A Little Light From The Tunnel

First of all, I didn't bring a camera to get any pictures. I promise that I'll get some soon. That being said, I did get a chance to fly within a 2 week period, which is unheard of for me. I also have to admit that my instructor is correct in telling me that I need to fly more often. I have noticed that my skills are deteriorating every time I go a month between flights. The last time we went up, we did the usual touch and goes and as usual, I had some difficulties but managed to put the plane down. This time several of the key elements to landing were already there. I had very little trouble with wind coming straight at me.

Before all of the landing practice, we did some turns about a point. I haven't done any of that stuff since my first lesson. The winds were fairly strong and gusty so I was having a tough time keeping my distance uniform. It took a while but I finally got the hang of it. As soon as I got the hang of it I started to get a little queasy and backed off for a while. We tracked a road for about 10 miles practicing crabbing into the wind then went in for a couple of touch and goes at SWI. Finally having a good day, Richard wanted to wipe the smile off of my face with a reality check. We headed to GYI for some more crosswind landings.

The wind was out of the south (17k @ 180) so we went to do touch and goes on runway 13. It was a lot better than our last time out there. We got to do about 6 before we needed to head back to SWI to refuel and head to a lunch date. We did get to see a Cessna Citation do a touch and go during one of our rounds. We kept hearing someone on the CTAF doing an ILS approach and never did see him. Finally he announced he was on a 4 mile final and we kept looking, then low and behold, a pretty little Citation flew right under us as we crossed over runway 17.

We finally packed it up and headed back to SWI, refueled and parked the airplane and headed out to lunch.

It felt good to get back in the airplane after only being out of it a couple of weeks. I still need to be flying once or twice a week but this is still better than only twice a month then a one month layoff. Maybe I will get this finished in this lifetime.

My E-logbook

First Flight From Sherman

First of all, I'm sorry for not having any pictures to post. I drove up to Sherman (KSWI) on Tuesday afternoon just to get a feel for the airport and make sure that I wouldn't have any issues with combinations or procedures. I found the airport rather quaint. It seems that the city is behind this airport and would like to make it grow. It has grown considerably since the TFC and NTFC have moved up there. Almost all of their tie downs are in use but I wasn't able to check out the hanger space. They have an A&P on site, J&S Aviation. The city even provides a crew car.

Since my usual trainer, N737TY is getting a complete engine overhaul, new windshield and new cover around the dash, I had to fly N733NB. The last time I flew 3NB was in June. I forgot how much horsepower it has. It is a Superhawk with a gross weight of 2550 lbs as opposed to the Skyhawk that has a gross weight of 2300 lbs. It also has a 180 horsepower engine instead of a 160. The torque and p-factor that this airplane produces is considerably more than the Skyhawk so you need a lot more right rudder on takeoff. I was able to climb to pattern altitude on my takeoff leg before I had to turn. I couldn't do that with 7TY. The down side to this extra horsepower is that it burns 10 gph at cruise. I found myself climbing too much before I had to trim the airplane. It really is an odd thing because I found myself throttling back early because I needed to slow down, reduce altitude and try to trim the plane for a slower speed. The take home lesson is more power means more trimming.

We did a couple of "normal" landings. Then Richard wanted to do some soft field landings. I really like the soft field landings. They are a lot less jarring than the "normal" landings. See my previous post on my feelings. We then did a couple of short field landings over an obstruction. I was closer to the numbers than I have ever been and it was on a narrower and shorter runway. I will be doing more touch and goes up here even after KTKI opens back up.

We then headed to Grayson county (KGYI) to do some crosswind landings. They have 3 runways but one of them is closed, 17L/25R and 13/21 are open but 17R/35L is the closed one. We went to 13 to do crosswind landings since the wind was out of the south. The first 2 were horrible. It is always the last 5 seconds that will get you. Don't get me wrong, a good approach is the key to a good landing but how you finish, after ground effects kick in is the hardest part. I kept forgetting to use my feet to keep the nose pointed where I needed it. One time the wind shifted on me as I was getting my nose pointed and I went too far. I really need to work on crosswind landings. It was starting to get pretty busy dodging all of the traffic at KGYI so we needed to call it a day and headed back to KSWI. I checked the pattern and there was no other traffic in the pattern so we did a straight in approach. I put it down smooth and slow and was able to turn off at the first taxiway.

We now have to refuel the airplanes ourselves so I taxied up to the gas pump and shut the engine down. KSWI has some of the cheapest gas around at $3.30 gal. We were in the air for 1.6 hours but only used 1.3 hours tach time and I only burned about 10.4 gal of fuel. The odd part was that the left tank took 7.4 gal but the right side used 3.o gal. We then started up again and headed to the tie down area and finished our post flight.

I'll try to get some pictures for the next time.

My E-logbook