metaruss

Been doing pattern work around KPWK for the past three lessons.  Definitely hit a wall with the landings, but I guess that’s pretty normal.  For me, it’s mostly about staying calm during the final approach so that I keep flying the plane during the flare.  The more landings that I got behind me, the calmer I became and the better my touchdowns were.  He threw some cross wind landings in there too, but they were pretty light crosswinds.

That came to an end on today’s flight when we flew in gusty conditions.  Being thrown around by the wind in the pattern definitely got me riled up and brought back some bad habits (like drifting to the right).  Things got better towards the end as I calmed down and was able to think and fly it to the ground.

Next time he wants to add short field and soft field takeoffs.  I guess that means that my takeoffs are decent enough.

Did pattern work at K3CK today, which is an uncontrolled airport.  My pattern work and radio calls got better as the lesson went on, but all of the landings were terrible.  I generally over-controlled it and flared too fast.  Some not-so-great approaches just made it worse.

For some reason, my cameras only captured about 15 seconds of footage, so all I have is the intercom audio.  It’s frustrating that I can’t learn anything more from that flight, but a part of me is almost relieved that I don’t have to relive it.

This flight started-off a little hectic.  After getting all started-up, I made the call to ground for taxi clearance and got no response.  It also sounded wrong over the headset when the button was pressed.  After fiddling around with the radio and intercom, it seemed that we were not transmitting.  The school had a spare radio, so after a swap-out we tried to get underway again.  But again, ground did not respond when I called for clearance.  After waiting a bit, they finally did respond, saying that the fire department was in the tower because of a gas leak.  Apparently, the morning wasn’t just hectic for me.

I had prepared for the lesson expecting to head back over to the practice area and perform S turns and turns around a point again, since I had no wind to deal with last time.  Then if we had time, we’d take a shot around the pattern overflying the runway.  As we headed over there, there were some clouds above the spot we had used.  So we found another spot and after a couple of turns around a point (skipped the S turns), we headed straight over to K3CK for some practice in the pattern.  I had prepared to some extent and we talked it over before we took off, but had not memorized flow checks or anything.  We spent quite a bit of time over there, doing 4 circuits to a full stop.  It was quite overwhelming and I felt like I hadn’t prepared as well as I could have.  It seems like he really wanted to expose me to this, since I had commented previously that my landings were all a blur to me.  All of my landings were bad, but I was conscious of what I was doing and so had something to think about afterwards.

This is the first flight where I captured two camera angles.  I didn’t like having the side angle last time, so I tried mounting the foward-facing camera on the back window and the second camera facing the instruments.  That didn’t work well, because the camera didn’t get a good view out the front and what view it did get was overexposed from having so much of the cabin in the shot.  I’m going to install a self adhesive GoPro mount overhead so that it can see out the front better.  The instrument camera worked OK, but not great, as it couldn’t really see the altimeter from that angle.

Performed more ground reference maneuvers today.  After warming up on the rectangular pattern, we did S turns and turns around a point.  The wind was extremely calm, so the maneuvers were greatly simplified.  It was actually nice to get the hang of them without the complexity of large wind corrections.  He wants to go over them again next time, since correcting for the wind is one of the main points of the maneuver.  If I do well, we will start with the pattern work.  I suspect we will be doing that for quite a while, since there is a lot to learn and my landings are still not good (hey, I’ve only done 8 so far).

I finally got some video footage of a lesson.  The 152 does not have a GoPro mount, so I mounted it to the side window just behind my head.  The camera could see the instruments and outside, but it had the door pillar right through the middle and the instruments were way underexposed.  I guess two cameras are needed if I want to get both the outside and a good shot of the controls and instruments.  Despite that and even though I started the camera a bit late, the video has already proven really helpful.  Editing and syncing-in the intercom audio was rather tedious on GoPro’s software.  Looking for something better.

Had a pretty good flight today.  My taxi and takeoff radio work were better this time.  We’ve started discussing emergency procedures and, as I expected, my first exposure to a simulated emergency didn’t go all that well.  I did my best to memorize the checklists before the flight, but it wasn’t all that helpful in the moment.  He showed me his flow checks in the 152 and so I’m going to head over there sometime for some dry time to practice those.

After a couple of steep turns that I overshot for some reason, we proceeded on to ground reference maneuvers.  We went around a rectangular pattern a few times and I got the hang of left traffic after a couple of laps.  However, the right pattern was a lot more challenging and I struggled to keep the correct distance from the landmarks and choosing my bank angles.  Going to need more practice with those.  Somehow I just couldn’t keep it all straight in my head while also dividing my attention between where I was, where I needed to turn, what kind of turn it needed to be, where I needed to be after the turn, my altitude, my airspeed, and keeping everything coordinated.  Multitasking is pretty much the point of the exercise, so more practice next time when we polish this and then move on to S-turns and turns around a point.

My radio work for the arrival fumbled a bit when the tower gave me a bunch of information that I then couldn’t articulate back, but it got better as we went around the pattern for a first-ever landing on runway 30 with a bit of a crosswind.  It wasn’t terrible.

After well over 2 weeks of bad weather, we finally got up again today.  I was already feeling rusty and struggled with simple tasks.  I made a few mistakes while on the ground and the takeoff was messy, but I held my climb this time.  It felt weird at first, but it started coming back to me.  I still have a habit of climbing during my turns.

Once at the practice area, we did some slow flight and then moved on to full stalls.  I had quite a bit of trouble with these.  I did the power-on stall reasonably well after a few tries, but I struggled with the power-off stall.  Part of the problem was that I was rusty and not staying coordinated.  However, the real challenge was that I think I was getting hung up on performing each step leading up to the stall (fiddling with flaps, etc) while trying not to forget things (which I did anyway…”carb heat!”) and not flying the airplane.  I think I need to step back from the procedure and just fly.  My instructor thought my problem was that I was nervous about the stall, but actually they were pretty fun.  I was actually nervous about forgetting things in the procedure and feeling generally rusty with my flying.

This was the first time that I flew with the GoPro mounted in the cabin.  And that’s exactly everything that I did…mounted it in the cabin.  I forgot to start recording.  I did hook up the audio recorder to the intercom, however.  Since that battery lasts forever, I just started it as soon as I connected it and so there was no way I could forget to start it.  That proved useful in and of itself, as I heard my instructor explain things that I didn’t pick up while I was in the cockpit.  At times it was painful to relive the experience, however.

My second lesson started with a supervised preflight inspection on N9831G.  We did the usual procedures and then I did the radio calls to ground and tower.  After take off we did a few ascending/descending turns and then moved on to slow flight in the clean configuration.  He slowly worked me down to 50 knots a little at a time to get a feel for it.  I then tried to do some turns and made a mess of them.  He demonstrated how to quickly get from cruise to slow flight and back again.  After a few tries I got it.  It is very challenging to keep the heading and altitude while the attitude is way nose-up and the controls are like mush.  Next time we add flaps….

My rudder work is generally terrible, but at least my taxiing is improving.  I keep forgetting to clear my turns and I’m definitely still staring at the instruments too much.

I could tell he was trying to get me to apply what I had just learned in slow flight to the landing, but I was pretty burned-out by then.  The take offs and landings have been a blur, but they are getting less so each time.  I want to mount a camera in the cabin so that I can review my flights later.

The Federal Aviation Regulations (“FARs” in aviation circles) are actually parts of the Code of Federal Regulations (aka, “CFRs”).  The two seem to get used interchangeably, though they mean the same thing.  The FARs are often bundled into the same publication with the Aeronautical Information Manual as the so-called “FAR/AIM”.

This book is the nitty-gritty.  If the Airplane Flying Handbook and the Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge are the Java and C of aviation knowledge, the FAR/AIM is written in assembly.

The FAR is not really “readable” per se.  It’s more of a reference as it is written as a list of rules.  The AIM is more what you’d expect from a manual, though it is very dry and reads like stereo instructions.

There is a suggested study list at the beginning of the FAR/AIM that helps narrow the focus when seeking a particular license.  However, I found that the private pilot list tended to skip things that are important enough to be covered in other materials I have seen.  I used it as a rough guide to make sure that things were OK to skip, rather than as a definitive study list.  As you can see, I used those Post-It tabs to mark those sections plus others that I deemed important.

Not as fast of a read as the Airplane Flying Handbook.  There is some overlap in the content, but this book goes into much more detail and hits the main topics needed in order to take the written exam.

It is also downloadable from the FAA’s website.