Woohoo!

Well... after about 15 CFI-assisted touch and goes at Nampa, and many end-of-lesson landings in Boise, I finally did an unassisted landing at the end of the day today--at KBOI. We practiced in Nampa for a while. As you get about 10 feet over the end of the runway, you do a "roundout." The descent is stopped and you fly at that altitude until your airspeed decays and you reach about 1 foot over the runway. At that point you pitch up, stall, and settle to the runway. If you have ever watched the Shuttle land, you get an exaggerated example. I was having a tough time converting from the roundout to the flare. CFI had me practice just flying over the runway at 10 feet...and not landing. It must have helped. After we touched down in Boise, he said "Congratulations, your first unassisted landing!" I felt like a little kid. Called Alex on the way home and he bought me lunch.

The day started cold. The plane under the shelter where it would be relatively frost free was unavailable, so I had to reserve one out on the ramp. We had to put an engine heater on it and deice it prior to flight. They use a hand sprayer with some glycol solution. Then we turned it to the sun and let it sit while we did ground. Evaporating glycol is cold on the hands at 18 degrees. We are about done with the book for a bit, although I have a lot to master, yet. Book picks up again after the solo with navigation and aircraft performance types of issues.

All in all a red letter day.

Improvement

Improvement is a very good thing. We cancelled Friday because of weather and roads and flew Saturday. I did much better...although a way to go. I am flying this morning and again Wednesday. Landing is a very fluid thing with a complicated sight picture. More later. The book work is starting to kick my ass a bit, but it's largely a bit of laziness on my part.

The Fallacy of Mental Imagery

I have always heard the visualizing yourself doing something would help with the actual doing of it. False. We worked on landings Friday--touch and go's (land and take right off again) at the Nampa airport. Prior to leaving he took me through the steps of landing and I could visualize myself doing each step. Well.. not that easy, Bucko. I was all over the sky although I did improve on each of the four we did. But Number 4 was still pitiful. Practice, Practice. I fly again next Friday and Saturday.

Rain, Visibility, and Pilot Weather Stuff

It was raining yesterday. The clouds were fairly low, having dropped significantly in the hour before I got to the hangar. Conditions were still VFR, but marginal, so we did not fly. I am going to try again on Friday morning. With the holiday next week, I am not sure what will happen. I need to keep my marginal skills honed (humor).

I am still surprised by the amount of weather information that I am learning. As discussed before, the PIC (pilot in charge) is responsible for everything. So you can't just watch the TV guy and call it good. For one thing, the goal of the TV guys is to make sure that people don't get surprised by bad weather...so they skew things to the Oh My God!! end of the spectrum. NOAA must provide weather information to the FAA for pilots with the goal being short-term accuracy. They don't care about anything past the next couple of day--but they really want an objective look at that time period. As a pilot it's my job to figure out what they are predicting, look at the data myself, and make a go/no-go call (without whining about the forecast being wrong).

Several Web sources are available for the information, and they are very cool. They are designed for pilot use and have a bunch of information. Also, there is the FAA's Flight Service Station system. In the past, Boise, for example, had a group of FSS guys who pilots could call. They were familiar with local conditions and many were in aviation themselves. You could file flight plans and open and close them. They would also give you a weather briefing, using their data sources and local knowledge. This system has been closed and the whole thing outsourced to Lockheed Martin back east someplace. Now, a phone bank person reads the report that you could look up yourself online. No local input. Most pilots are dead set against the new system. And there have been reports of long waits to close flight plans.. so long that some folks just hang up and leave them open (not a good thing because if you don't close your flight plan within a short time after your ETA they are supposed to start looking for you). Also, the briefers have no specific knowledge of aviation. They just read the text. As a taxpayer, I can see the cost savings. As a pilot, it would be nice to have my own personal briefing. Logically, this looks like the death dance of a system that was great pre-Web, but makes little sense now. The Web sites are great for short-term forecasting.

Anyway, caution is the key. I am not keen on flying cross county in marginal weather. We have too many nice days here. But being able to look at the detailed short-term predictions is pretty cool.

On another note. Cessnas don't have windshield wipes. The rain just blows off and they arent' needed. I need to ask why the big planes have them. Might be just Cessna hype. :) This pilot thing continues to be very cool. I have several chunks of material that I need to just sit and memorize, though. I have a list in my head, but need to actually sit down and do it. I can still recite the list of 40 common prepositions that Sister Willana taught me in the 8th grade. I should be able to handle this.

On a third note, Dick Rutan of Voyager fame had to land his plane on a road yesterday with engine failure http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/rutan_4142___article.html/victorville_dick.html . And what does he fly? One model down from the one I am training in (C150 vs. C172). What a guy...Angelina Jolie flies a very cool turbo prop, Morgan Freeman his own exec jet, and Rutan.. a C150.

On a fourth note. The mythbusters are indeed doing the airplane on a treadmill. See the preview below. This is too complicated to go into here. Talk to me if you want details.

http://dsc.discovery.com/video/?playerId=203711706&categoryId=210013704&lineupId=229524134&titleId=1344511100

Ugh

Had to cancel Tuesday's flight because of issues at work. Caught a cold. Did ground today because the airplane I reserved had a bad battery. I guess it's not my week. Flying twice next week.. should be long ones because of the extra ground today. Weather is the topic these days. Lots I don't know. It's wise to stay out of thunderstorms.

Va

Va is the maximum maneuvering speed. In the Cessna 172 it's about 12o mph. Tonight I flew. We did some S-turns around Swan Falls Road. I think it clicked with me on how those work. We then did some circles around Initial Point. It's the point at which Township and Range start for Idaho. You can hit Wikipedia for the details. On the way back to Boise we hit some turbulence. Severe enough that I couldn't keep the plane on course... let alone on altitude. We cinched up our seatbelts to keep us from bouncing on the ceiling. It wasn't frightening to me, but I knew I was in uncharted territory. CFI took over controls and reported "severe turbulence" to the tower. At the same time we started hearing similar reports from other aircraft in the area. We made our approach to runway 10L and it smoothed out. However, as we approached, we suddenly lost a bunch of airspeed. CFI adjusted and told the ower "experienced some fairly dramatic wind sheer on approach." We landed and heard a couple other aircraft alter their approaches because of the conditions. Landing was fine. Taxied to the parking are and put 870 to bed.

On the way back to the hangar we talked about what happened. In turbulence, it's important to get the aircraft below Va (the maximum speed that you can do dramatic maneuvers without causing structural damage (read, ripping the wings off). I will remember that because of tonight's adventure. Lesson well learned.

No more this week. Flying Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon next week. Still very exciting!