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.

Lesson 7 - Stage Fright?

I will never fault game show contestants for not knowing obvious answers ever again. I knew what we were going to be working on today. I went over in my mind the necessary steps. This wasn’t uncharted territory. I was ready. Then performance anxiety set in. The ability to retrieve that which I had been practicing went completely askew. But I’ll get to that in a bit.





The first takeaway of the day was the importance of density altitude. In my ground school, I learned what it was and how to calculate it. For those wondering, density altitude is what the air feels like to the airplane. We all know the air in the atmosphere gets thinner the higher you go. The air also gets thinner the warmer it gets. Airplanes have a “ceiling,” which is the maximum altitude the plane can fly. This is a function the wings, weight of the plane, and power of the engine. That ceiling is also dependent on the density of the air. When it gets hot out, the heat makes the air thinner. As a result, the plane will not perform as well as when it’s cooler out.



Today, it was hot outside—90 plus. The density altitude at the airport was 8,700 feet. That means even though the true elevation of the airfield is 5,885 feet, planes flying today would behave at take-off the same as they would behave on a “standard day” (59 degrees) at 8,700’. To keep the math simple, that’s a technical loss of about 3,000’ of elevation. The practical working ceiling of the Cessna is 12,000’ on a standard day. Losing 3,000 from that means we’ve got a practical working ceiling of only 9,000 feet. We typically maneuver between 7,500 – 8,500’, so we were pushing the upper limits of that ceiling today. When I was just crunching the numbers for ground school, I did the math and didn’t think about how it actually affects things in the air. Today at 8,500’, we were hard pressed to be able to climb faster than 300 feet per minute. If there’s a mountain at 10,000’, you’re not going to be able to get over it very easily (if at all). That’s why density altitude is important.



The second takeaway from today is that I’m getting more confident with the airplane. The preflight checklist material is getting easier. I need to come up with some kind of mnemonic device for the safety briefing. I gave myself the safety briefing in the car before leaving for the field. I got tongue-tied in the plane. (I did get through the take-off briefing, so there’s that.) My taxiing is improving, despite what felt like a right brake that was sticking every once in a while. Don’t know if that was my imagination or just a quirk of the plane I was flying. Today’s take-off went (relative to previous take-offs) very smoothly. I’m feeling better about those. I need to work on trimming the plane once we’re off the ground, because I felt like I was having to pull back on the yoke harder than necessary on climb-out. If flying the plane is best done with subtle control movements, having to apply that much pressure to the yoke to maintain climb runs a bit counter to that. However, I was concentrating on listening to ATC tell me where to fly and when I could start my turns that I wasn’t worrying about trimming the controls. That will come.



Today’s lesson focus was slow flight and stalls. (Wing stalls, not engine stalls.) As I hinted at the beginning of this entry, things didn’t exactly go as smoothly as I had hoped. I had practiced these maneuvers in my chair fairly often since my last flight. I felt confident after my last lesson that I could do these things without prompting. I felt pretty good, but somehow my mind went blank. I grew up doing community theater, so I’m generally immune to stage fright. Generally, but perhaps not completely? 



A few things tripped me up, I think. On our first slow-flight, I had the plane’s nose pitching up way too much. In retrospect, I think I may have forgotten the flaps were extended on this exercise, and was pitching the nose for a “clean” slow flight configuration, which is a lot higher than flaps extended. I don’t know that I ever fully realized that, as I kept having a tendency to pull the nose high through the drills. At least I recognize it now, so when I drill in my head over the next week, I’ll paint a clearer mental picture.



The second thing was that whole “action-reaction” thing. Every action on the controls has a predictable reaction. Because the reaction is predictable, you as a pilot have the ability to counter that reaction as it happens so the reaction does not interfere with the maneuver. For instance, when one applies full throttle, the plane tends to pull to the left. This is easily countered by gently applying a bit of right rudder to counteract that tendency. I learned this on the runway. You’d think I’d remember it in the air. On my first slow-flight recovery, I pushed the throttle full forward, put the nose to horizon, reduced flaps, and after all was said and done, realized I was about 15 degrees off course (to the left). Well, yeah, dummy. You forgot the right rudder. Next time went better. Apply throttle with right hand, step on rudder with right foot. Maintain heading. They’re related.



The other action/reaction thing which tripped me up was reducing the power to idle to practice stall recoveries. Part of the stall drill includes flying a descent with the throttle set to idle. However, that descent needs to be a controlled descent. When you reduce power, the nose of the plane wants to drop. You don’t just let the plane drop and recover by pulling back on the yoke. We’re simulating a landing maneuver, and the last thing you want when you’re close to the ground landing is to do anything which would make the distance between you and the ground get closer faster. That’s where “controlled” comes into play. You know the nose is going to drop when drop power to idle. You have to counter that by pulling back on the yoke. You want to descend, but on your terms, not the planes. Since you as a pilot know what is going to happen, similar to stepping on the right rudder pedal when increasing the throttle, you can pull back a bit on the yoke when decreasing the throttle so you maintain control of the rate of descent. It can’t be a “step one – reduce throttle. Okay, that’s done, onto step 2. What’s step 2…” The reaction happens simultaneously with the action, so your control inputs to counter the reaction have to be equally simultaneous. A mental checklist of the steps is good, but the steps have to come quickly and naturally. I wasn’t quite there on that aspect today. I was thinking about each step one after another after another. Fortunately my instructor was rather accommodating to my requests of “well, that sucked. Can I try that again?” Improvements each time, thankfully, but anything but smooth.



A side note about the stall horn. It’s not loud. It starts off very quiet, a pitch and frequency best described as “mildly annoyed mosquito.” When you’re working with your instructor through these maneuvers, it’s sometimes easy to miss through the conversation. It does get louder as the stall deepens, but if your headphones are especially good at blocking out exterior noise, you’re still going to have to listen carefully. I think by the time the stall horn gets to the “HEY IDIOT!!!” stage, the plane will have let you know by other means that it’s stalled. Early in your lessons, though, it’s okay to fly and hear that annoyed mosquito during these maneuvers so you know what it sounds like. That way you know what to listen for and can correct earlier once you get used to flying and you’re not flying specifically to get the airplane close to stalling.



The last impromptu lesson on today’s flight dealt with low level wind shear and gust factors. I fly in Colorado. Colorado summers are known for their ability to spawn severe weather at a moment’s notice. We actually had a tornado touch down north of town this afternoon, which should give some indication to the unstable nature of the air on the way back to the airport. The practical lesson in low level wind shear come from flying below a developing storm cell with a considerable down draft that we didn’t see coming. Sure felt it, though. Fortunately we were still 1,500’ above the ground when we hit it. The winds at the field had become very gusty while we were out and about, too. Weather reports had them gusting nearly 20 knots above the reported wind speed. Fortunately the winds were still pretty much out of the north, so that meant they were a direct headwind for our runway, but to compensate for the gusting winds, we had to fly about 10 knots faster on landing, and only set 10 degrees of flaps so the flaps wouldn’t act like sails in the gusts. I haven’t gotten to where I’m landing the plane yet, so I was just “enjoying the ride” at this point. Enjoying, but observing at the same time.



Next time, a review of stalls, and also steep turns. I’ve done a few steep turns, but not on purpose.

Lesson 6 - Confidence is Key

I was a bit nervous going into this lesson, just based on the pattern of good lesson, bad lesson, good lesson, bad lesson up to this point. Last week was a good lesson, so if the pattern held, today was going to be a rough ride. It wasn’t all sunglasses and autographs, but by and large, things went well today. It was a good confidence booster.

That’s not to say there weren’t some minor goofs. I missed a wing access panel that was only hanging on by one screw on my walkaround, and my safety briefing needs polishing. I also forgot to check flight controls during my run-up check. (I had checked them previously, but it’s on the checklist—I need to do it.) And I’m going to buy my own fuel tester, because the thimble-sized one that was in the plane I flew today splashed more on my hands than what got in the cup.

Taxiing is starting to feel more natural. I’m still a little wobbly on the line and a still a rather poor judge of where the line is underneath me. (Can I get a glass-bottom plane?) For the third flight in a row, I did not accidentally move the throttle the wrong way during any of the maneuvers. Take-off went well. I’m glad I was on the secondary runway so I didn’t feel pressure with a whole lot of traffic behind me; it calmed my nerves. I mean, airplanes don’t have horns, but at the same time, you can’t dawdle on the runway if there’s someone on final waiting for you to leave.

Today’s lesson brought us back to slow flight operations. We did these a few lessons back and I felt okay-ish with the concept. Today went better. Like last time, my instructor covered my instruments with a sheet of paper so I had to maintain altitude and airspeed by looking outside and listening to the plane as opposed to watching my instruments. For the most part, I was able to maintain my altitude within 100’ for everything, which I will consider impressive given how sluggish the controls are in slow speed flight. One thing I keyed in on for myself was being able to keep a constant pitch attitude by watching the angle of the horizon versus the wing since the nose was so high, especially during clean slow flight. Dirty slow flight (flaps down), your pitch angle isn’t quite as steep because the flaps create more lift, but I was at near full throttle just to maintain 55 knots.

I’m just starting to get the hang of trimming the plane. It’s been hard for me to get a good sense of how much to turn the trim wheel to make the necessary adjustments, and I need to get better at setting the pitch attitude with yoke then trimming off to match that, as opposed to using the trim wheel to set the pitch attitude. Set the pitch attitude with the yoke, trim off the pressure, then you can make minor adjustments with the trim wheel as needed.

The winds were calm today, so as a bonus, we worked on ground reference maneuvers, specifically S-turns. Not great, but not bad for the first time out of the gate. I think I was a little nervous to get us into too steep of a turn, but I was reasonably close to wings level whenever I got to the road we were using as a reference, though perhaps not exactly at 90 degrees to the road.

I’m also working the rudder more in flight than I have in the past. Part of that has to do with not having to concentrate so hard on other aspects of flight that I forget that there is a rudder on the plane, but the other part is that the rudder plays a significant part in these maneuvers, so you really have to use it.

Next time, more slow flight, stalls, and recovery—without prompts from my instructor. So between now and then, lots of chair flying to get the steps clear in my mind. And I’ll get the safety briefing.

Lesson 5 - Lightbulb Moment

I missed flying the previous week due to weather, so I was sure I was going to be rusty about some things with it being two weeks since my previous lesson. Still, I had done a fair bit of chair flying (sitting in a chair and pantomiming the motions while going through the procedures in my head) and after my previous “instrument flying” fiasco, I realized I was going about things completely wrong. That was a habit that had to change, and change quickly. I was ready to work on that. Preflight work was beginning to seem routine, which I think is a good thing. Routine enough, at least, to where I did everything even if I forgot a step and went back to it before checking against the checklist to make sure I had covered everything.

Seriously, I got tripped up by the safety briefing again—embarrassingly so because I had just gotten off of a commercial flight the previous day where I cheerfully ignored the safety briefing because I’d heard it a hundred times. So I punted on the safety briefings for the day, leaving them to my instructor so I could concentrate on flying the plane. I’ll get them another time. He now has them posted with my lesson plans, so I’ll have them to refer to before the next flight. Whether I remember them, well…
 

My instructor left me to do all the preflight work this time, which I’m getting more confident with. Repetition is a good thing. We pulled out onto the line, started up, and proceeded to the run-up area. Run-up is where you check to make sure things are working before taking off, get the latest weather info, and talk to ATC about what you would like to do. You double-check your breakers, set your gauges, check the left and right magnetos, alternator, and generally make sure all your needles are in the green where they belong. Make sure the flight controls are free and clear. After a pre-takeoff “what to do in the event of an aborted takeoff” briefing, we proceeded per ATC’s instructions to the runway.

Line up with the numbers, apply full throttle, right rudder only as needed to stay on centerline. Finally, I got it without much issue. Reach rotation speed, apply back pressure on the yoke, and let the airplane start to climb. Throttle is at full. Climb rate and airspeed is controlled by what? Pitch attitude. The higher the nose, the slower the airspeed. There’s a target airspeed you want to hit, in the case of the Cessna, around 75 knots give or take. DO NOT look at the VSI. Just don’t do it. Watch your horizon against your nose, and watch your airspeed. If the nose to horizon is consistent, your airspeed will be consistent. That's physics. Let that be your guide. Watch outside, watch outside, confirm with gauges. Watch outside, watch outside, confirm with gauges. This is starting to make sense.

 
Out comes a big sheet of paper. Apparently my instructor forgot his sticky notes, so he had to improvise. What for? Well, when learning to fly by instruments, you fly under a hood that prevents you from looking out the windows. When you have a nasty habit of flying by the instruments and not looking outside, you fix that by covering the instruments. No instruments forces you to look outside, to listen to the engine, and to feel what the plane is doing. Take the instruments away, and you’re 100% flying by visual cues. I spent the flight climbing, descending, and turning using the horizon and reference points in the airplane. I’d fly a bit, mess something up, and then my instructor would fly the same maneuver so I could see what it’s supposed to look like out the window. This is not something you can learn from a book or YouTube video. It’s something you have to see and feel from the controls in the air. It’s all based on where your eyes are in the plane and how you perceive things around you from that position. With that revised reference, it was easy to fix mistakes, and—hopefully—break bad habits. We landed with me feeling for the first time that I was actually in control of the airplane, acting ahead of it instead of playing catch-up. Next time? Hopefully that will continue.

Lesson 4 - What. Are. You. DOING???

Feeling pretty good about the previous lesson, and having a better (albeit not “firm”) grasp of checklists, etc., I was looking forward to this lesson. More slow flight operations, which I enjoyed the last time up and hoped to be able to hone my skills. That struck me as something that if I could master, I’d feel better about my ability to confidently control the airplane. And that’s the goal, right?



Clear prop! Throttle open just a little bit—about ¼”. Turn the key to start. Once it catches, let go of the key and advance the mixture to keep the engine running. Throttle to 1000 rpm. Avionics on. Lights on. Set radios. Check brakes. We’re ready to get going to run-up.

I’ll start off by saying that for the first time, I felt good about my taxiing skills. I could make the airplane go where I wanted it to, even if I’m still not 100% sure if I’m right over the yellow line or not. Having said that, my take-off wasn’t near as nice as I had hoped. Perhaps it was because I felt a bit rushed because I had to get onto the runway and up in the air fairly quickly due to traffic. I think I probably wasn’t 100% lined up with the center of the runway, and not sure of my foot placement to control the rudder pedals. My instructor and I seemed to be in a bit of a battle over rudder control for a bit before we got things straightened out and got airborne. But that was just the start of things. Remember earlier when I wrote about bad habits being hard to break? Well, yeah. About those, specifically flying by instruments instead of what’s outside the window. More specifically, trying to maintain a constant rate of climb by watching the Vertical Speed Indicator, which is arguably the most lagging instrument on the panel. Another spoiler alert – that doesn’t work for beans.

To be honest, I’m not exactly sure how far I was pitching up, nor do I know what my airspeed was because I was clearly not watching that gauge. Apparently it wasn’t very fast. About the same time I realized I probably was doing something wrong, my instructor rather firmly asked “What are you doing???” The accurate response was “f***ing up,” but that was a foregone conclusion that didn’t need to be verbalized. I pitched the nose down, gained some airspeed, humbly transferred the controls over to him to get us back on a reasonable climb attitude, and regrouped my thoughts.

Change of plans. Let’s go back a bit to more of the basics this lesson, okay? Turns, climbs, descents, straight-and-level… Listen to the airplane and let it tell you what it’s doing. I’d fly a little, then he’d fly a little while having me tell him what is going on and how to correct it. Sometimes you have to hit pause and reset. Give things a little thought, a little bit more time. There’s no schedule that says “by X number of hours you will have this mastered.” Everyone’s different. And if it takes me longer than others to master the skills, I’m still flying towards my goal. I’m paying by the hour for the plane whether I have my license or need an instructor with me. Better in my opinion to master and build than to hope all gels down the road and never feel confident until if or when it does.

Lesson 3 - Slow and Steady

I did my homework this time. I showed up with the weather, condition of the plane, any NOTAMs or other advisories. I wasn’t going to start off on my heels like last time. We got to the plane, inspected it, got it going, and ready to go. I was feeling pretty good. Still a little shaky on start-up procedures, but we’ll work on that.

“Your turn for the safety briefing.”

Um, crap. Yeah, that speech we all ignore on every commercial flight we take. Guess what—they’re required by law whether it’s two hundred people in an airliner or two people in a Cessna. And the truth is, they cover pretty much the same thing, except the Cessna’s seats aren’t equipped with flotation devices. But at that moment in time, my mind drew an almost complete blank on what is covered.

Okay, fire extinguishers. Yeah, I remember that. It’s between the seats, so easy to look down for a bit of a memory jog. In the event of a fire, the more experienced pilot (not me) flies the plane and I fight the fire. Seatbelts are to be worn at all times, which in the Cessna is a foregone conclusion because once you close the door, you can’t get to the flippin’ seatbelt latch to release it anyway. There are no lavatories, so scratch that line. Seatbacks upright—they can’t be adjusted. No tray tables, so forget that line. There are two exits, which you should unlatch in the event of an emergency to make exiting the airplane easier on landing. If the doors get stuck, kick out the front windshield. We are to maintain a sterile cockpit during critical phases of flight, which despite the age of COVID has nothing to do with cleanliness. It means we avoid extraneous conversation during taxiing, take-off, and landing; anytime we’re under 1000 feet above ground level. (i.e., when we’re listening for ATC to tell us where to go and what to avoid.) We need to point out hot spots, or areas where there may be heavy traffic congestion as we taxi along. It’s common sense to look both ways before crossing the street, but when there’s a lot of traffic, it helps to look twice. The hot spots, usually marked on the airport diagrams, are areas where that second look is advisable. Three-way verification of control anytime we transfer the control of the airplane from one to another. “My controls,” “your controls,” “my controls” It’s not a custody battle, it’s confirming who’s flying the plane, which is kind of important to know. (“Is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?”) Lastly, it’s both of our jobs to point out anything that is unsafe during the course of the flight, or to assist in any aspect of flight which would improve safety such as looking out for traffic or obstructions. In today’s vernacular, “See something, say something.”

Remember last lesson when I forgot the right rudder on take-off? Hint – don’t compensate by flooring the right rudder the next time down the stretch. Just add a little. As needed. Keep the plane on center, that’s all you need. Okay, next time I’ll remember that. (Hopefully.) Today’s lesson, slow flight. I made a point to watch a bunch of YouTube videos on slow flight operation so I knew what to expect. Knowing what to expect is one thing. Developing the mental muscle memory to get into and out of slow flight is a bit trickier, but it’s one of those things that you just have to practice.




The premise is simple. When you’re coming in for a landing, you want to fly the plane at the slowest possible airspeed that will still allow you to stay in the air and be able to control the plane, albeit a bit more sluggishly than at higher airspeeds. We practice this at higher altitudes, though, since the possibility of a stall and losing altitude is great. So, we make sure we’re at least 1500’ above the ground, pick a heading and reference point, and slow the plane down by reducing power to around 1700 rpm. You will want to pitch the nose up to maintain altitude because just lowering the rpm will cause the nose to drop. If you’re doing slow speed with flaps (landing configuration), then you will want to apply them in stages. Below 110 knots, you can drop 10 degrees of flaps. Once your airspeed drops below 85 knots, you can drop to 20 degrees. Each time you add flaps, watch your pitch and altitude. Adding flaps increases lift. Below 75 knots, you can add full flaps (30 degrees). When airspeed approaches around 50 – 55 knots, adjust power to maintain airspeed and altitude at that pitch angle.

Chances are that in this configuration, you may not be able to see the horizon over the nose of the airplane, so look to the left and right of the plane to keep an eye on landmarks there as well to maintain course and altitude.

To recover from this, apply full power and pitch the nose down to increase airspeed while maintaining altitude. At the same time (or as quickly as you can slide your hand from the throttle to the flaps) decrease flaps to 20 degrees. Once airspeed increases above 60 knots, reduce flaps to 10 degrees, then reduce them fully after 70 knots, and let airspeed build to cruising speed before reducing power to set final cruise configuration. Repeat as needed.

For my first time out of the gate, I wasn’t bad. Was I fully in control every time? Perhaps more than I give myself credit for, but it was still new enough to where I thought I was still chasing things just a bit. Again—practice. That would come with the next lesson, right?