway. Doing these maneuvers at 1500’ above ground level while maintaining altitude is just different enough to where it wasn’t clicking with me. Nevertheless, we spent the better part of the lesson plowing through slow flight then recovery, then more slow flight, then more recovery. On one hand, a lot of review, but on the other, is it review if you’re still struggling with it? Keep plugging away.



That’s not to say my instructor didn’t throw some new challenges my way through all this. This time, it came in the form of setting the radios and getting weather information for our flight back to the airport while cruising and turning. Remember back a few lessons when I wrote about walking and chewing gum? All things considered, I fared pretty well though I gained about 300’ altitude while turning and listening to and writing down the ATIS (weather) information. I’ll get there…



Anyway, I set us heading back to the airport before my instructor took the controls to set us up to land. Because landing is slow flight, I kept an eye on what he was doing. We were on final to land when ATC instructed us to abort the landing and go around. Neither of us know why, but there had to be something ATC didn’t like. Without blinking an eye, my instructor cruised through the same slow flight recovery steps I was stumbling through, getting us climbing again and out of harm’s way. Two things came clear to me. First, the “real-world” demonstration of how it’s done. There was no step-by-step explanation or hypothetical. Full throttle (with a little right rudder), reduce flaps, build airspeed, climb. THAT’S how—and why—it’s done. It made sense. Second, this is something that I will want to master. It may take me 100+ hours to get to the smoothness with which my instructor pulled things off, but when ATC tells you there’s a threat, your response has to be automatic. You can’t pause and pre-think the steps before you do them.



We landed, sat down and chatted about the day’s flight—the good, the bad, and the ugly (take-off)—and called it a day. Tomorrow was another day, and we’d be back at it soon enough.

 



“Tomorrow” arrived, and it was time to get back going again. We chatted again this morning about what we noticed last flight, and I mentioned the newfound context in which I saw slow flight and recovery. My instructor reassured me that as a student who had all of 10 hours under his belt, I should not compare myself to someone who demonstrates slow flight recovery techniques many times a day every day of the week with regard to the smoothness with which he acted the previous day. In an emergency, form follows function. Just get the steps down and worry about polishing them later.



Out to the plane, prepped it and set off on the day’s adventure. I didn’t get 200’ down the tarmac before I encountered something I hadn’t dealt with before. Up to this point, I was actually taking a bit of pride in how much improvement I had in keeping the plane taxiing (more or less) on the yellow line. I was having a bugger of a time today. Hello “crosswind!” On the ground, this has a tendency to turn the plane into a weathervane. The wind was coming from the right, causing the plane to want to constantly turn that direction. Ailerons turned into the wind to stabilize the plane, and a whole lot of left rudder and brake to keep the plane rolling where you want it to. And—yes—it changes every time you turn a corner. It wasn’t my prettiest taxi. Definitely a challenge, but I’m glad I had already gotten somewhat of a handle on taxiing before throwing this monkey wrench into the works.



Speaking of challenges, my take-off was a bit ugly today, too. This time I had my hand on the yoke and had no trouble keeping us centered on the runway, but—again—once airborne, the plane wanted to slide to the left. I’m gonna have to figure out what’s going on there. I’m honestly not sure. Was it the wind? Am I pulling the ailerons slightly to the left when pulling back to lift off? It’s something I’m going to pay close attention to next time out of the gate. That has to get better. Alas, until I’m landing, doing touch-and-goes to get repeated take-offs in order to troubleshoot isn’t going to happen. I would also expect this to have to be corrected before getting to landing, so we’ll take it one take-off at a time. I think just knowing the tendency, figuring out what the probable causes of it might be, and getting ahead of it should clear it up.



Southwest to Chatfield Reservoir. Slow flight and stalls were on the agenda today. On our way out there, we got talking about cruise power levels, cruise descent power levels, and climbs. In the process of that discussion while having my eye on the horizon thinking I was in level flight, I managed to lose 500’ in elevation because I had the power set too low. I think I was just gradually pitching my nose up to keep the horizon at the same place on the windshield, meanwhile slowly bleeding airspeed and altitude. Gotta watch outside the window but confirm with the gauges. Look outside, look outside, check inside (gauges). Lather, rinse, repeat. Not the shining start I was hoping for.



In lessons past, whenever I had something of a befuddling moment like that, it had a tendency to knock me off my game. My instructor and I would work through things step by step again. Do this, check that, do this, check that… This time, something different happened. I’m not entirely certain how it came about, but it was cool how it worked out. Instead of going through mental checklists of what steps 1, 2, and 3 would be, I just flew the plane. Need to climb? Full power, let the nose come up. If you need to climb faster, apply more back pressure to the yoke. Less focus on mentally going through the step-by-step checklist in my head allowed me to just feel my way through what the plane was doing as I made control adjustments. My instructor would say say “climb to 8000” or “descend to 7500,” and leave it to me to figure out how to get there and make corrections along the way. (Hint – when descending only 300’ or so, don’t worry about rolling in trim. You’ll have to level off too soon.) I was able to work a lot of things out in my mind just flying here, there, and around. I felt comfortable. I would like to think this more relaxed approach stemmed in part from my instructor’s faith that I actually know what to do, but need to put things together in my own way.



After a bit of flying circles, climbing, and descending, I felt plenty confident to start setting up for slow flight and recovery. This time, I didn’t focus on the individual steps in process (which I know), but thought about the end result and the best way to get me there. It’s difficult to describe in words the difference in these two approaches because either way it ends up reading like an instruction book on how to fly the maneuver. The closest I think I can come is that today’s approach focused on the “why” as opposed to the “what.” The “what” is the step-by-step description of how to fly the maneuver that my instructor and I had talked about numerous times. “What’s the first thing we do? What’s the second thing…” and so forth. Today I looked at it from the perspective of “why” those are the steps we take. Why do we reduce power? Why do we increase pitch? Why do we lower flaps? What effect do each of those actions have on the plane? That’s what I was figuring out in my mind in the first part of today’s flight—feeling the action and reaction so I can put them together to get the plane to do what I want it to do. They’re not so much individual steps as actions taken in concert to get the plane where you want it to go.



I set us up for slow flight, flew a few turns, recovered, climbed, set up more slow flight, recovered… Sometimes it wasn’t pretty, sometimes it was “textbook.” Where things weren’t pretty, though, there was realization of why it wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t watching my airspeed. I was pitched up too high. All easily corrected for a better job the next time. The difference in my mindset was most noticeable. I was ahead of the curve because I wasn’t thinking about what came next. I was still plenty shaky because of inexperience, but I felt better about it, if that makes any sense.



With that renewed confidence, I proceeded to setting up stalls and stall recovery. These weren’t quite as clean, but I haven’t done many of them yet. Probably most of the roughness here came from the stall itself, not setting it up or getting out of it. I’m wondering, too, if I was picking up well enough on what the stall felt like to know when to recover from it. We’ll do more of that next time. 

On top of all of this, my instructor had me making more radio calls and multitasking with respect to flying, setting up radios and getting weather info. I think I made sense for the most part on my calls, but don't quote me. Probably forgot a few words here and there. On one hand I could probably write things out on my kneeboard before saying them, but on the other hand, that would require writing on my kneeboard while flying, which at this stage would probably introduce more chaos than having to repeat radio calls because I flubbed a line. My handwriting is bad enough without having to read what I just wrote at 8000' in bumpy skies. 



I think the takeaway from today’s lesson is that I’m learning. I’m doing less and less guessing of what to do, instead starting to draw on experience of knowing what happens when I do this, that, or the other and applying that to different aspects of flight. It’s a good feeling. Today was definitely an “I may actually be able to pull this off” kind of day. With any luck, this will continue next lesson.