Lesson 32 - Once More into the Pattern

Getting up in the pattern is getting to be somewhat routine, and that's a positive thing. That's not to say my landings are remotely smooth, but what it does mean is that I can better analyze what is different about each approach and landing, then work to figure out what may have contributed to the success or lack thereof on each one.

It's been said time and time again--the key to a good landing is a stable approach. Today's lesson was exhibit A on that front. What threw me for loops this time out more than anything else was actually starting the descent. Once I was configured for landing and on the base and final legs, I felt I was at least maybe somewhat ahead of the plane and it was responding to my control inputs as I wanted it to. Getting to that point was unusually rough. Part of that had to do with a somewhat busy pattern, so there were time when ATC called my base as opposed to flying a "standard pattern." A "standard pattern" begins with dropping power when you're abeam your touchdown point on the runway on the downwind leg. "Slow down before you go down." So you reduce power, bleed off some airspeed, extend 10 degrees of flaps, then pitch down for around a 500fpm descent while keeping your airspeed in the neighborhood of 85 knots. As you turn your base turn, you reduce your speed to around 75 knots, extend flaps to 20 degrees, then turn final. On final, you want your speed to be around 65 knots, so you extend to 30 degrees of flaps, pitch for 65 knots, then use the power to stay on glide slope until you're over the runway. Once over the runway, pull power to idle, settle down over the runway, flare when you're just a few feet off the ground, then let the plane set itself smoothly down. Writing it makes it sound easy. Doing it is another story. 

Truth be told, when I flew a "standard pattern," things went okay. My approach was stable, and while I still absolutely stink at judging how high I am above the ground to begin my flare, leading to some rather interesting touchdowns, my approaches were at least descent. In looking back at things, what threw me this time out was the "non-standard" approach. Because the pattern was busy, ATC had me extend downwind on a number of landings. "Extend downwind, I'll call base." That means you fly the downwind leg until ATC tells you to make your base turn, and only they know when that's going to be. Therein lies the issue that plagued me most today. ATC says "Six Mike Echo, turn base" I'm still in a cruise configuration at this point; around 95 knots at 2300rpm. ATC is expecting me to make that turn, though. So do I slow down and extend flaps before making that turn? Do I try to slow down in the turn? Do I extend flaps in the turn? (No on that one!) These are questions that are running through my mine when ATC tells me to make that turn. Am I far enough out to where when I make the base and final turns I'd be on a 3 mile extended final? In that case, do I need to slow down or can I fly it at cruise speeds? My head was a jumble of inexperience and second guessing myself getting into my approach set-up, and it showed. That time spent second guessing myself put me behind the curve and I spent too much time playing catch-up before I felt I was back where I wanted to be on short final. My instructor could sense I was a bit unsettled and unsure, so he took over radio coms for much of the lesson. This left me to concentrate on getting set up for approaches, which did help. 

I write this knowing it sounds like the lesson and my landings were absolute flops. In reality, things are definitely trending in the right direction. My control is getting more and more confident, and the after-the-fact awareness and analysis of things helps give me more confidence next time in my decision making. I need to have the confidence that I am in control of the airplane, and while I'm expected to respond to ATC's directions, it's my responsibility to make sure I do so safely and thoughtfully. Hindsight is 20/20, but the good thing about hindsight in the pattern is that the last landing's hindsight becomes the next landing's foresight. You've seen it before, you know what to expect, you know what to do. The more you fly, the less you'll be second-guessing yourself because you know what works. 

I'm going back up in three days (as of this writing and weather-permitting), so I'll be doing lots of chair flying in my mind of what to do and when to do it for any of the approaches I was handed this past lesson. We'll get there.

Lesson 31 - Remember to Verbalize Everything

 

I talk to myself. A lot. Most often just a series of conversations in my head about steps I'm taking in whatever it is I'm doing. If I'm driving to work, it'll be mental thoughts like "get in the right lane," or "don't forget your exit." Sometimes they're philosophical discussions with myself (which invariably lead to me forgetting my exit). But I'm almost always conversing with myself about something. Which leads to one of the key takeaways from today's lesson--talk. 

Our goal today--same as it has been for some time--get me more comfortable landing the plane. And today's landings weren't all that terrible. They weren't butter by any definition, but at no point did my instructor scream in horror, though there was a slight gasp of correction when I momentarily forgot to retract the flaps before going to full throttle on one touch-and-go. I felt more consistently in control of the process than I have before, even if my controls weren't perfect. It wasn't a matter of "this time I got lucky." I felt good in that I was making conscious decisions in controlling the plane and it was responding to what I was doing. I just need to make that "doing enough to land properly." I'm still skittish about pulling power all the way out to descend, so have a tendency to be a bit high on final, even if I'm a touch low on the base leg. It's coming along, and it just takes more and more practice to give me the comfort of knowing the plane will not fall out of the sky if I yank the power to idle at 300' above the ground. 

That's not what I want to concentrate on with this post. I want to talk about what I didn't do, and that was talk. My last lesson, my instructor chided me for not running checklists. They're an important aspect of keeping track of your flight tasks. We have them for every phase of flight, even if we can't always pull out the checklist to run them. Some things we do by memory, we call them "flows," rather than checklists. They're in the checklists but when you're landing, you can't be distracted by a piece of paper telling you your airspeeds and elevations or where your flaps need to be. You kinda need to know them as part of the process. On climb-out, it's similar. You're busy applying back-pressure to the yoke to get the plane off the ground. You're not going to pull out the checklist and read "rotation speed 55 knots." 

I'm pretty good about running the checklists or flows while I'm flying. What I do not do well is verbalize that I'm running them; especially the flows during take-off and landing. ATC clears me to take off. My mind says "apply full throttle." It says "check the gauges to make sure they're alive." It says "rotation speed 55 knots." On climb-out, my mind says "airspeed 78 knots, flaps up." That's my mind saying it. Not my mouth. Why is this important? Two reasons. First, verbally saying things out loud reinforces that you're actually doing them. In journalism, we have a saying "say dog, see dog." It means write to the video you're seeing on the screen. In flying, it's "say dog, do dog." If you say it out loud, there's no excuse not to physically do it. Second, as students, we have an instructor sitting in the right seat. They may be watching us, but they're not mind readers. Our verbalizing what we're doing is how they know we're in control of what's going on in the plane. If we don't tell them what they're doing, they're left to wonder if we know what we're doing. 

Many times, I've made conscious decisions in flight that I fail to communicate to my instructor. If I'm flying back from the practice area to the field, I'll fly a slow descent from practice elevation to pattern elevation. What my instructor sees is a gradual loss of elevation with no explanation as to why. Or sometimes I'll climb a bit higher than pattern elevation if I have to extend downwind because the terrain rises south of our field. My instructor sees me flying 300' above pattern elevation. My climb out flow is by-the-book straight out of the checklist. I just don't verbalize it out loud as I'm doing it. That needs to change. When you're cruising, you have the opportunity to check the checklist. Check it and verbalize it as you go. Every time you're in the air, treat the person sitting next to you as a co-pilot to whom you want to make sure is 100% on board with everything you're doing. Keep nothing secret. That's how your instructor or DPE will know you know what you're doing. Yeah, they'll see what you're doing, but they may not know why you're doing it. If they have to wonder why you're doing something, they don't know you know what you're doing. 

A few other takeaways from today's lesson... Be ready for anything when dealing with ATC. You can expect to do certain things, but you need to be ready to not do what's expected just as a precaution. For example, ATC had me fly a few 360s south of the field while they sorted out other traffic before they let me enter the pattern. They had given me instructions to enter the pattern, but last minute asked me to hold. No problem, but had I been too focused on following their instructions on entering the pattern, I may have missed the instructions to hold. Second, watch for geese. I had a small flock of them off my left wing. Cool to see, but would have been messy to hit. Third, listen to what ATC is telling other pilots, especially weather updates. Getting the latest ATIS or AWOS is one thing, but that's updated only every hour. ATC will give pilots up-to-the-minute wind information, especially when it's variable. Forth, don't forget that information when you're landing. If ATC says winds are 280 at 6 knots and they vector you in to 35R, don't forget that means there's a 6 knot crosswind you're going to have to deal with on your landing. Lastly, don't forget to take a minute or two of every flight to just take in the view and enjoy being up in the air.

Lessons 29 and 30 - Airspeed is King (and don't forget your checklists!)

 I'm combining two lessons, partly because with the Holiday madness I haven't had time to write the first one up, but also because the two lessons ended up being remarkably intertwined. The two lessons aren't so much a matter of "night and day," but more one of "questions and answers." 

Let's start with the first lesson. First, it was cold, around 28 degrees. It was the first day I've flown in sub-freezing temperatures since I started back in April. In fact, I don't think it's ever been cooler than 45 degrees for any of my flights, and certainly my most recent ones have been in 60-degree temps thanks to an unusually warm Fall. Anyway, one of the first things you learn in ground school when learning about airplane performance is the effect temperature has on performance. Planes fly better in the cold because the air is denser. I was about to learn how much better, and learn it very quickly. Like as soon as I pulled back on the yoke to take off, and we lifted up so quickly I almost stalled. Oh crap! Nose down a bit, find that nice 75 knot climb-out speed. 

I did find that sweet spot for a proper 75 knot climb-out. Problem is, in cold air, that meant a very nose-high pitch attitude and darned near 1000 feet per minute rate of climb! I was not used to that, and I found it easy to lose sight of my alignment with the runway because my nose was pitching so high above the horizon. Fortunately I was consistently veering off to the left, away from the parallel runway. I was reminded later to lower the nose periodically to make sure you were still pointed where you want to be pointed. Still, with that very robust rate of climb, I found myself at pattern altitude about halfway through my crosswind leg of the pattern, if not before, and it got my rhythms off just a bit. 

I mention this because in hindsight, I didn't realize that's what was happening at the time; I just knew my airspeed/pitch control was definitely off kilter all day. If there's one piece of advice that is almost universal when it comes to landing, it's "start with a stabilized approach." If you've got that, the rest is "easy!" A stabilized approach to landing means that you've got your airspeed under control and are on a good, predictable glide slope. Airspeed is controlled primarily by the pitch of the airplane--how high (or low) the nose is relative to the horizon. Glide slope is controlled by power. It stands to reason that if I had to pitch my nose way up to maintain 75 knots under full power on climb-out, then what would have been a "typical" pitch attitude on warmer weather days would result in a slightly faster airspeed on the descent. They say "Airspeed is king" (or "... key" depending on who's saying it.) It was obvious today why. On landings where I had my airspeed more-or-less in check, I had an easier time on the approach. For my scientific mind that likes to dissect cause/effect of control movements in the airplane, this was pretty clear-cut. I did better when I had good control over my airspeed, which was something of a rarity today. 

More frustrating to me this lesson was my inability to properly time the "flare" (aka "roundout," or "transition" from CFIs who don't like the term "flare"). I floated. A lot. I ballooned. I gave the landing gear a proper stress test. There was absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind when I was on the ground. Seismometers detected it. The line "I may bend your precious airplane, but I'll get it down" kept replaying in my mind, because I was sure I bent something. It was not pretty. They say "any landing you can walk away from and still use the airplane is a great landing." Perhaps that's true in the purest sense of the term, but my instructor has higher standards. On the plus side (I always try to find at least one gem), I'm getting better at trimming the plane for climbing and descending. That, and upon inspection at the end of the lesson, I actually didn't bend anything.

That night, I lamented to the student pilot group on Facebook about my rather dismal landing performance of the day, and asked for advice from other students and instructors in the group for getting things right. The answers were varied in terms of techniques to try the next time up, but one thing was abundantly clear--I was not alone.

I was eager to try some of these new techniques on my next lesson. Alas, wind gusts to 25 knots grounded us that day, so my anticipation would have to wait another week.

The day of my next lesson dawned equally cold. Because the lesson was at 9 am and we were the first to fly the plane, we had to preheat the engine with a hot air blower. This warms the engine to get the oil flowing faster. By the time I got onto the ramp to get the plane prepped, there were a dozen or so other folks warming up their engines, so I had to wait my turn for the heaters. I finally got my plane warming up, and I watched as one by one, the others left the ramp for the clear blue skies. 

Alas, because I was the last horse out of the barn, that meant that the pattern at Centennial was full, so no touch-and-goes for me here today. No problem. We'll fly east and head to Colorado Space Port. Yeah we weren't the first one with that idea either, and Spaceport nixed us for the day as well. So no touch-and-goes for today, despite that being pretty much the sole point of what we wanted to do. We opted instead to head south to the practice area to work on slow flight, since that's pretty much what pattern flying is. It turned out to be a good exercise. I spent pretty much the entire time working to maintain a given airspeed and maneuver around, climbing and descending without changing the airspeed too much. After a bit of that, we decided to head back to Centennial on the off chance the pattern had opened up and we could do touch-and-goes there. No such luck. They vectored us in direct to the east/west runway for a full stop. 

So, here was my one chance at working a landing today. It was a straight-in approach to runway 28. Straight-in approaches are nice in that you have the runway in sight for pretty much the entire time you're landing. This makes it easy to make sure you're pointed the right direction. The downside is that in a typical pattern approach, there are mental targets for altitude and airspeed on each leg of the pattern. Your downwind leg, you start by dropping your engine to a low RPM and extend flaps to start slowing you down. You begin your descent, make your turn to the base leg of the pattern, meeting your airspeed and altitude targets for that leg, which for the Cessna is 75 knots and 500' above the ground. From there, you make your turn to final, extend more flaps, slow to 65 knots, and land the plane. 

On a straight-in approach, your benchmarks for airspeed and altitude don't change, but you do it all while flying the same heading. This was only the second or third time I've flown the approach to 28, so I didn't have a good sense on visual landmarks to gauge distance from the field. For instance, when I'm landing on 17, I know when I pass over Arapahoe Road, I better be at no more than 500' above the ground and 75 knots or slower with flaps being extended to slow me down to 65. If I'm landing from the south on 35, Lincoln Avenue is my landmark for that. Nope, no such mental landmarks on 28 for me today. (I will be looking at the map before my next lesson.) The end result, my speed was okay-ish, but I was way too high. My instructor put us into a forward slip to bleed altitude and get us back on a proper glide slope, then handed the controls back to me for the final approach. With a stable approach re-established, I worked through some of the mental reminders I had read from my Facebook group for that final transition onto the ground. Easy, but firm on pulling the yoke back. Wait for the runway to get wider quicker in your periphery, transition your eyes from the aiming point to further down the runway and aim your nose there instead. And I managed to pull it off. My second "that was all you" landing. And it wasn't even that rough, not like the seismometer-rattling hits of the last time. I was really bummed that I wasn't going to have a chance for a second landing this lesson, but at least I was walking away from the lesson with a feeling that I was able to land the plane because of conscious actions I was making with the controls. I felt in control of things. Perhaps not confidently in control, but it was a landing where I felt I was flying the plane, as opposed to it flying me. 

I was feeling pretty good about things after this lesson, and my instructor shared my sentiment about how things went. However, he's also a stickler for details. And he has a way of catching and correcting bad habits in a way you don't easily forget. He spends a lot of time watching me fly; counting seconds between when he notices something happening and when I notice it, or watching my eyes and my head to note where I'm looking or not looking. He's very observant of mannerisms and things which affect how I fly; things I don't necessarily think about as having much of an impact. It's actually quite fascinating to me the things he picks up on. I don't know if they teach that in CFI school, but when he says "this is what I've noticed," it's rarely something blatantly obvious, but small things that have big impacts. Correcting them pays dividends. During today's debriefing, he says "I'm going to send you a picture I took while you were landing." Okay, I think to myself. He's taken some cool scenery pics while I've been flying, because--let's face it--I'm learning in a pretty scenic place. Or maybe he got a cool shot of me looking intent while landing or something.

 

He continues, "I want you to tell me what's wrong with it."  That wasn't what I wanted to hear. Oh, s***. What'd I do now?  I look at the photo. My hand's in the proper place on the yoke (which he taught me by slapping my wrist like my old piano teacher used to). I had the weather written down, my right hand was on the throttle, my fly was zipped. He stumped me. "Zoom in," he says. "Look at your checklist." 

Yep, that's my pre-takeoff checklist. He took that photo as I was on short final. That little piece of laminated paper we're supposed to refer to during various stages of flight was still clipped to my kneeboard, undisturbed from before we took off--a clear sign I hadn't referred to it in a good long while. Checklists exist for a reason. They're there so we have a written description of what needs to be done at various stages of flight. It might be something as simple as calling out your engine RPM and airspeed when cruising in straight and level flight, or making sure your fuel tank selector is still set to "both" and that your seatbelts are still fastened. Did I run my checklists? The proof was right there. No denying I had not. It wasn't that I hadn't thought about those things, but I didn't run the checklist which serves as a reminder to think about all of "those things" so that nothing gets missed. 

So, yep, another bad habit I need to break. And hopefully one I break before he resorts to slapping me topside the head with it mid-flight. Though I wouldn't put it past him, nor would I remotely blame him. 

Lesson 28 - The Simulator

 My instructor told me early on in this process that he didn't really think simulators were all that valuable as a teaching tool for private pilots. For more advanced training, definitely, but for the basics of flight, he felt those lessons were best taught in the air. Alas, my scheduled plane got grounded for maintenance, and the school bumped me to the simulator for the day. At this stage in the game, we're focusing very hard on me learning how to land the plane. Last time was rough, but we're getting there. This lesson would focus on procedures. Making the radio calls, calling out the specific steps in the process, and just getting a firm handle on the flow and process. And toss in an emergency or three to see how I deal with that.

Let me start by saying it's a simulator, and despite it being a pretty darned expensive piece of technology, it's not the same as flying the real thing. There's a near complete difference in feel. The controls mimic the real ones, but the tactile feedback is different. The rudder pedals don't move cables and springs, they move potentiometers. And that took some getting used to. Trying to just steer the plane with the rudder pedals brought me back to my first time ever trying to taxi the real thing--I was all over the place, with no real tactile feel for when I was centered. "In the air," the response was much closer to what I've experienced in the plane. The throttle and yoke controls combined to give a pretty good simulation of what really happens. 

Despite the differences in control, I thought the lesson was very productive. Not necessarily where I was hoping it would be (timing the flare at landing, for example) but we worked through some other things that until we could just pause "mid flight" and discuss what was happening, hadn't quite clicked. Landing is all about proper application of pitch and power, but that also applies to cruising speeds and correcting errant elevation changes, etc. These are things I never thought I was necessarily struggling with, but in hindsight wasn't doing correctly, either. (If you want to lose elevation, point the nose down. Don't just rely on a reduction in power.) 

Other benefits included emergency procedures. A few times in the process, my instructor all of a sudden threw a cloud right in front of me so all I had to go by was my instruments. A bit unnerving at first, but once I had my bearings straight, it was easy to keep things under control. That will undoubtedly help when it comes to learning instrument flying down the road. My engine "died" on approach, and my only goof there was continuing to fly the pattern as opposed to immediately turning to the runway. I landed just short and to the right of the runway, but I did land safely. And I caught the inoperative airspeed indicator on take-off, and successfully aborted the take-off. Taxiing back to the end of the runway was a disaster (rudder pedals) but overall, I thought my emergency procedure work went fairly well.

As far as it being a good tool to teach landings? Not so much. I could fly the patterns and stay lined up with the runway easy enough, but the response to changes in pitch and power weren't as predictable as they are in the airplane, and without the 3D depth, it's very hard to judge where you are in relationship to the ground to know when to start your roundout to land. I had a few go-arounds, and I was able to set the plane down on the runway in all the other cases, but really hard to say how well I did it. There's no "you just crushed your nose wheel" error message that comes up. 

I think there's a reason the FAA only allows 2.5 hours of simulator time to count towards your requisite hours for PPL. It's not the best tool for the job. To borrow a line, "ain't nothing like the real thing, baby." 

Lesson 27 - That was a bit rough...

I try to find the good in every lesson I take, so not to dwell on the negative or the frustrating. Flying is understandably a very hard skill to learn, and I'm used to days when things don't go so great. Finding the good keeps me going.

Today's good - I didn't break anything on the airplane.

Okay, that may be a bit harsh, but any thoughts I may have had after my last outing that that landings might start to "click" with me shattered on my first attempt today in a hard thud as I pulled power to idle and the plane slammed onto the runway. 

"That was a bit rough." 

Fortunately the landing gear on a Cessna 172 is quite resilient. Apparently they're used to abuse by new students. 

Truth be told, I'm not surprised today went as it did. On my last outing, I was thrilled that I was able to finally land the plane without my instructor helping on the controls. It proved that I could do it and was quite a confidence booster. What I couldn't do was really explain how I was able to do it. I just kinda did. It wasn't accidental that I was able to do it, but it wasn't the result of any repeatable skill, either. Today's lesson was to hone in on that, to make that "blind squirrel finding a nut" landing from last time something I could repeat consistently. To do that, you've got to make mistakes, analyze what you did wrong, and figure out how to correct it. Suffice to say we didn't get to the "figure out how to correct it" phase, but boy did I have my share of mistakes from which I can build a long list of what doesn't work. 

There are two things that are messing me up at the moment. First, there's the notion that you don't want to do sudden control movements in the plane when you're flying. It just doesn't work. Make small changes and be patient enough to let the plane catch up with you. I've done that with increasing success in the pattern, but when it comes to that final round-out and transition to landing, I'm still not as smooth as I need to be, and I'm not giving the plane time to respond to my control adjustments.

There's a reason I think this part is proving particularly difficult. Put quite simply, it's self-preservation. When you're landing, your nose is pointed towards the ground. You spend a lot of time lining up the landing looking down at the ground as it's approaching. When you get down to that last 10 - 20 feet, you realize how bloody fast that ground is approaching, and your nose is still pointed towards it. When you're driving and there's an object in front of you, your instinct is to sharply turn the wheel to avoid it. It's a reflex. Your body knows it doesn't want to hit something, so it acts to get you away from it. When the ground is approaching like it does when you're landing, your body instinctively wants to pull back sharply on the yoke to get the nose going higher so you don't hit the ground. That's instinct. It is, however, counterproductive to landing. You want the plane on the ground, and pulling the yoke back that sharply causes you to gain a bit of elevation, but also stall. When that happens, you drop like a rock. When this happens 5' above the runway, you slam onto it instead of gently gliding down. 

The trick (at least as my instructor explained it to me) is to slowly apply a bit of back pressure to gently raise the nose just enough so the nose wheel is higher than the main wheels. "Gently" is the key. Let the plane respond to the controls. You'll have the advantage of ground effect giving you a bit of extra lift already, so your descent will be slowed once you get to around 10 - 20' above the runway. When that happens, the point you were aiming towards on the runway will actually pass beneath the plane, and you raise your eyes to look down the runway as you apply back pressure to change the pitch of the plane. 

So that's what I've been working through in my mind all this week--how to be a bit more proactive and controlled in that last phase of landing. If I can do that, then I know I can train my mind not to freak out that the ground is getting closer and closer. It's just going to take time and repetition.

Adding to my grumbling about this lesson, I totally brain-farted on one of my go-arounds. Throttle needs to go to FULL. For some stupid reason I only pushed it in about 2/3 and started to decrease flaps. It wasn't pretty. I didn't lose any (much) altitude and we were not in danger, but--geeze--throttle to FULL!!! Then get the nose to horizon, reduce flaps one notch, let airspeed build, establish positive rate of climb, then retract flaps. I know this, but it needs to be more automatic. 

On the plus side (See, I told you I always look for a positive!) my altitude and airspeed control on climb-out is getting a lot smoother. If I got to pattern altitude on my crosswind-to-downwind turn, I was able to level off mid-turn. Also, my use of the trim is getting smoother. I'm also getting to be a better judge of how high I am off the ground at various points in the pattern, so I can make quicker, more even adjustments to that. It's sight-picture reinforcement. The more I do it, the more I get used to the visuals. 

Lesson 26 - "That was all you"

 

After my last lesson and my somewhat dismal attempts at landing with a 7 knot crosswind, my instructor and I agreed that what I really needed was a good calm day with clear skies to just stay in the pattern and bang out 8 - 10 landings. That would, hopefully, give me a good sense of the basics needed to confidently land the plane. The weather report for the day of my next lesson had winds gusting out of the west at 25 knots. That clearly wasn't "calm," so we scrubbed for the day and waited for the next lesson.

Thursday was by all measures ideal. Clear skies, cool temperatures, and most importantly to the task at hand, no wind! No excuses. I was going to get this. By now, it had been another three weeks since my last lesson, but the cobwebs are getting fewer, so I don't worry so much about that as I did earlier on in the process. Since my landing skills last time were anything but sharp, there wasn't much for me to "forget" between lessons anyway. I got to the field, prepped the plane, and fortunately traffic was light enough to where they let us do touch-and-goes there. I don't mind flying out to Colorado Spaceport, mind you, but there are more landmarks at Centennial that I can use to gauge my position in the pattern, and it saves me time getting out there which means I can do more landings. While I've written in the past about liking that time flying to the practice areas or the Spaceport to get my mind together, today was different. I was ready to hit the ground running. I was really champing at the bit.

I spent the time since my last lesson watching many YouTube videos on how to land a plane. I knew the theory. I dissected my performance in my previous lessons with and without crosswinds to figure out weaknesses in the process. I had a game plan in place. The first part of the plan was to form a good sight picture of what the runway needs to look like on a proper glide slope. One of the things I picked up from watching the videos was that what I had in my mind as a proper glide slope was really too low. The "ideal" glide slope is 3 degrees from horizontal. This does not sound like very much, and when you look at it on a protractor, it's really not. However, when you see that three degrees from the air looking down at the ground, it's a different story. It looks visually a lot steeper, so it's easy to think you're too high when you're really not. So getting that sight picture burned into my mind was the first step to success. 

The second part of my game plan was to get a better handle on maintaining that proper glide slope. We had done slow flight training on a good number of my previous lessons. This is where you put the plane into a landing configuration with flaps fully extended, nose pitched up to keep your airspeed constant, and apply throttle to keep you from losing altitude. (You're not gonna gain altitude very easily if at all in this configuration, certainly not in a trainer.) Landing is really the same kind of thing. Flaps fully extended, nose pitched to a set airspeed, but rather than use the throttle to keep the plane at a given altitude, you use the throttle to control your rate of descent. I felt in my previous lessons I had a pretty good handle on maintaining airspeed, but my altitude control was poor. I was too high, then too low, then too high. The profile looked like a set of stairs rather than a smooth slide. I figured the reason for this was that my adjustments to the throttle were too large. I wanted to try using smaller changes and being patient enough to let the plane react. 

The third part of my game plan would require cooperation from Mother Nature in the form of minimal crosswind. I needed to get a good feel for rudder and aileron control for keeping the plane lined up with the centerline of the runway. Once I get comfortable with doing that with limited crosswind, then adapting it for higher crosswind components become easier to manage. But you need that basic foundation first. Today's lack of winds would hopefully give that to me.

We took off and immediately got to work. First attempt wasn't pretty, but I was trying to build that sight picture. The second time around, my instructor flew it to give me a sense of the sight picture and control. Third time went smoother. So it went for a few more landings. I got more and more comfortable with the sight picture of what the runway should look like, and my plan for making much smaller adjustments to pitch and power seemed to play very well. I was able to control both airspeed and elevation much better. Centerline alignment was pretty good as well, though I wasn't quite as "straight in" on final as I thought I should be. I felt like I was approaching the runway a little bit from the side. Truth be told, we have parallel runways on this field, so sliding in a little bit from the outside isn't a bad thing. ATC at Centennial is very good about staggering traffic on the runways so you're not landing right alongside another plane on the parallel, but I'd still much rather stay out of the space between the runways. 

The hardest part of the process for me today was the transition over the runway. After a few more touch-and-goes, my instructor took the controls and had me just watch out the window while he landed so I could get a sense of when in the process to begin pulling the nose up. This is totally a finesse thing. If you do it too early, you risk ballooning up and getting farther off the ground. If you do it too late, you land on your nose wheel. (Really not good.) In a perfect landing, you rotate the plane's nose up just enough to keep the nose wheel off the ground, bleed off enough airspeed so the wings stall right as the main wheels touch the ground. "Perfect" is hard to get, but we settle for "good enough" where the wings stall with the main wheels just a few inches to a foot above the runway and the plane settles down more-or-less gently on the wheels. 

I was struggling with the timing on this pretty much on every landing. In fairness, I've been struggling with that on every landing since I started this process, but the other pieces of the puzzle were so out-of-whack that this part being out-of-whack seemed far down on the list of concerns. On our tenth landing, I set the plane down on the ground, my instructor turned to me and said "That was all you. Good job!" My first landing without any physical control input from my instructor! Perhaps not a major milestone in the process, but mentally for me a significant hurdle cleared. We made one more landing, again with my instructor leaving me to man the controls without his help. This one wasn't quite as smooth, but it was still all me. I don't know that I'd say things have "clicked" for me on landings because there's a degree of "am I doing this right?" especially with the flare. Still, my confidence is boosted quite a bit. I'll take that.

One other takeaway from the day; I'm a lot more comfortable with adjustments to the trim wheel. That's always been a weak spot for me, and I know there have been a good number of lessons where I never touched the wheel. Making 11 landings meant there were 11 climb-outs as well, so I had a good degree of repetition there to finally get a sense of when and how much to adjust the trim for climb-out and descent. That made a lot of difference in the smoothness of things as well. I could probably use a bit more nose-down trim in my descents, but then at the same time, that means it takes more back pressure on the yoke to make the flare. Since my tendency is to not pull back quite enough on that soon enough, needing more back pressure might lead to complications. 

One other area of minor concern that I need to work on, my crosswind to downwind turn and adjusting to level flight when I reach pattern altitude. I found that if I was climbing throughout the upwind-crosswind-downwind legs, I was good on both airspeed and altitude control. There were a few times when ATC had us extend our upwind leg to allow another plane into the pattern. As a result, I reached pattern altitude somewhere in the crosswind-to-downwind turn. On more than a few occasions, the plane got ahead of me there as I was juggling dialing the power back, leveling off, and completing the turn. I think in the future the plan will be to not worry about the power setting until I'm settled into the downwind leg. Just lower the nose to level off, complete the turn, and let the airspeed do whatever it needs to do. You can get faster here. That's what happens when you stop climbing without adjusting power. You want that to happen. Then you can configure for cruise and dial your engine speed to where you need it. 

All in all, this was one of the better days in the air that I've had in this process. I was relaxed, my instructor was relaxed. Nothing was "perfect" on the day, but it was definitely a day of demonstrable progress. The plan is for the next few lessons to focus pretty much singularly on getting landings down. I've got to get that flare timed better, and do it just enough to get the nose wheel higher than the main wheels, but not too much to balloon up again. It'll come. It's a visual thing, and like the sight picture of what the runway looks like on a proper glide slope, it's just something I'm going to have to burn into my mind through repetition.

Lesson 25 - Strengths and Weaknesses

 

Scheduling conflicts and vacations meant that it had been three weeks since the last time I was up in the air. At 30+ hours into my training, I've developed enough muscle memory and routine to where I don't worry about forgetting every last little thing if I don't repeat doing it often enough. This is a good thing since once I do finally get my license, there will very likely be long periods of time where I do not have a chance to fly and it's good to know that even at this early stage in the game, there are aspects that are indeed much like riding a bicycle. I'm still quite a ways off from where I'd consider myself polished, but I'm no longer a menace to everything in the air. 

The weather report showed some low-altitude turbulence, which was confirmed by one of the other instructors telling us it was bumpy up to about 7,500', then it smoothed out nicely. (Note that our field elevation is 5,885'.) Bumpy skies below 7,500' aren't perhaps the best conditions to work solely on take-offs and landings, so we opted to head to the southeast practice area for some ground reference work, stalls, and emergency procedures. Once we ran through those, we'd head back to the airport and see if they would be agreeable to let us do some touch-and-goes. That "mixed bag" approach to this lesson gave me a chance to sit back afterwards and reflect on where I am in the process and places I need to maintain focus. Note that what I'm calling a "strength" in no way implies mastery of the skill, just that it's something that seems to have found a firm nest in my mind to where I don't worry about losing the skill from lesson to lesson. 

Strength: Radio communications. Despite my instructor calling me "mean" for boldly staking my claim to the most scenic practice box in the practice area without first asking if anyone was actually already in there (they were. My bad.) my radio communications are going smoothly. (And I politely flew to an unoccupied practice box instead.) I'm not getting any more tongue-tied than I do in normal conversation (which is why professionally I'm behind the camera) and I'm getting much quicker at picking up instructions, repeating them, and (most importantly) remembering them after I repeat them. I do need to work on being a bit more informative and precise in terms of position, and need to work on getting my ducks in a row sooner so when I contact ATC when returning to the airport I have more time and distance to adjust to their instructions, but overall I'm happy with how communications are going. I read about a lot of students struggling with radio communications, so I'm glad to not suffer from that deficiency. 

Strength: Pilotage. Perhaps it's because I'm something of a map geek, or I just drive around a lot and know what's where, but I'm pretty good about looking out the window, knowing where I am, and having a fairly good general idea of where I need to point the nose of the airplane to get where I want to go. It will be interesting to see how this goes once I start working on my cross-country stuff, especially if we head east where landmarks are much fewer and further between. I still know the roads rather well, so there's that, but if the ATC at the destination airport uses landmarks I'm unfamiliar with, it could get interesting. 

Weakness: Multitasking. We were doing S-turns and turns around a point today. I had no trouble maintaining elevation doing those maneuvers. I'm focused on the task at hand with few distractions. Now, tell me to make a 90 degree turn to the left while getting weather information, and I'll climb 500' in that turn before I have the first half of the ATIS frequency dialed in. If my attention is divided, things get shaky. I've got to get better at maintaining flight attitude out of the periphery of my vision and making quicker back-and-forth glances between outside and inside when I need to split my attention like that. I quipped that we needed a heads-up display for checklists so I wasn't constantly looking down. My instructor simply held the checklist up at window level and said "we have that already." Simple, yet elegant. On the ground, I need to be able to look left or right at things going on around me without drifting off the yellow centerline. This is definitely one of those "comes with time" skills, but it's also something I know to keep on top of.

Strength: General "getting there" flying; straight and level, controlled climbs and descents, maintaining heading, turns to new headings, etc. Granted these are probably the most basic flying skills and if I hadn't gotten a firm handle on these after 30+ hours of lessons, I should probably stay out of the sky. 

Weakness: Landing. This is probably too broad of a term since there are so many things that have to come together for a smooth landing, but in the most general sense, I ain't there yet. Granted I only just started working on landings over the past half dozen or so lessons. There are things I'm doing fairly reasonably well such as airspeed control and staying in position in the pattern, but other areas where I'm still getting by on sheer luck. My altitude control remains uneven stair steps. Too high, then I descend too much, then I need more power to get back on glide slope, and back and forth. I think like anything when it comes to flying, smaller adjustments are better than large ones, but I'm not confident enough (patient enough?) that my small changes are doing what they need to do so I make them bigger, which then starts the cycle over again. 

My biggest challenge with landing comes with the introduction of any kind of crosswind. Today, it was a 7 knot crosswind from the east. In the grand scheme of things, 7 knots is not much, and I'm getting better at compensating for it right up to the point where I'm supposed to be setting the plane on the ground. That's where things go (quite literally) sideways. I watch videos on crosswind landings. I know the theory of the control movements, but this is one area where the gap between theory and action remains fairly wide. It's just going to take repetition to get there. If I can get a couple of fairly calm days, I should get a good enough feel for things to where I can make better adjustments.

Strength: Mindset. My instructor typically will ask me after a lesson how I'm feeling. After a particularly rough lesson, it's human nature to be disappointed, and I often step out of the plane grumbling in my mind about what I screwed up. Yet my answer to his "how are you feeling" question is seldom "lousy" or similarly negative response no matter how poorly I may have done on specific tasks. Yeah, I may be frustrated, and maybe I'm mad at myself for a particularly bone-headed something-or-other. But I've learned not to let that define the lesson. Take today's landings as an example. They were abysmal. I touched down on one out of three attempts. But on the other hand, my go-around execution was rather smooth. Once we decided we were way out of bounds for a safe landing, it was full throttle, right rudder to match, nose to horizon, flaps to 20. I had struggled miserably with that my first time in the pattern. This time, it was much more natural. That's a tangible display of my skills improving, so while I remain frustrated about my landings, I'm given confidence in realizing I felt just as bad about my go-around skills not too long ago, and they've gotten better. 

Weakness: Foreflight. It's the software on my phone that I use for maps, airport info, etc. Today, my instructor asked me how I knew how far above the ground I was. I could look at the altimeter and know my altitude above sea level, but I hadn't a clue how to tell the elevation of the ground beneath me. GPS doesn't tell you that, nor are printed charts that accurate (and you would have to know where you were.) On Foreflight, you just put your finger on the screen and it will tell you the ground elevation. New skill learned. The company's web site has a bunch of tutorials on how things work. I've got to sit down and watch them. It's very powerful software, used by pilots across the spectrum. Certainly once I start doing cross-country planning, I had best be familiar with it. 

In skiing, they say if you're not falling down, you're not getting better. Learning to fly is similar. If you fly every maneuver in your lesson perfectly, if you know the answer to every question your instructor asks, you're not being pushed out of your comfort zone, not learning anything new. My instructor will not let me sit in my comfort zone very long at all. He's always layering new things in the lessons for me to work on. This means that there's always going to be stuff within the lesson that I just flat out mess up. As a student, you can't dwell on that. You have to see one lesson's weakness as the next lesson's challenge. If your instructor asks a question you don't know the answer to, realize that's precisely why your instructor asked you that question. Don't be afraid to say "I don't know." They're asking you questions to get your mind ready to absorb new information. Learn it this time, practice it next time. 

I wrote early on in this process that there's nothing natural about flying. But it's important for students to keep one important thing in mind. You're flying! That in and of itself is something that few people get to do. Enjoy it no matter how frustrating it might get. Take 30 seconds in every lesson to just look out the window and take in what you're experiencing. That's why you're doing this. Keeping track of those little victories along the way--large and small--will keep the wind under your wings.

Lesson 24 - Make a List and Check it Twice

 

The day's lesson focused on landings, because that's operationally what I need to work on. Truth be told I'm writing this two weeks after the lesson due to having to travel for work and then family vacation, so I don't recall the specifics of each landing. I'm feeling better about things each time I go up, I'm getting a better feel for controlling the airplane on approach, and am working on engraining the sight picture of what the runway should look like on approach and making the call to go around when things aren't where they should be. 

That's not what I want to dwell on this time, though. Today, I want to talk about checklists and the tasks we do in the plane that have nothing to do with moving the controls, because that was the weakest part of my performance today. As a student, you might not necessarily think about those as being important--especially during the more "mundane" parts of the flight, but the whole idea of flying is to make sure you stay ahead of the airplane. When it comes to physically maneuvering the plane, it means making sure you anticipate what the plane is going to do when you make this or that control input. When it comes to mentally flying the airplane, it means making sure you're thinking ahead to where you're going to be next. 

There are two ways we can keep track of the more mental aspects of flying--checklists and flows. Both are designed to keep us on task in terms of not forgetting details. Checklists are good for those times in flying where you have time to refer to a printed list of steps to take. Flows are important for those times when you don't have that ability. For example, your preflight inspection is a checklist-friendly task. While many of us (myself included) have developed that into more of a flow which we then reinforce by checking it against the checklist to make sure we got everything, we do go down and check the boxes of tasks. The run-up (for me at least) is very much a by-the-checklist list of tasks which I do in order every time. Step 1, step 2, step 3... and so on. 

Once you're done with run-up and you start moving towards taking off, the checklist gets put away. It's a distraction at that point because there's 8,000 other tasks you need to be doing in order to get the plane in the air. You're communicating with ATC or other pilots if you're at a non-towered airport. You're watching around you for other planes taxiing, traffic or wildlife which may get in your way, and following the taxiway signs to get you where you need to be. That's when having a flow is key; a mental way of working through steps necessary to get the plane in the air. "Lights, camera, action." Make sure you have whatever lights you need turned on (beacon, strobe, landing lights, nav lights, etc.), make sure your transponder is set, and get ready to go. That's a flow thing. You run that checklist mentally as you're taxiing and lining up on the runway. You confirm your runway before you advance your throttle to take off. You're not reading things at that point, you're just doing. Your verbal call-outs are your mental checking of the boxes on the mental list. 

Once you hit the throttle and start down the runway, you're mentally going through the flow of checking your gauges (airspeed in particular) to make sure they're working. "Gauges alive" is a common verbal confirmation to yourself that your airspeed indicator is working. (If it's not, abort the take-off.) You're checking the other gauges to make sure they're in the green. You're watching your airspeed needle. You don't have to read a checklist to say "rotate at 55 knots," you know mentally that's when you rotate. Another verbal confirmation at 55 knots just reinforces to you that it's time to pull back on the yoke and get airborne. And while the checklist tells you your V speeds for climb out, you don't read the checklist, you just mentally know what your airspeed needs to be and you get there. Again, verbal call-outs help that mental reinforcement. Piloting an airplane is one time where it's not only okay to talk to yourself, but it's a "best practice." As a pilot it's just good reinforcement. As a student with an instructor sitting next to you, it's reassurance to them that you know what you're doing. And they kind of like to have that reassurance. 

Once you're established in your climb-out, you can pull out the checklist, though truthfully it's not very long. If you're climbing in a typical GA training aircraft, your throttle will be full open and your airspeed will be somewhere around Vy, plus or minus a few knots. For the comfort of your CFI, a verbal confirmation of this is well in order. Once you reach cruising altitude, you can run a similar check as you pull power back to cruise power. Again--it's a checklist, but not terribly long. But since at this point you have time to pull out the checklist, it's a good idea just to do the visual reinforcement in addition to the verbal one. 

Once you run this checklist, you're not done. Yeah, you're cruising, but where are you headed? What do you need to do in order to be prepared once you get there? Now I have to admit that as a deadline-oriented journalist, this kind of planning ahead is a bit foreign to me. If I'm not going to be at the practice area or other airport for 10 minutes, my mind has a bit of trouble wrapping itself around the notion of getting the radios set up now. It makes sense to do so. Once you're clear of the airspace of the departure airport, you don't need to talk to them anymore. You need to talk to those who are where you are going. It behooves you to set yourself up to listen to them instead as soon as practical. So once you've run your cruise checklist, get yourself set up for where you're going. 

"WRBC." Weather, Radios, Briefing, Checklists." Get the weather. It's that simple. Tune into the ATIS/AWOS for the airport you're flying to. Know what you're getting into sooner rather than later. This lets you plan your arrival better as well. If you know the weather, you can make an educated guess as to which runway you'll be landing on. Knowing that lets you plan your arrival route to enter the pattern appropriately. 

"Radios," means once you have your weather, tune your radio to the tower or CTAF frequency for where you're flying. Again--why wouldn't you want to hear other traffic where you're going as soon as possible? It really does just make sense. 

"Briefing." Whether you have a passenger, CFI who wants to make sure you know what you're doing, or just by yourself, talk about what your plan is. What are you expecting in terms of runways? What's the wind doing? How do you anticipate entering the pattern? You may be wrong--if it's a controlled airport, ATC may have you do something completely different, but you have at least given some thought to how you're going to proceed, and have let your passengers know what you're planning on doing. If it's an airport with multiple runways, your briefing will be your way of telling yourself and your passengers whether or not you're comfortable taking one runway versus another if ATC at that airport gives you the option. 

"Checklist." Yep--run that cruise checklist again. Check your fuel, gauges, etc. And now that you know you're in good shape, you know where you are, and you have an idea of how you're going to proceed, you can contact ATC at the airport to get better instructions from them. 

With ATC instructions on where you're going to land, or following traffic patterns at an untoward airport, you can now begin your descent, which--yep--another checklist. You have time, so use the checklist here.

Once you're in the pattern to land, you're back to flows. There's too much going on to worry about checklists. Call-outs here are important as you get to each milestone. "Below 110, flaps 10." "Below 85, flaps 20." Again--good reminders for you, good reassurance for your CFI. Airspeed call-outs are also a good idea. It's mental reinforcement of the steps you need to take to get the plane safely on the ground. 

Once on the ground and off the runway, you can pull out the checklist again run those items. Yeah, the checklists are short and can easily be memorized, but reinforcing with the checklist is always a good idea.

As the saying goes, "Aviate, Navigate, Communicate." As pilots, even if we're the only ones in the plane, that last aspect is crucial. Whether we have people in the plane with us or not, we have to make a habit of explaining what we're going to be doing. If we can explain it, we can better execute it. And if you have a CFI (or DPE) in the right seat, they're going to need to know that you know what you're doing.

Lesson 23 - Learn your ABCs

 

Today was a review day. We hadn't focused on basic maneuvers (slow flight, stalls, turns, etc.) in a while, and my instructor likes to make sure I keep those skills sharp. Despite the blissfully calm winds and cloudless skies, ATC wasn't letting anyone do touch-and-goes at the airport today, so pattern work would have to wait anyway. My instructor and I reviewed slow flight and stall procedures in our pre-flight briefing, and I mentioned wanting to work on using ailerons and opposite rudder to align the plane with the runway as an exercise so I could get a better feel for that. Nothing extravagant, but certainly a good chance to continue to sharpen skills. As the lesson unfolded, there would be one skill I completely blanked on, and it's a skill you most decidedly want to be instinctive. 

Pre-flight inspection, run-up, etc., went pretty much by the numbers. I don't ever want to think that aspect is ever "routine," because familiarity breeds contempt, and I don't ever want to miss steps in any part of that process. That's why we have checklists against which to compare things. But I figured today was going to be a good day when I actually got the engine to start on the first try! (Seriously, that's happened like three times.) Set radios, get clearance, taxi to 17L, full throttle, pull back on the yoke, and get the bird in the air. Today's take-off was measures better than my last one. My entire attitude today was different from my last outing, and my ability to fly reflected that. 

I flew us to the practice area and set us up for some slow-flight exercises. From straight-and-level, reduce power to around 1700RPM, once the speed is below 110 knots (which is pretty much right away since cruising speed is around 95 knots), drop 10 degrees of flaps. Below 85 knots, drop to 20 degrees, then below 75 knots, drop to 30 degrees of flaps. In an ideal world, you do this without losing any altitude. That didn't happen my first time, I'm rather embarrassed to say I dropped 600' of altitude in my first try. Ugh! Climb back up and try again. Second try was oh, so much better. Got into slow flight, made left turns, right turns, even some controlled descents and tried to climb, though with 30 degrees of flaps in 180hp plane, you're not gonna climb much if at all. But that, too, was part of the lesson. 

Stalls were next, which is similar to slow flight. I was slow to adapt to my slowing airspeed and calling out flap applications as airspeed decreased, so I got flying really slow at a few points in time. It's really almost immediate from when you apply 10 degrees of flaps to when you follow up with 20, then 30 degrees as your airspeed slows that quickly in this exercise. I was hesitant and things didn't go as smoothly as I hoped. Still, recovery was pretty solid, so all in all, nothing to be too worried about. We'll keep practicing it. We then worked on rudder and aileron control to keep the plane aligned with the runway or other points. This went well, giving me a good feel for how the plane responds to control inputs for getting (and staying) aligned with runways.

Leaving the practice area, my instructor pulls the throttle to idle and says "your engine just died. What next?" Suffice to say had this been a real emergency, I'd probably not be here to write this. My brain completely froze and I forgot what to do. I knew scanning for a place to land and running checklists were in there somewhere, but I was losing altitude at 95 knots while I was trying to process what I was supposed to do. Um, oh, yeah... Best glide speed. I knew that was in there somewhere...

This is one of those skills that a pilot needs to learn. Period. Your life literally depends on it. That's not hyperbole. Your engine quits, you need to know how to safely land. It needs to be automatic. This is where your ABCs come in. (Aviators love acronyms, so it's fitting that this most basic one is for arguably the most important task.) A = Airspeed. Step one is to get to your best glide speed. Just do it. Pitch the nose up until you're at 68 knots (in the Cessna). B = Best place to land. As you're pitching for 68 knots, look out your left window (since you're sitting on the left) for a suitable place to safely land the plane. An open field, long stretch of empty gravel road (thankfully plentiful in rural Colorado) or similar flat place. If there's not one to your left, look ahead, then look right. Then run your checklists to figure out what may have caused your engine to fail. "Door to floor." The ignition switch is first, since it's closest to the door. Make sure it's on. Then progress to the right across the bottom edge of the controls. Make sure your master switch didn't get bumped. Turn on your fuel pump. Make sure your throttle and mixture are in all the way. Look down the center console to see if the fuel selector valve and shut-off valve are where they need to be. All of these steps (A, B, and C) need to happen very quickly, like within 30 seconds or less. In fact, once you've identified your landing spot, start flying the plane to it while running your checklists. If your landing spot is beside you, the longer you wait to turn towards it, the further behind you it gets and you may not make it back there. 

Once you've done all that, you can then look to see if you can get the engine started again, then contact the tower to let them know you're declaring an emergency. Set your squawk to 7700 (squawk is what ATC uses to identify you) to let them know you're in an emergency. If the engine won't start, just concentrate on setting the plane down safely at that point. Planes want to fly, even without power. A dead engine is certainly cause for concern and concentration, but not panic. At that point, your checklist runs "floor to door." If the engine won't start, shut off the fuel, pull the mixture to idle cutoff, turn off the electronics, kill the ignition, and unlatch the door. It won't open because you're flying at 68 knots and the wind will keep it closed, but unlatching greatly reduces the chances of it getting jammed when you land. If you've chosen your landing spot well, you should be able to glide to it. Landing speed on the Cessna is 65 knots, so if you're pitched for 68 knots, then (theoretically) landing with no engine will be similar to landing with the engine at idle anyway. You basically fly a power-less plane every time you touch down. You just have the advantage of power leading up to the point when you're finally over the runway. 

We talk about what to do in the event of an engine failure in our run-up briefing. We talk about it because it's that crucial. But talking about it is only part of the equation. Actually doing it has to be as routine as taking about it in your run-up briefing. Maybe my emergency procedure briefing needs to be improved to describe the specific steps I'm going to take, not just the generic "land the plane." How are you going to land the plane? Remember your ABCs. 

With that, we started back to the airport. Again ATC wasn't allowing touch-and-goes, so we just requested a full-stop landing. I flew the approach and landing, feeling rather comfortable every step of the way. I took us from 8800' down to 6800' (pattern altitude) as we flew towards the airport. Once in the pattern and the traffic in front of us had passed off my right wing, reduce power to 1700RPM and since I was already below 110 knots, drop 10 degrees of flaps. I continued my descent as we turned to the base leg, then turned onto the final leg, dropping 20 degrees of flaps and lining up with the runway. Since the winds were calm, there wasn't much pushing me left or right of the runway, so I could concentrate more on airspeed and altitude control on the landing. I flared a little to early, so I set us down on the runway with a bit of a "thud." Gotta work on that. It's just something you have to get used to. The tendency is to see the ground approaching and want to pull back. It's human nature. You're in a plane and the ground is approaching quickly. It's instinct, like putting your foot to the floor of a car when the person driving doesn't slow down as soon as you would. In a plane, if you pull back too quickly, then you float and land hard. If you do it too late, you land on the nose gear. It's just feel and timing. And that takes getting used to.

Lesson 22 - Pick Any Two

With the Wings over the Rockies Museum's 2nd exhibit space located across the ramp from where we tie down at Centennial, you never know what you're going to see sitting out there...

 There are three critical things to be in control of during a landing. 1) Airspeed, 2) Altitude, 3) Alignment. When it came to my landings today, it seemed like it was "pick any two." Either I was in control of airspeed and altitude, but not lined up with the centerline, or I was lined up with centerline, controlling my altitude, but blowing through at 100 knots, or on centerline, at a good airspeed, but 1000' above the friggin' runway. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back a bit. First, I wasn't expecting to fly today. My original plane had been grounded for maintenance early last week, so the school bumped me to the simulator. My instructor isn't a big fan of the sim for early pilot training, so he kept an eye out in case a plane became available last minute. One did, so he booked that one instead. That reservation didn't last long as that plane  also got sidelined for maintenance. So, no plane, no fly. My instructor said he'd keep his eyes open in case something came available last minute, but wasn't holding his breath. I pretty much wrote the lesson off, and didn't do any kind of mental pre-work that I usually do (chair fly, etc.) 

My phone chimes at 6:30 in the morning with a text message, "got a plane, meet me at 11." Okay, then. I guess I am flying today. There was part of me which thought "I'm not mentally prepared for this, I should scrub." But I didn't. Got the kids to school, got myself ready, and headed to the airport. Arrived, chatted about the flight and a few questions about my medical exam which I'm working on getting everything prepped for, and we headed to the plane. Preflight went well, taxi, run-up, etc., all went smoothly. Still, in retrospect, I think my mind was still only 90% focused. Something was distracting me. Cleared for 35R initially, then ATC moved me over to 35L and had me switch to the secondary tower frequency. No problem. Cross 35R, then position to take off on 35L. Cleared, apply throttle, and pull back. That was the first real indication that today was going to be a bit rougher than usual. My climb out was not clean, to the point where my instructor turned to me and said "are you sure you've done this before?" Truth be told, I can't really tell you what was going through my mind. It was just brain fog; distraction. 

Because we took off on 35L, we would be flying a left pattern. All my previous landing exercises have been right pattern. This was going to be new. I liked the idea since in theory I'm on the left side of the plane, so I'd be able to see better, as opposed to having to look across my instructor in the right turns. This was going to be a lot easier. For some reason, I totally blanked the landmark for the downwind leg. I'm flying the same pattern as I do for 17R, just the opposite direction. The landmarks are the same. But did I remember that? Nooo. I turned my crosswind leg, leveled the wings, and kept flying straight wondering to myself what the downwind landmark was. Duh, it's I-25, idiot. The big road with lots of cars that you're just about to fly over. This was not starting well. 

It turns out that my thinking that left turning patterns would be easier was a bit off the mark today, too. Why? Because my brain decided today that since I don't have to look out across my instructor to make turns, I can make them by looking out the left window at the ground below instead. Did you know that doesn't really work? (But Wal-Mart has their logo on the top of their building, so you know what it is as you're flying over.) If you're looking out the left window towards the ground, you're not watching your pitch attitude, which is kind of important when you're landing. If you pitch up too much in a left turn 500' above the ground, it very well may be the last thing you do on this earth. It's that important to keep it under control. I only made my instructor scream in horror once, but once was too much. Look. Out. The. Front. Window. I don't know how Lindbergh did it with only side windows, but I also ain't Charles Lindbergh.

Suffice to say my landings today were not smooth. We had two go-arounds out of necessity, not just because my instructor decided to call one as a drill. (Even those weren't without hiccups. Build airspeed then climb.) As I wrote above, I was concentrating on two of the three aspects of landing, and letting the third (whichever of the three it was) take a back seat, suffering the consequences as a result. It became a question of "which piece of the puzzle am I neglecting this time around?" 

The advantage (if it can be called that) of today's lesson is that I learned to recognize how the landing is affected by whichever aspect I was neglecting. Though it did take a bit for my brain to clear whatever fog it was in, eventually it cleared and I was able to start analyzing what I was doing while I was doing it. If I was concentrating on keeping centerline and altitude under control, my airspeed was all over the place, often way too high. If my airspeed was under control, I was up and down on altitude like a kid in a bouncy house, or off centerline like a drunk sailor. But that's part of putting it all together. If there's one takeaway from today's lesson, it's that for the first time, I felt comfortable in my ability to control the plane in each of the three critical aspects of landing. I know how to control pitch to control airspeed. I know how to control power to control altitude. I know how to control aileron and rudder to stay on centerline. I made the control inputs and saw/felt the tangible changes in the plane's path. What I wasn't doing was all three at the same time. That comes with practice. And more practice, and more practice. 

Still, I wonder if today's other lesson was "if you're really not feeling it, don't go." How much risk factor did I add to the equation today because I wasn't 100% focused? My instructor took the controls more today than he has in a long time, either because he wasn't comfortable with the flight attitude or because he felt I needed a few seconds to regroup. I can't help but wonder if I was in reality too distracted to be safe. Pilot attitude and emotion is one of the preflight checklist items. (PAVE - Pilot, Aircraft, enVironment, External pressures.) Was today a case where I pushed the Pilot aspect more than I should have? 

Lesson 21 - Crosswinds

If my last lesson was a measure of how far I've come in my journey, today served as a reminder of how far I still need to go. Building upon my landings from last time, we decided to stay close to home and in the pattern today for more touch-and-goes. While my last time was in no way "expert" or even "textbook" in terms of my landings, they were at least more or less in the ballpark of passable. I felt I had an okay grasp on airspeed and where I needed to be on the various stages of landing. I had spent the past week thinking about what I had done and where I needed to improve. I replayed each landing in my head to try to burn that sight picture into my eyes of what the runway should look like on a proper glide slope. I wasn't expecting miracles this time out, but I figured I had a pretty solid foundation upon which to build. 

The weather was good. Skies were smoky but clear. Winds were low, only 5 knots out of the northwest. Despite the reported wind direction, ATC had us using runway 17, so a slight tailwind, but not much. For a moment, we thought they were going to shift the traffic to 35 before we took off, but they did not. I think they knew something we didn't, and therein lies today's hurdle. 

First, came a reminder from my instructor to be as complete in my readback to ATC as possible (if they say "follow the Columbia, taxi Alpha to 17L," make sure you read back the "follow the Columbia" part as well as taxi and runway info. ATC needs to know you know where you are in line.) Then a bit of crosswind compensation on taxi that was blowing me a bit sideways. Despite the weather report, these winds felt like they were coming out of the east, not the west. With all the hangars to the side of me, I figured it could be mechanical turbulence. Ailerons into the wind. Slow down, stop if you have to in order to get the plane under control. Then continue. None of this rattled me, but in hindsight they were little indicators that today wasn't going to go as smoothly as the last time.

Cleared for take-off, and up we go. Fly runway heading. Planes need rearview mirrors. My instructor had me look over my shoulder to make sure I was still in line with the runway on climb out. I need to learn how to turn over my shoulder without turning the yoke. I do try to remember to set the heading bug and pick a point on the horizon in line with the runway as I'm rolling down, and I make a point to check that as we're climbing, but a quick glance behind you to make sure you're still in line with the runway is a good thing. 

The first few landings went okay--on par with the last time. A little rough, a little stair-steppy on approach, and I need to remember to cut power to idle once I'm over the runway. Just take it all out. That's a mental thing I need to get used to--it's okay to glide without power, especially when you're already over the runway. I think if I remember to do that, then I won't have a tendency to float further down the runway than I did on these landings. Once on the ground, flaps up, throttle full, pull back on the yoke, and get us back in the air. 

I think I have become a bit timid on rotating lately. I don't want to stall, so I pull back just a bit and wait for physics to do its thing. When you've got 10,000' of runway, you have that luxury. I'm not always going to be flying into airfields with 10,000' runways. Pull back a bit harder, get us up off the ground, then adjust pitch for proper climb speed. But get us up off the ground first. That's important on touch-and-goes, because while you have speed coming in, you're still using a fair amount of the runway to land, so you don't have quite as much as you might think when taking off again. 

Next trip in the pattern, I noticed I was having a bit of trouble getting us lined up with the runway on final. I turned too soon, then flew to the runway about 5 - 10 degrees to the side. We touched down and went back up again. ATC had us do an extended downwind, which meant a longer approach. This time I was able to keep us a bit more in line with the runway because I didn't turn so close to it. I had a much longer time to adjust, though still wanting to float just a bit to the right. Bear in mind I'm landing on the right of two parallel runways, so I'm already a bit cautious about overshooting the approach and accidentally flying into the path of the left runway. Bad things can happen, as we saw a few months ago with a mid-air collision caused by exactly that. While I was focusing on keeping us on centerline (easier to do with the extended approach) I was a bit fast on my speed, so my instructor called for a go-around. Throttle to full, flaps reduced, and climb. Again, I was being Mr. Timid on the pull-back today so I didn't climb as fast as I should have. Rather, I skimmed the runway at about 100' for a bit before adding a bit more back pressure then removing the last 10 degrees of flaps. The danger there is that had I removed the last bit of flaps while still only 100' off the ground and not climbing, I could have lost that 100' of elevation pretty quickly with the reduced lift from retracting the flaps. But that's why "go around" training is part of our landing training as well, and why slow flight recovery figured heavily into my early lessons. That needs to be down pat. No excuses, because the ground doesn't forgive mistakes.

The next few times around, I noticed I was having the same trouble getting lined up with the runway. Always to the right of it. Was I that quick in my turn? It was starting to rattle me a bit. I'm so focused on landing and my aiming point that I've got something of tunnel vision going on to what else is around me; things like, oh, I don't know, wind socks? I glanced down at my kneeboard where I had written the weather... 320 degrees at 5 knots. Can't be the wind. According to the report, it's coming from the northwest. It's gotta be something I'm not doing properly. Yeah we were getting a few bumps here and there, but it didn't feel windy like the time a few lessons ago where we were getting bumped around like crazy. I was starting to get a bit frustrated, so my instructor took the controls for the climb-out so I could relax and gather my thoughts. 

We flew around again and on the downwind leg, my instructor asked for a wind check--a quick "at this moment" report of what the winds are doing. 110 degrees at 10 knots. Oh, crap! No wonder I was having trouble lining up with the runway. The winds had basically flipped sides! Instead of coming from the northwest, they were now coming from the east/southeast, and had picked up considerably. I was flying into a pretty much broadside 10 knot crosswind from the east. No wonder I was always to the right of the runway.

I'd love to tell you that armed with this new knowledge of what the winds were doing, I was able to compensate and keep us lined up with the centerline the next time around the pattern. Nope. "Ailerons into the wind, opposite rudder" looks simple enough on paper. I'm gonna need a lot more practice...