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!
2 comments:
Bernoulli works with hoses and traffic flow as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli%27s_principle
You can practice while you drive to work and water your garden.
Weather Science can't be that hard if the weatherman can't do significantly better than I can when looking out the window.
Eric Says: Brenoulli also works in Cessna carburetors. The fuel goes through a Venturi, descreasing it's pressure and increasding its speed. This also lowers its temp considerably and can cause carb icing from moist air. You have to add heat to the carb under certain conditions to prevent it. Essentially you take air from around the exhaust pipe and use it as engine air rather than using outside air.
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