Well here we go again with excuses. I'll be posting about 4 flying experiences. They don't even begin to cover all of the stuff I have been doing. I've decided that enough is enough and I'm going to fly more. I've been doing that since the beginning of March. Unfortunately, anyone who has to schedule around a lot of other people and a limited number of airplanes will have some bumps in the road. That is me. We have been down 1 172 since the middle of January for a paint job. What was supposed to be a 1 month process is now at 3 months and still going. The guy painting our airplane needs to get a little more serious before some of our other members go pay him a visit. Let's just say that we have a few VERY unhappy members and I don't blame them one bit. At our board meeting last week, we decided that he needs a little more pressure applied to get this finished. We have already paid him over $6K and there isn't a single drop of paint on this airplane.
Enough about things that don't belong here. This is about learning to fly.
3/22
Time to get back in and really start tweaking things for my check ride. So off to the practice area we went. One thing we had never worked on was stalls. Richard tried to tell me that we did early but I just forgot. My response was that if he could find the word stall in my logbook, I'd buy dinner. No stalls in the logbook ;-) Before we did any stalls, we started working on steep turns. The object is to start a turn with at least a 45 degree bank and keep it within 10 degrees of bank angle. You have to roll out and be within 10 degrees of your original heading and be within 100 feet of your original altitude. It is a lot harder than it sounds. As soon as you get past 30 degrees, you will need a lot of back pressure because past 3o degrees the airplane looses most of its lift. If you do like I do and let the nose drop a little, it is almost impossible to recover from. Next thing you know, you are pulling back as hard as you can in a 3G turn trying to gain back that precious altitude and you're still 200 feet below your original altitude. The trick I am learning is to remember the picture that the horizon makes across the top of the dash and keep it there.
Next we progressed to stalls. Since I had never done any stalls, I got set up like I would for slow flight except I didn't trim as much and just waited for the nose to shimmy and then drop. As soon as the nose drops, yo are in a stall. All it takes to recover is full power,and push the nose over a little and you are flying again without dropping much. I think I dropped about 100 feet, which isn't very much. Next was a power on stall. This is used to teach you about stall recognition, especially on a climbout. The procedure goes something like this: (I forgot to mention that before you do any of these procedures, you must do a clearing turn to make sure that you don't have any traffic near you) Set up like you would for a climb. Reduce the power and start a climb like you would on takeoff. Then make sure that you have full power in and begin to increase your angle of attack. You will notice that this angle is much steeper than you would ever want on takeoff but that is not the point. The point is to take the airplane to the backside of the drag curve and stall it. What will happen is you will feel a little shudder and that is where you lower the nose and get your airspeed back so you are creating lift again. Like I said, this technique is to recognise a stall during takeoff.
We finally headed back to the airport and he had me do some full flap spot landings. He would pick a spot on the runway and have me hit them within 200 feet. I did pretty good on my landings and felt like I had made some good progress.
3/26
Since our experience with stalls went so well last time we dicided to add them to our dance card for today. We started with my old friend, turns about a point. I had always struggled with this but Richard had me try something new. The object for TAP is to pick and object on the ground (I usually pick a water tower) and fly around it keeping the same distance away from it all the way around. It is very difficult to judge distance as you are screaming around an object at 100 knots. As an added bonus, you are dealing with a constantly shifting wind because you are flying in a circle. If you have a 100 knot airspeed and the wind is at 20 knots, you are flying at 80 knots on your upwind leg and 120 knots on the downwind leg. This means your bank angles are constantly changing. The trick is to pick 4 points equadistance from the object and use them to fly over. You will notice quickly just how much bank angle you will need.
Next he had me do some S Turns over a road. The object is similar to the TAP but you want to make sure that as you cross the road, you have completed your turn and are rolling over to begin the next turn. During all of this you want to keep your distance from the road consistant and make sure that your points where you cross the road remain consistant also. Your bank angle changes according to the wind much like TAP.
Since I had so much fun with stalls last time we went out and did some more. Same technique, same results.
We headed back to the airport to do some landings. We did the usual short field landings, soft field landings and slips to a landing. This time my landing sucked more than the last time. I just have to keep at it.
4/1
This time I did something different. I went up with a different instructor. I had been up with Dick about
a year and a half ago. Things didn't turn out too well that time as the heat got to me. This time was much better. Dick likes to train his students on the east side of Lake Lavon between the lake and Caddo Mills (
7F3). We headed out to see what I needed to work on. First thing we did was steep turns. He doesn't like for his students to use the AI to see the angle. So while I was in my turn he pulled one of his trusty panel covers he uses for partial panel failures and put it right on the AI.
Use the force Luke. I made 2 360 degree turns. Of course I lost 250 feet in my turn but who's counting? The next 2 to the other side were much better.
Next he had me get set up for slow flight. I have to preface this by saying that we had some very high winds that day. We were at 2500 feet and the winds were from 140 degrees at 45 knots. When I got the airplane slowed down (it was really bumpy) my ground track was almost nothing. It was really difficult to maintain altitude and direction becasue the wind was gusting so much.
Dick had me clean up the airplane and head south were he pulled the power and told me that I had just lost an engine. I needed to try to find somewhere to land safely. Unfortunately I gravitated to a big field that had been plowed. Not the best place to land. He pointed out to me the little road on the side of the field that was a good choice and a driveway to a house that was about a half of a mile long.
We recovered from that and headed over to Cado Mills to do a normal landing. Then he had me do a power off landing from abeam of the numbers. Not nearly as good as the first one but it was still able to fly. He had me do this again and it was much better this time. finally he had me do one last thing. He wanted a spot landing on the numbers and I put it right on the 17.
After looking at the clock, we decided to head back to McKinney and talk about what needs work. The steep turns definitely need work but everything else was pretty good.
4/10
Today is going to be a short day but a busy day. We started out at McKinney to do some pattern work but it was busy with a lot of twins in the pattern. Not the fantasy twins from the beer commercials but twin engine airplanes who fly a lot faster and wider in the pattern. we decided that we needed to go somewhere less busy so we headed over to Rockwall (
F46). We climbed to 3500 feet and he wanted me to do a spiral down to to land, simulating an engine out emergency landing. I was able to get down but it wasn't pretty. Next he wanted to fly a normal pattern and kill the power at midfield and make a power off landing. The first few were pretty good as I had a good I dea of how much energy I had to make it to the runway. When you know you can make it and are high enough, grab all of the flaps and put it down.
The final pass he had me do the same thing but add full flaps as soon as I got below 80 knots. That is hard to do on a windy day. I was trying to maintain the best glide speed (65 knots) ans still turn toward the runway. With all of that drag and slow speed, I had to make gentle turns and use a lot of rudder because a hard turn would have stalled the airplane or maybe put it into a spin. I actually had to add power for about 10 seconds but made it to the runway and when he said to stall it and land, we fell out of the sky. I had bled my airspeed down to nothing and was barely flying. But that is the object. Land it safely.
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