Better!

I flew yesterday morning. Tuesday was an off day. I was sorta wound up and it showed. Yesterday was much better. I worked real hard on relaxing (yes, I see the irony there). As a reward I did much better. We worked on power-off and power-on stalls. It was the first time I had stalled the plane and recovered myself. The other time we tried, the CFI demonstrated it. We also did some ground-reference maneuvers again (tracking around a rectangle on the ground, S-turns around a road, and circles around a point. It's interesting because the heading (the direction the nose is pointing) varies from the course (the track on the ground) because of wind. I did most of the landing (CFI handled the throttle, I did the rest). Not too comfortable with that yet, but landing is a mandatory factor in every flight, so I guess I will get better. I am still hoping to post up some pics. I need to get to the airport on a sunny day and take some. I think I will wear shorts and pretend it's summer for purposes of the pics. Weather is going to continue to be a factor, but my CFI agrees with my assessment that the weather guys are often wrong. In addition, he claims that he tv guys are under great pressure to never miss a storm. So they are overly pessmistic. The ground school focus from here on out is material with which I have limited famiarity, so I anticipate that it will be a little tougher. Nothing else to report. Every time I talk to my mother she quotes Dad as saying, "Yep, flying is lots of fun if nobody is shooting at you." I guess that applies to lots of things.

More Balance

Fly the airplane. Don't overthink the details. But keep an eye on the details. Look outside the cockpit, check inside cockpit. Don't try to drive by the altimeter and airspeed indicator alone, any more than you would drive down the road staring at the speedometer. Calm down. Enjoy the ride. All good advice. I just need to strike a good balance. I guess that's what experience will bring. The book work is going well... CFI says I pick things up quickly. We will see if I remember the things that I pick up quickly. Still having a great time. It is truly like riding a motorcycle, though, in some respects. It's about smooth, and flow, and control.

We flew last night before the snow hit. Did some ground-reference maneuvers (S turns across a road, circles around a point, and flying a rectangular pattern). I did pretty well for my first shot at some of those. The latter comes in handy in the landing pattern. The two former for precision in flight. I knew I was doing ok when I cut through my own wake turbulence on the circle maneuver. At least my altitude was stable, anyway. As for a constant radius...maybe not so much.

Maybe flying in the morning. Will decide tonight after a weather check. The CFI is about as skeptical of the accuracy of the local weather forecasters as I am. One of these days I hope to go out and take a few pictures of the planes and maybe me in my big-boy headsets. Should be fun.

Twice this week

It worked out that I had a week off for the holidays.... CFI schedule conflicts. I fly Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning this week (weather permitting). Working on airspace classifications in the book. And air traffic control facilities. A lot of it is fairly new to me so it's taking some time. The only one I am sure about is Class A (everything from 18,000 feet to 60,000).

Toys

Pilot toys are very cool. A word of warning.

Morning Flight

After a ground school session on Tuesday night, we did a short session on Wednesday morning and then flew. Covered charts.... lots of information on a chart. The legend goes on and on. It's basically a topo map with everything a pilot would need to know. They expire every couple months. It's a folded roadmap kind of thing called a "sectional." We are in the Salt Lake sectional. It would take about 4 to cover the northwest.. each named after the biggest airport in the area. Seattle, Billings, Klamath Falls, and Salt Lake cover us. Next time we intro controlled air space.

Anyway, did preflight and fired it up. He had me talk to ground, the tower, and departure until we got in the air. I had a little experience on the radio in the A.F. years ago, so I did pretty well. We practiced a few steep (45 degree) 360 turns and I was able to maintain altitude.. unlike last week. Then we practiced Engine Failure procedures. CFI cut the engine back to idle, and we went through the procedure. As we came in to approach the chosen emergency landing area, we would apply power and go up to do it again. Did it about 4 times. I won't go all 6 steps other than to say that the first step is to announce (out loud--even if alone) Engine Failure! This sets up a scenario and starts the checklist. If you don't do that, you can piddle around trying to decide what the problem is and waste valuable time. It's a personal heads up! The last step is to radio the tower. No sense wasting time radioing and crash because of it. Better to do what you can to land safely and then call. The intermediate steps have to do with establishing best glide speed, finding a landing spot (he likes fields because roads have power lines along them), some troubleshooting steps, and then preparing for forced landing.

It was a beautiful day. Clear and pretty. I flew most of the approach and he helped with the landing. Once again, a great time. I think we are going to shoot for an afternoon and then the following morning next week, too. Woohoo! I have 3.7 hours logged.

Ground School

The wind was gusty and hard this afternoon at flight time. We did 2 hours of ground school. Fly tomorrow. Sigh.

I did learn that pilots have a fair amount of latitude as far as safe operation of the aircraft is concerned. The PIC is ultimately responsible if something goes awry... so it's up to him/her to make wise decisions. More tomorrow night.

Quick Update.. Landing

The airport was busy when we landed. They held one other Cessna over the prison, but told us we could squeeze into the pattern between two big passenger jets--and Airbus and a 737. We made it into the pattern fine (my CFI did). I then tried to fly part of the approach to the runway. It was very deceptive and I couldn't get quite lined up right. What I saw wasn't what I was getting. CFI said that it would come with practice. He landed us (avoiding the wake turbulence from the previous plane) and scooted the hell off the runway in a hurry at the tower's request so we wouldn't get mowed down by the 737. Landing will be more problematic than I thought it would. I guess that's why they call me a student.

Balance

I had a great lesson today. Started at 3:15 and left at 6:15. 1.1 hours of flight time. We covered some of the aerodynamics stuff in the book. I did well again. Overthinking is my strong point. Turns out that both Newton and Bernouli have a say in keeping the airplane up. Newtons third law (every action has an equal and opposite reaction) begin more prevalent at lower speeds and Bernouli (lower pressure on top of the wing) more prevalent at higher speeds. Whoda thunk it. I also found out that flaps increase lift to aboug 10 degrees of extension, and act as air breaks with more extension. (I am oversimplifying all of this, but I am old. Be patient). Anyway, one more section of aerodynamics and we move to the airport environment and weather. I have never paid a hell of a lot of attention to weather science, so that will be challenging.

We headed south to the practice area. I practiced turns, both shallow and steep. It's hard to maintain a turn and keep a steady altitude. You have to keep a sight picture throughout the turn. For example, in a turn to the right I could keep the cowling in front of me at a particular reference to the horizon. The horizon cut through the cowling at a particular spot. Fair enough. Turn the other way, however, and the whole picture changes. We tried both steep (45 degree and normal turns. I did ok after a bit of practice. It's a constant balance between pitch (up and down), altitude, power, and airspeed. Want to climb? What you willing to sacrifice? How about speed? Or maybe add power? It is pretty amazing what the tradeoffs are. Put in a little instrument time, too. I didn't feel as if I did as well as last time.. but the CFI said he had tightened the parameters a bit.

Coolest thing of the evening. We flew into the sunset over the Owyhees. It was gorgeous. I commented on how pretty it was, and he said "climb to 5,00o and we will watch it again. I did and we did. Wow. Two sunsets, both gorgeous.

I have a tendency to do what I did when I first learned to ride the motorcycle... target fixation and concentrate on one thing to the exclusion of all else.

I continue to like this guy. Great teacher. He has a way of limiting what I have to attend to, but adding complexity and explaining as we go. It's not his first rodeo. No schedule for next time again. His fireman job is hitting extra still because of the guys they sent to California.

More next time. Still very exciting. I did better steering the Rodeo on the way home!