Two for the Price of One

Because of the holidays, I've been a little busy. I've needed a mental rest along with a physical rest. I feel so much better after a great Christmas with my wife and daughter. However, I did go flying on Christmas day. After looking at the weather for several days and trying to plan some flying time while I was off, I determined that I needed to change from the original plan of some solo work the day after Christmas. I use a cool website called usairnet.com for looking at forecasts for flying. It is not an official site for getting an approved weather briefing but it does give you trends and has a wonderful graphical representation of the forecast, using data from the National Weather Service. I have personally found that the data that is the farthest out is the least accurate and if you are continuously checking for a certain time and date, the closer you get to the date, the more accurate the data will be. I must say that being able to predict wind direction and velocity 3 days out is quite an undertaking.

To get back to the topic at hand, the day after Christmas was supposed to be very windy and the conditions weren't too good either. I decided to change to go fly on Christmas day instead. When I got out to the airport, it had settled down to about 140@7kts. Not too bad. I needed to start flying N737TY because it will probably be the plane I take my check ride in because the other 172 (N733NB) goes offline 1/5/09 to get painted. I decided to just get familiar with the airplane again and do some touch and goes. It was good to just get back to flying but I am starting to feel an urgency to get my training over. I did a grand total of 5 touch and goes before I called it quits. I was not real happy with my performance but did manage to land safely every time and the airplane was flyable after I finished. After I landed the last time, I heard the controller say that the winds were now 140@14 gusting to 18. I'm glad I decided to stop. I needed a confidence booster, not a demonstration of my crosswind techniques.

Move foreward 3 days to Sunday the 28th. After a couple of days of horrible winds, I decided that the forecast for Sunday looked great. Saturday had some of the worst crosswinds I have ever seen at McKinney. Our runway is oriented at 17/35 or 170 and 350 degrees. A direct crosswind would be 280 and 100 degrees. The maximum demonstrated crosswind for a Cessna 172 is about 15 kts. Anything above that and you are a test pilot. Saturday afternoon's winds were 270 @32kts (37 mph) sustained with 48 kt (55 mph) gusts. I saw a Gulfstream do a go around because he couldn't handle the crosswind. Then I saw a Cherokee land right behind the Gulfstream that went around. Go figure. Eventually the Gulfstream did make the landing and asked how the Cherokee guy did it. I'd seen enough and left.

Sunday was a thing of beauty. By the time I got out to the airport, it was calm winds and about 57 degrees. What more could I ask for. Unfortunately, I was not going to be able to enjoy the beautiful scenery because I had to go under the hood. I go to look at the lovely scene of the Cessna six pack. We did the usual takeoff and put the hood on and turn to a course of 90 degrees. I climbed up to 3,000 feet and Richard had me intercept the Bonham 190 radial and fly to it. Of course I did as asked but quickly realized that I was flying with a "from" flag instead of a "to" flag. This makes everything backwards. So I dialed in the reciprical (10) and it behaved normally. Then I got tested pretty hard. While under the hood, he asked me to turn to 270, descend to 2200 feet, dial in the GPS 17 A approach, set up the CDI, intercept the 212 radial from the Bonham VORTAC and fly it to McKinney. Not much pressure. I actually did it. When we got to our final approach fix, we let the tower know and headed to it to do a touch and go. Of course, nothing was easy. Richard wanted a soft field landing. It was soft but too fast so we went around for another one. This time it was soft and slow. The damn stall warning horn is still going off in my head 4 hours later. We went around for another lap and this time did a short field landing over an obstruction. I cleared the obstruction easily but my flare was late and scared Richard. He asked me to be kind to the retired and not make their hearts race so fast. I went around one more time and this time it was good. I was getting so good that I had to speed up on the taxi down to the Charlie exit so another plane could land.

All in all, a great day. All of my instrument work is done, my night flying is done, my cross country trips are done and all of "required" work is done. All that is left for now is some prep work for my check ride. I'll be going back over all of the written material again and trying to be prepared for the oral, plus, getting the rust off for the PTS.

My E-Logbook

Today's theme of 2 for one will have to apply to the videos also (actually I have 6 videos, but who's counting?). I had one of our instructors come over this morning and I had to do some work on a PowerPoint presentation for him. He is not just any instructor but my friend Colonel Richard Graham of the USAF (Retired). Col. Graham was a pilot on the SR-71 Blackbird, squadron commander and the 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing Commander. This man has flown at over Mach 3 at 80,000 feet over some of the most sensitive areas in the world and has some great tales to tell. It is an honor to know him and he is gracious with his time and endeavors. I wish I could show you the videos he uses in his presentation but since I do not have the rights to them, I won't violate his trust. However, I have found a couple of interesting videos on you tube that I think you will like (except for the annoying background music).

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5


Part 6

A Little Fun (Maybe)

I'm so close to being ready that I am about to burst. Actually I have quite a few things that I need to work on, but for now, I feel like a student air taxi pilot. My friend Keith has access to a Piper Seneca. It has been in the shop in Denton (DTO) for a while getting a new alternator on one of the engines. Keith doesn't like to drive anywhere. so during a conversation last week, he asked if I would pick him up at Addison (ADS) and fly him to DTO to get the Seneca. I'm a sucker for a little taxi service.

I had to call Calvin because Richard was out of town. So he was "just a passenger". Riiighht. I really wanted him to give me some tips about what I need to work on for my check ride. The first thing he tried to slip past me was that he didn't put on his shoulder harness. So I gave him my best passenger briefing I could where I reminded him that shoulder harnesses must be worn during taxi, takeoff and landing. Also there will be no smoking and should we have to get out of the airplane quickly, he would go out of his door and I would go out of mine. with that out of the way, we began getting radios ready for the trip to KADS. I had to keep the usual McKinney (KTKI) settings for the tower and ground control on radio #1 but I put the ADS ATIS and approach control on radio #2.

I contacted TKI ground and got permission to taxi to 17. Got to the runup area and did my runup then asked for takeoff clearance. Next thing you know, Calvin asks me to do a soft field takeoff, so I pulled back on the yoke and off we went. When we got clear of the TKI airspace, I tuned to the ADS ATIS and got my information "PAPPA" then contacted approach control where I was give a new transponder squawk code. Approch control handed me off to the ADS tower where the tower controller seemed a little miffed that he handed me off in the position I was in. So I got to fly circles above North Dallas till she could fit me into the pattern. I finally got down and that's when the nosewheel shimmy started. This particular airplane has a nosewheel shimmy problem where it feels like the airplane is about to shake apart. If you have any speed left you can pull back on the yoke and take the weight off of the nosewheel and it usually stops. It did this time. We taxied over to Atlantic North, picked up Keith and requested taxi clearance for a VFR departure to the North, with "PAPPA".

we got back in the air pretty quick and that's when I started to make a mistake. Luckily, Calvin was not "just a passenger". The controller had told me not to get into the bravo airspace. I had punched up DTO on the GPS and was heading straight for DTO. Unfortunately, the GPS doesn't tell you that you are headed for bravo airspace until you are in it. I had my chart but didn't have it opened to the proper section. I made a big sweeping right hand turn and flew around the airspace. After I got around the little "finger" of airspace, I turned straight to DTO and contacted them 10 miles out. He had me do a midfield downwind entry then turn to base and final. No nosewheel shimmy. Keith got his things, bid us farewell and we requested taxi clearance.

Out trip back was a lot less eventful. I chose to use dead reconing this time. My instructions were to fly runway heading until I passed Hwy 380, then I could turn out to the east. McKinney is just off of 380 so I just followed the road. 10 Miles out I called the TKI tower and gave them my intentions and was given clearance to land. when I had the airplane on the ground, I was doing pretty good until the nosewheel shimmy started. This time it was bad. I grabbed the yoke and pulled back but I grabbed the push to talk button for the radio and made a couple of funny noises. The guys in the tower asked me if that was a nosewheel shimmy I had. So if they can see it being that bad, it is bad. I wrote up the issue and let Calvin get to his next student.

Lesson learned, use your charts better.

My e-logbook

Today's movie is a cool video I found from the Zurich School of Applied Sciences. It shows a simulation of every commercial flight in the world over a 24 hour period. It is amazing to see how many things fly in the world.

Almost There

Sorry for the delay of posting. I had a challenging week to say the least. I was on vacation last week and wanted to get some things done around the house and in my office. My wife was on vacation also. On Monday my wife was out working in the yard and I heard a sound like someone had fallen. I jumped up from my chair and as soon as I got up, I heard her calling me. I got out there and she tried to jump over a small wall of bricks on our front porch but did not make it. She hurt her arm pretty bad but wouldn't go to the doctor. So I had to tend to her and run a lot of errands. When I got back, my "medicine" I had given her was starting to take effect. She was in a lot of pain.

Tuesday wasn't good for her either. I was going flying Tuesday morning and she was going to the doctor (finally). I got in about 1.3 hours of instrument work. Richard had me shoot 2 ILS approaches on top of some slow flight under the hood. Slow flight is very interesting. Everything happens a lot faster than you would think. The turning radius is much smaller so the airplane really turns (an the possibility of stalls) quick. An ILS approach is one of the most accurate approaches you can make. The ILS at McKinney takes you down to about 200 feet off of the ground. When I took my hood off on the first pass, it was a quick transition from looking at the instruments to getting the airplane ready to land and go missed. No time to be nervous about landings, just do it (Thanks Nike). The second one was a full stop landing, not a missed approach. When I took the hood off, I was lined up perfectly and still on the glide slope so my height was just right. Just slowed it up a little, add about 10 degrees of flaps and wait for the ground effects to kick in then put it down.

I only need 0.3 hours of instrument work before I fullfill my requirements to take my check ride. I need to do some more work on ground refrence manuevers, soft and short field landings then do a phase check with another instructor (a practice check ride). I'm hoping that I'll be ready around Christmas.

Part of the other reason for the late post was obviously my wife but also I had to take my daughter to her allergist, my computer died, was ressurrected, died again (really dead this time), got a new computer that died also and had to be returned. I finally got the new computer running but wasted a lot of time on it. I was able to retrieve all of my old emails. After getting throught all of this, we left on wednesday to spend Thanksgiving with my mother who lives about 5 hours away. All of the time we were gone, my wife was in terrible pain and now her whole arm is swolen. To make it even worse, my daughter got sick (new medicine) every night. Then we get home and we have to take my daughter to the doctor because her cough is getting worse. We find out that she is in the early stages of pnuemonia.

It gets better. I had to leave town Sunday for a business trip and my wife calls and said that she is going to have to have a MRI done to her arm and her sinuses are draining and her throat is scratchy. The only thing that would make this worse was the traffic on my trip. It usually takes me 4.5 - 5 hours. This time it was 6.5 hours.

I'm going to bed and when I wake up, this will all have been an episode of Dallas. RIGHT?

My-Elogbook

Todays Video is one I found about "Dangerous" landings. Let's just say that you wouldn't want to be a passenger on any of these flights. Pay attention to the last one and look at how short the runway is. He also touched down a little early on the displaced threshold.

Night Flying Done

Here we are in November and I am finished with my night flying. The requirements for night flying are 3 hours, 10 landings and one cross country leg over 50 miles and 100 miles or greater for the whole trip. Last week I got in the first part by flying to Denton, Addison, Rockwall and back to McKinney. I also had 8 landings so all I needed was 1.1 hours and 2 more landings. This week, we went to Addison, Durant OK and then back to McKinney. A total of about 125 nm. If we would have had no wind, this would have taken about 1:20 minutes. But I had 2 legs where I had to fight the wind. I had a 27 kt wind coming out of the south-southwest. As it was, it took a little over 1.5 hours.


A couple of reasons we picked Addison were that it is where the DPE I am going to go to for my check ride is based there, I needed an intermediate place to fly so my leg to Durant was over 50nm and also because Addison is in class B airspace and you have to talk to DFW approach control in order to get in there. One thing I have learned about night flying is that it is very hard to find an airport at night, no matter how well lit it is. everyone thinks that with all of the runway lights that it is easy to see. The problem is that the street lights and all of the other lights that illuminate a city are much brighter than the runway lights. You can't really see the pattern of lights until you get close to tracking the centerline of the runway. One thing I have found that helps is to first look for the beacon (the green and white light that denotes an airport) and a dark spot. Addison is in the middle of a lot of bright lights so I just look for the big dark spot, with a beacon, near the bright lights.

I fought a headwind to Addison but it made for a really slow approach (slow ground speed). After we took off I requested flight following to Durant. The tower handed us off to DFW departure and had me climb up to 3500 feet which put me right in the middle of class B airspace. Once I leveled off and got the airplane trimmed, I was getting about 108 kts indicated but 137 kts on the ground. We were going to be in Durant very quickly (ETA was about 33 min). Richard had me do an interesting thing to get lined up with the runway for my approach. since I was coming at the airport from the southwest and the runway is 172 degrees, I never was going to be able to see it straight on. So he had me dial in the GPS 35 approach on the GPS and fly an intercept to the final approach fix for the approach. I turned to head about 70 degrees (my original track was about 20 degrees) until the needle started moving. Then as the needle started moving, I started to turn until it stopped, then center it. After doing this, I looked straight ahead and there was the airport. I descended and moved over to fly the downwind leg where I got slowed up and readied myself for the approach to 17. The hard headwind I was experiencing died down at about 500 feet off of the ground. We got it put down and readied ourselves for the flight back to McKinney.

On the way back I had the opposite effect from the wind. 108 indicated and 87 kts on the ground. This gave me time to fine tune my mixture. This airplane has an EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature) gauge that rarely works. It was working this night. I started to lean the mixture and watched the temp go up. The proper way to lean an airplane, using the EGT, is to lean it until the needle stops going up and starts back down. Then richen the mixture until you get past the peak temp and it goes down a little bit again. This makes the mixture short of peak temp on the rich side. This gives you the best performance while conserving fuel. I was able to lean it pretty good for a cool night at 4500 feet.

Once we got less than halfway, I mentioned that I would like to track the localizer in on the approach without flying the official ILS approach. so I turned more to the west so that I could intercept the localizer pretty far out. I called McKinney tower and told them that I was about 16 miles out and wanted to join the localizer for a full stop landing. They told me to give them a call when I was 4 miles out (which is where the outer marker is). By then I had already intercepted the localizer and glide slope and was dead on for a perfect no flaps landing. I added some carb heat and put it down a little faster than usual, because of no flaps, and taxied to parking. It was a beautiful night for flying but it had to come to an end. I'm starting to like this night flying. You can see everything that you lose during the day and can see airplanes for 20 to 30 miles.

My E-Logbook

This weeks video is from a clip I found on how an airplane is made. I got to fly a Diamond DA-40 last week and when I found this, I thought it was kind of cool, even though they dumb this stuff down a lot for this show.

A New Airplane to Fly

I was sitting around wondering what I could do today with my daughter and then I got the call. My friend Darren called and wanted to know if I wanted to go flying with him in Denton. He got checked out in a Diamond DA-40 a couple of weeks ago and has had nothing but fantastic things to say about it.

It has the same horsepower that the flying club's N733NB has (180 HP). The big difference is that this airplane has a higher takeoff weight but it sure felt a lot lighter. Maybe it's because of all of the carbon fiber construction. I do know that this airplane is a lot more slippery as it moves through the air. The yellow arc on the airspeed indicator covers a lot wider range than on the Cessnas that the club owns. According to the specs, this airplane cruises at 150 ktas (this airplane doesn't have wheel fairings and is 75% power) and burns 10 gph. It also says that it has a 860 lb useful load. Subtract 240 lbs for fuel and it can carry 620 lbs. Even with Darren and myself, that is a nice useful load. You can see a lot more at Diamond's web site. Below is a picture of a DA-40.

Part of the other reason I jumped so quickly on this chance to go flying (like I need an excuse) was the fact that I got a new toy this week and wanted to check it out before I have to use it for real on Monday night. I figured that after a year and a half of using my old David Clark headset, I was ready for something a little more modern. So I went out and bought me a Lightspeed Zulu. This is one cool headset. Part of my reasoning for buying it was that Darren has one and and my CFI has one too. I have heard nothing but great things about them so I bought one. They aren't cheap by any means so that is one of the reasons that I have waited so long to get one. The cheapest you will find on the internet is $850. After using it for the first time, I am sold. They have amazing noise cancellation and I even tried the feature that allows you to connect to an iPod and listen but mutes as soon as something from the panel comes through. It can also connect to a cell phone through Bluetooth. How cool is that? I opted for the included iPhone (yes, I have an iPhone) cable that would allow for me to use my iPhone to play music but if I should receive a call, the iPhone mutes the music and the phone takes over. Then if something comes through the panel, all of that gets muted and the real reason you have a headset on, takes over. It may not look like much but it is quite a step up for me.


Sorry but no logable hours and I'll save the next video for after my night flying tomorrow night. I'll be going from TKI to ADS to DUA to TKI (about 125 nm) for the last of my night flying.

Night Flying

Imagine this. 2 posts in 2 days. I just got back from part of my night flying requirements. According to the FAA, I need 10 landings, 3 hours and in that 3 hours, I have to do a cross country. As of tonight, I have 1.9 hours and 8 landings complete. All I have left is 1.1 hours (with a 50 nm cross country leg in there) and 2 landings left.

We started out by leaving TKI headed for Denton (KDTO) which is about 30 nm to the west. I was going to do this on Thursday night but my friend Keith called today and asked if I could come up to Denton and pick him up as he had dropped off a Piper Seneca to be repaired. I tried to get there before the tower closed but as I made my call 10 miles out, the tower said that they were closing down in 3 minutes. I may be able to go a lot faster than a car but 10 miles in 3 minutes is over 200 mph. Not in a 172. I was able to make a beautiful slow turn to join the pattern on a right base and finally put it down without any landing lights. We finally we able to find our turn off and head toward the tower where Keith was waiting.

We picked up our passenger and headed toward Addison. I contacted approach control, got my squawk code and instructions for my approach to Addison. Our controller could not get my call sign right to save his life. He would call out the wrong call sign and I would answer with the right call sign. He paid too much for his clue but I had to live with it because when he handed me off to the tower, they had the wrong call sign. same results with them. Even after we landed and was handed off to ground control, it was still wrong. We dropped Keith off at Atlantic Aviation NORTH (Richard could not get it through his head that we were at Atlantic North, not South) and taxied back to the threshold. I did get to hear the ground controller call a Learjet pilot an idiot so eloquently, he though she was being helpful. I was in the midst of greatness.

We got our clearance to taxi back to 33 and then to take off with a departure to the east. So I did my best to remember how I used to get home after a few too many adult beverages (because I couldn't see the runway because of no landing light). Soon we were airborne and headed toward Rockwall. Rockwall is an interesting little airport. It is 3373 X 45 feet long and when you land to the north, you have to flare an lot more than usual because it slopes up. To top it off, there are some interesting power lines on the north end of the runway. I did a couple of touch and goes (in the dark) and headed back toward McKinney.

By the time we got to McKinney, it was dead and got a straight in approach. This was my absolute best landing ever and had someone there to confirm it. We got to the runway so smooth that even Richard was amazed. We taxied down to Delta and turned off to the Alpha taxi way. The controller found out that we had a red neck airplane. Because the taxi light was out, Richard was using my big flashlight to light up the reflectors so I could see the centerline. It was very funny to hear the controller ask if that was a flashlight we were using on the dash. What can you say. Once a redneck, always a redneck.

My E-Logbook

This post's video is another Cub video. These guys who fly Cubs are an interesting bunch. They can land an airplane where you thought only birds could land. Pretty cool stuff. This is still not a turbine Cub. We'll get to one of those soon enough.

I'm Starting to Like this Instrument Training

I got to go out again today and do some more instrument training again. This one was a little different. First of all, it was Sunday morning and it was daylight. Other than that, it was back under the hood. Richard told me that he was sorry but he was going to have to take away the nice beautiful day away from me.

On climb out, Richard had me put on the hood and head east again. He wanted me to track 090 at 3,000 feet then intercept the 180 radial off of the Bonham VORTAC. He punched in the frequency for the Bohnam VOR (114.6) and had me dial in the CDI for the 180 radial. When I started to see the needle move, I needed to turn to the VOR and track the course.

My big mistake was not thinking about what I learned in ground school. When flying a VOR radial, you fly to the other side. In my case, I was tracking the 180 radial, but I was flying north which means that I should have dialed in the 360 radial. This meant that I had a "FROM" flag in the window instead of a "TO" flag. This also caused me problems chasing the needle.

When tracking a VOR radial, you always chase the needle on the CDI. What that means is that if the needle is moving to the right, you turn to the right (in small increments) to get the needle to stop moving then keep turning the direction (in small increments) to get the needle to move back to the center. Once you get the needle back to the center, take out the added angle you used to intercept the needle and fly the course. Of course this may not be the same as the actual VOR radial because of wind. The VOR doesn't care which way the airplane is pointed, just which way it is tracking through the air. after I changed the CDI to the 360 radial, I got my "TO" flag and was able to "chase the needle" and have it work properly.

Once I finally got to track the radial correctly, I was able to fly it all of the way to BYP. I kept it straight over the top as I flew through the "cone of ambiguity", which happens as you fly over the top of the station. As soon as I got on the other side, my flag flipped for "to" to "from"and I was still tracking 360 degrees.

Before we set up to do some landings at F00, he had me do some steep turns. At least a 45 degree bank, stay with 100 feet of the assigned altitude (3000 feet) and roll out within 10 degrees while still under the hood. The first one was not great but workable. The second one was much better but he had me hold for 450 degrees. Then he had me drop to 1600 feet and take off my hood and we were on top of the F00 airport.

I entered the pattern and was setting up for a short field landing over an obstacle. When I turned base and was setting up for a 60 kt approach I made the remark that it felt like we were crawling. I was tracking 270 degrees and had 65 kts indicated but the GPS had my ground speed at 36 kts. That meant that we had a 29 kt headwind. A Cessna 172 only has a maximum demonstrated crosswind component of 15 kts. As we were sinking, we went through a shear layer and the wind dropped to about 7 kts. We did a few more of the usual short and soft field landings then he had me do a slip to a landing. That one was very hard because of the shear layer.

After I finally got us on the ground, it was time to head home and do the ILS 17 approach to McKinney. I tracked the course that Richard asked me to track, intercepted the localizer and glideslope and tracked it all of the way in. I was a bit tired but felt great. The instrument part of my training is getting interesting. I like the challenge but need a lot more work at it. I only have 1.5 hours of required hood time and 2.6 hours of night flying left for my required training in order for me to take my check ride. I'm supposed to fly this Thursday night to get some night flying out of the way and I'll see what I can do the next weekend to do some more hood work.

My E-logbook

The video for today is from the EAA. It is a video of a "cub like" airplane. Cubs have been around forever and the original ones had small engines in them but they now have turbine cubs (I'll save that for the next post). Enjoy

Simulated Instruments

I finally got off of my ass and went flying again. I'm glad I did. I'm on my last of 2 required elements (with an instructor). I began my simulated instrument training today. So far, all of my training has been centered around me seeing the big picture out of the front of the airplane.

Now with a view limiting device, all I can see is the instruments in front of me. I had to listen to the instructions that my instructor gave me as far as course, altitude and speed. Everything is coordinated by looking at the instruments. Each instrument can serve several purposes.

For instance, if you notice you are climbing, your airspeed will probably be coming down, the rate of climb indicator will be going up and the attitude indicator will show a climb. They are all related. If you are in a bank, the attitude indicator will show a bank, the turn coordinator will show a bank and your heading will be changing.

The object is to fly wings level, at a constant altitude and maintain course. This is easier said than done. The nature of flying is truly dynamic. The wind is constantly changing, the DG is constantly precessing (click here for an explanation of precession). In my case, the DG (directional gyro) was precessing a lot more than it should have. It made for a lot of extra work to constantly keep resetting it.

Once I finally got the hang of flying by instruments, I got to experience some unusual attitudes. Essentially, that is when the instructor puts the plane in an unusual climb or dive and hands it back over to you to get out of it, only using instruments. The main thing to look for is speed. Is it increasing or is it decreasing. If it is increasing, you are in a dive so you cut power and begin to pull up (not too fast or you will rip the wings off) and level your wings. If it is decreasing, you are in a climb, add full power and begin to push the nose over and level your wings.

By now, I am getting tired. It takes a lot of concentration to make minute corrections just by looking at the instruments when you are used to looking out of the window for that visual reference. So we did a GPS 17 approach back into McKinney. We got our squawk code and headed for our approach fixes. By the time I got to the outer marker, and descended to 1060 feet (the decision altitude for a GPS approach), off came the hood and I could see the runway. I made a small correction for the error in my tracking of the course, and landed (my first night landing). We did 2 more landings so I could be "night current". The problem with being night current is that according to our club rules, I can't fly at night unless it is with an instructor. According to the FAA, I can't carry passengers until I get my certificate. The only reason to stay night current is so that you can carry passengers at night. But I am "night current".

My E-Logbook

The video for this post is a DeHavelland Twin Otter on a short field landing then a short field take off. There is no way I would attempt that at my skill level.

IFR Approaches

I went flying today with my friend Kieth again. He wanted to do some time under the hood shooting RNAV approaches in 737TY because it has a Garmin 430W GPS in it. It does not have an auto-pilot though. Kieth hasn't flown this plane in a couple of years so he was a little rusty. I fly this one all of the time so I gave him some pointers on flying the little, slow Cessna compared to the Cirrus and Pipers he likes to fly. The other airplanes he likes to fly handle much different than our little 172.

We left McKinney and turned to the northeast where we flew the RNAV approach to Bonham(F00). We even flew the published hold before we started the final approach. My job was to be his eyes while he was using his view limiting device. All he could see was what was in front of him., nothing outside the airplane. If I saw something going wrong, I could reach in and correct it. As we got lined up for our final and got to the decision altitude, he pulled off his goggles and saw the field and we did a missed approach, climbed to 2500 feet and then started on our next leg.

The second part of our journey was to go to Sulphur Springs (KSLR) for another approach and to get some lunch. Everything went well here too, until we landed. Keith hasn't flown 7TY much and it sits up a lot higher than most of the other airplanes he flies so his approach was a lot hotter than I would do and he also didn't realize how low the wheels were so we hit a little hard and bounced a couple of times. We walked over to the Redbarn Cafe and had some lunch. A lot of people have been telling me about this place but I have never been. One of the complaints that I read about on AirNav.com said that this is a smoking restaurant but on Sundays, they don't allow smoking from 12 to 2 PM. We got there at 1 PM. The food was good and we were ready to go so Keith said that he wanted to file IFR going back.

We used my iPhone to file an IFR flight plan on DUATS. So we took off from Sulphur Springs and headed to McKinney. We picked up our flight plan just after we made our turn to the west. Unfortunately, ATC didn't want to give us the RNAV approach into McKinney we wanted so we had to go straight in. We did have to deviate a little to avoid some skydivers near Caddo Mills (7F3). Since we filed IFR, I was able to get a snapshot from FlightAware.com of our trip.

Since I am not a private pilot yet, I was not able to log any of this time. If I was, I could log this as PIC since I was technically the safety pilot, since Keith was under the hood. It is still a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

I Can See The finish Line

I'll try to make this a 2 for 1 deal. I needed to post something about my flying last Sunday (Aug 24) but I have been too busy to sit down and type something out but here goes.

I went out and did more pattern work hoping for some cross wind but all I got was about 2 knots 10 degrees off of center. Not very challenging. It did start out interesting though. I did my usual pre-flight, started my taxi and held short on the ramp while I called ground control and asked for permission to taxi and stay in the pattern. I got my clearance to taxi to runway 17. So I set out down the Alpha taxiway to do my run-up. As I got there, they turned the airport around to use runway 35. The guys in the tower asked if I had received the message and I acknowledged that I had. I asked if they wanted me to taxi all of the way down to runway 35 and they said no that he would get me up and fix everything while I was in the air. The wind was so light that taking off with a 2 knot tailwind was not a big deal.

They had me take off from 17 and make a right hand turn then make a big sweeping left hand turn to land back on the 35 end of the runway. The pattern was getting full (this was strange for early Sunday morning) with one plane from Addison in front of me and my instructor and another student behind me. The guys from Addison are always irritating the controllers because they like to extend their patterns a lot longer than our controllers like. So I'm following this guy from Addison and he tries to go too far on his climb out and gets a verbal lashing from the controller. He tightens up his pattern afterward. Meanwhile I get more and more confident with my landings, even though the wind is light. It finally shifts a little more toward crosswind but never too much. I greased every one of them. I knew my instructor could see what I was doing because they were on my tail, but a lot slower in a C152. His student asked me why I was flying so high in the pattern. He though that I had gone up to 2000 ft (the TPA is 1600 ft). I did go up to 1700 feet because I kept getting in the wake turbulence of the guy in front of me.

All in all, a good day.

The next item on the agenda is another cross country. I needed another 1.5 hours so I set up a cross country to go from KTKI - F46 - KDUA - KPRX - SLR - KTKI on Aug 31. Round trip was about 210 nm. For a cross country to be "legal" for a student, at least one leg on each flight (I had 2. I stopped in Paris) must be over 50 nm. The leg from F46 - KDUA was 60.7 nm and the leg from KPRX to KTKI was 63.4 nm. I have to count this as a trip from Paris to McKinney because I didn't land at another airport in between, I just overflew the Sulphur Springs VOR, then headed to McKinney.

It was very interesting weather conditions. It was very hazy and winds out of the east. Every one of the airports I was going to had a 17/35 runway. This meant that I had a direct crosswind at every landing. Durant was the worst. The winds there were 110@11k. The maximum demonstrated crosswind component for a C172 is 15 knots. I was close to it and it was a little gusty to boot. At one point I thought I had run out of rudder but was eventually able to get down. By the time I got to Paris, it was only 8 knots.

Of course when I get to Paris, I get anther challenge. I am entering the pattern in a "normal"manner because I wanted to be safe and courteous. I joined the left downwind for runway 17. I had announced myself 8 miles out with my intentions. As I am turning to the downwind leg, I hear another airplane say the he is 5 miles out for a straight in final. At an untowered airport, this is a no no. This is where accidents come from. I do my last GUMPS check and announce myself as I turn base. By now, the other guy (who is in a Saratoga) is 3 miles out. I announce and turn to base. The guy behind me acknowledges that he has me in sight. For being a jerk, I am going to make his day. I grab every bit of flaps that I can and slow down to 60 knots knowing that the speed demon behind me has to get slow quickly too. I finally got on the ground and slowly taxied to the next exit where I announced I was clear of the active runway. When Mr Saratoga pulls up and gets tied down, he asks me if I am from around here. I tell him no. He then asks if I am familiar with the area and I once again tell him no. He then asks if I know where the jail is. I couldn't stop laughing for a good 20 minutes. I closed my flight plan, got some water and then filed another flight plan to get home.

Once in the air for the leg home, I made it much quicker as I finally had a tail wind. I hit all of my checkpoints and finally touched down in McKinney with a 5 knot crosswind. I was tired as I got up at 6 AM and it was now 11:45. Through all of the haze, I didn't see any clouds form until I was on my final leg home. An hour after I landed, there were clouds everywhere. It is truly amazing to see the soupy mixture in the morning that will become the afternoon thunderstorm.

Today's video is of a picture perfect gear up landing. This guy did an amazing job keeping down the center line, shutting down his engines and getting everyone out safely.



My E-Logbook

Getting More Confident

I went flying today to get some of the bugs out. I went and did some touch and goes to get used to flying solo again. I feel like I am regressing but after about an hour of T&Gs, I felt great. I finally had some wind to play with and it was a decent 10 knot, slightly off the runway wind. Too bad I didn't have any more time because I wanted to go do some ground reference maneuvers. So I reluctantly told the tower that after 8 T&Gs I would make this one a full stop landing. My last 3 landings were some of the best I have ever done. I came in so slow and smooth that I was beginning to think that someone else was flying. If Richard ever gets to read this, I even was using my feet a lot too (only a couple of times when I got a little crosswind).

Sorry that I don't have more to post but at this stage of my training, I need to finish getting the basics mastered, do another cross country, fly 3 hours at night (with a cross country) and get 3 hours under the hood then I should be ready for my check ride.

My E-logbook

Escaping the Texas Heat?

It's been a little warm here in Texas lately. It's been in all of the papers and all over TV. We have been over 100 degrees the last 11 days in a row and over 100 for 28 days this summer. Sunday we hit a high of 107.

So what did I do? I got in a hot airplane and flew to Graham (KRPH) on Sunday with my friend Keith. Keith is an instrument rated pilot and a man who's place I took on the TFC Board. I still learn from him every day. He likes to stay proficient so he flies just about everywhere IFR. Toady was no exception. We flew our club's Arrow (PA-28R-180) so we could get there pretty fast. Keith likes to go to interesting places. This place was about 100 miles away, so it wouldn't be a long flight.

The ride out was very bumpy. It was so hot that the thermals we giving the auto pilot a very hard time. We finally gave up and flew it by hand. Once we finally got to Graham we pulled up for fuel and only burner 12 gals of fuel on our little hop. Then we walked across the street to the Dairy Queen to make our $100 hamburger trip official.

The trip back was just as bumpy and I got to fly for about 35 minutes. The biggest problem I had was the thermals. We would fly into a thermal and the next thing you know, we were over 100 feet above the assigned altitude. So you try to push the nose down to get down to altitude then you would fly out of it and then over shoot the low side. ATC does not like you to go more than a 100 feet in over or below your assigned altitude. After a while, it settled down a little and I didn't have to fight it so much.

I'm glad we had such a good time because when I got home, my A/C went out. I may not be flying very much in the future because I just dumped $6500.00 on a new A/C unit. Below is our flight track from Flightaware.com on both legs.

More Laps Around The Patch

After flying with other people for the last couple of weeks, I finally found time to go for myself. I needed to use Richard to help knock off the rust. I really needed the day I had for confidence. After watching everyone else fly, I learned a thing or two. We went out to do some short field take offs and landings, plus a couple of soft field landings.

As usual, while flying 7TY, I started sweating. Maybe it's because it is July and we have had 21 days this year over 100 degrees, but I digress. It seems that the vent on the left seat side doesn't blow very well compared to the right seat side. I know from experience lately that the right side, works well. Maybe I should have written this up. Before this airplane got it's new engine, the vent was making a noise like the stall warning makes, except it made it all of the time. While it was down, it was "fixed". I sure hope that the fix wasn't to just limit the airflow. You know how us fat people like our air.

We got out on the runway and did a short field takeoff first. We used the Charlie taxiway as our 50 ft. obstruction. On a short field takeoff, you want to rotate and use the best angle of climb (Vx) which is about 62 knots in 7TY. This allows you to climb quickly but can cause heating to the engine pretty quickly. So the idea is to climb over the obstacle using Vx but change to Vy (Best rate of climb, which is 74 knots) after you clear it. This gives the engine some air to cool it properly. Treat you engine right or suffer the consequences. The short field landing process is supposed to clear a 50 foot obstruction just off of the end of the runway and then put it down quickly and stop quickly. I hope I never have to do this but it is good to know I can do it.

The soft field landing is for landing on a soft surface. You want to keep the speed as low as possible, the touchdown to be a smooth as possible and keep the nose wheel ooff of the ground for as long as possible (the airplane doesn't need any help flipping itself). My first soft field landing didn't quite go as planned but the next ones were the best I have ever done. It felt good, despite all of the sweating, to finally get this down. I actually had quite a bit of wind today and it helped. I needed to get the crosswind components down better and it kept changing from the left of center to right of center so every landing had a different wind to battle.

I'll see if I can find another video to post but I can't do it right now. I'll update this post later.

My E-Logbook

Just Can't Get Enough Pancakes

I guess my pancake run back in June was a big hit with one of my friends. As soon as I told him about the trip, he reserved 7TY for the July fly in. I have been busy at work (I know, I sound like a broken record) trying to get a project out of the door that I have been working on since I started this new job. I still don't have it ready but it better be ready soon as I have to have it to a customer in about 2 weeks. Despite my job addiction, I managed to find time to go with Darren to get some pancakes.

We left very early on Saturday morning (we had the plane from 7 AM to 12:30 PM) and flew the same course we flew when I went. At least I know I can do a proper flight plan. This time, it was someone else flying and it was much hotter. The one nice advantage for taking 7TY was the GNS 330 Mode S transponder that shows traffic on the GPS. As we got near Midway (KJWY), we saw some traffic that was getting close to us. I just kept my eyes open and soon we saw the traffic. This is such a great feature.

I won't tell any details but I got to see Darren sweat a little on the landing at Granbury (KGDJ). Of course when we got to the food, it was as good as ever. Not quite as busy as the last one but still a good crowd. I called my friend Kyle who lives in Granbury and told him I was there and he hurried right over. I had called him the day before and he didn't answer but I left a message. He gets so many calls that it is easy to get lost in the noise for Kyle. I bought us all a nice pancake breakfast then we had to leave again. We said our goodbyes, pushed the airplane out of the ditch and headed back to Mesquite (KHQZ) for some more inexpensive fuel.

As we got to Mesquite, we heard our friend Anton rolling down the runway for takeoff. After pleasantries were exchanged, we entered the pattern we got in line for a busy series of landings. We fueled up and headed back home to McKinney (KTKI) for a landing at a hot airport. The controllers at McKinney are being very friendly these days. When we were on the ground ready to taxi to parking, the welcomed us home. Nice touch.

Once again, no loggable hours but a full belly and a lot of fun.

Flying High and Fast

This post is a little late but it's better late than never. On July 19th we had to take my daughter to spend a week with my mother. Unfortunately, my mother is a 6 hour drive, one way, away. With the hectic schedule I keep, this wasn't an option. So I asked Richard if he would be willing to fly us to Louisiana for the day in his Bonanza. He said that he could arrange that. I also asked him what it was going to cost me. His original response was fuel and $25 per hour for the airplane, which I thought was fair.

His Bonanza cruises at 170 knots and burns 13 gallons per hour at altitude. Our flight plan was a direct route from Addison (KADS) to Leesville (L39) and should have taken us about 1.5 hours. That was about how long it took. We went up to 9500 feet where it was about 55 degrees. As great as that sounds, the sun was beating down on us pretty hard so that offset any of the pleasantly cool air. We had given Anna a Dramamine table to make sure that she didn't have any problems. I've noticed that it tends to make her sleepy.

We finally started making our descent once we were handed off to Fort Polk Approach. Leesville is a tiny little paved strip 3807 X 75 feet. The Bonanza had no problems getting down and off at the only exit (midfield) they had.

We visited for a while and made the stupid decision to fly back at 3 PM in the middle of July. Too bad we weren't smart enough to wait until 5 or 6 PM when the turbulence would have been significantly less. When we left, there were some storms building behind us so I guess we got out in time but it was a rough climb out. We climbed up to 10,500 feet and headed for Mesquite (KHQZ). Mesquite has fuel available for a LOT less than Addison ($4.75/gal as opposed to $7.39/gal). We took on 48 gallons which averaged out to about 14 gal/hr. Not too bad for a "family" outing. I looked at flying into Alexandria, which is on the other side of when my mother lives, and the cost for a commercial ticket was $514 per person. I think we made the right choice.

No logged time for this trip, just riding in the right seat and taking a lot of mental notes about what it takes to fly a high performance complex aircraft. Below are the shots from Flightaware.com of our trip. Since we had flight following, there is a radar track and a log for both legs.

Better Sooner than Later

Pardon my bad puns (don't worry, there will be many more in the future). Last Thursday I went with my friend Darren to KOUN in Norman OK. this is the airport at the University of Oklahoma. we went down there for Darren's first $100 Hamburger run. Darren had the hamburger while I had Ozzie's special of the day, an open face roast beef sandwich with brown gravy and 3 sides. In hindsight, I should have tried the burger.

We left McKinney at about 9:30 AM and headed due North. One of our goals was to intercept the Victor 573 airway and fly to the Ardmore VORTAC then fly the Victor 17 airway to the WETIX fix and then begin our decent to KOUN. We got to the airport at around 11:15 AM. The line guys at the FBO were awesome. No tie down fees or minimum gas purchase, just great hospitality.

We finished lunch pretty quickly because there were storms building to the northeast and we wanted to get south of the Red River before they hit. Our path back was straight to Sherman (KSWI) where we could get some cheap fuel. Cheap is a relative term in aviation fuel. Sherman was $4.75/gal for 100LL. When we left Sherman, it was pretty hot so our calculated density altitude was 3376 feet MSL, the actual elevation at Sherman is 745 feet MSL. It was hot, but not too humid, so the engine and wings thought that we were at 3376 feet. When you have two guys that are the size that Darren and I are, the 160 horsepower 172 had to do some work to get us flying.

We made our last leg to McKinney in no time at all. Once we did the post flight and headed out, we had just enough time to get ready to head out to Addison (KADS) for their Kaboom Town celebration. When I get some pictures from it, I'll get them posted. In the mean time, we have some pictures from last year on the TFC club site.

No logbook updates this time as all of the flying was done by someone else. Since I'm just a student pilot, none of the time is logable.

I Smell Pancakes

Today I set out for a bit of fun for a cross country. Calvin had agreed to go with me to the wonderful town of Granbury TX (KGDJ) for their monthly pancake breakfast fly in. I have a friend who lives there and has asked when I was going to come out for the fly in. Back in May I told him I would do everything I could to get out there in June. Well today was the day. I had several changes during the course of saying yes.


First, I had to find someone to fly with me. My friend Darren just passed his check ride, so I thought I would see if he wanted to go. Of course he did but was going out of town with his wife so he was unavailable. Next I asked my instructor if he would like some pancakes. He has an IFR student who has a 2 hour lesson every Saturday morning for the next 6 weeks, so he was out too. Next I called Calvin, our president and also a CFI in our flying club. He would have loved to go but had some vacation and wanted to go to Ohio. So I tried my friend Keith. He was up for it but wasn't up for getting up early in the morning. I convinced him it would be fun so he agreed. The problem for me was that I wouldn't get any flying done for me, but any excuse for flying was a good excuse. So we has a date set, June 28, wheels up no later than 8 AM (I reserved 3NB for 7 AM - 12 PM).


Everything was progressing nicely and I was really looking forward to visiting my friend Kyle and a good cross country flight on top of that. On Wednesday I got an email from Calvin where he asked if I still wanted to go eat some pancakes. I replied that I had made arrangements with Keith but would see if I could get out of it so I could fly left seat. I called Keith and he had forgotten about it so I was the new left seat guy.


I started my preflight on Friday afternoon at work. When I got home, I had some family things to do but as soon as we got Anna down, I started to get my outlook briefing from FSS. I was getting frustrated because I use several tools so I can get a big picture of what the weather is doing, plotted against my course. One of those tools is DUATS weather. DUATS was down for about 2 hours last night. By the time I got finished and felt comfortable, it was about 11:30 PM. My alarm was set for 5:45 AM. I could have used the sleep but I had to feel good about my planning. One of the reasons it took so long was the fact that I wanted to intercept VOR radials for all of my check points. Not just a single radial but a radial from 2 different VOR stations. I had spent a lot of time doing this.


5:45 AM and my alarm goes off. I get up and get ready and head out to the airport. During my briefing last night, the briefer told me that I would have a pretty strong wind to deal with today. The winds at my altitude were 200@34. If I had been able to fly straight to my destination, it would have only been 76 nm. Since I live in a very active class B airspace, I had to plan to fly under the 4000 foot outer shelf to stay out of the class B airspace. So my 76 nm route now was 98 nm with 5 way points for me to hit. I flew from TKI (McKinney) to HQZ (Mesquite) to (LNC) Lancaster to JWY (Midway) then as I flew straight to GDJ (Granbury), I picked up a couple of other reference points where I crossed I35W and the town of Godley. In a perfect world, I could have made this trip in about an hour. With a 34 knot wind to contend with, my calculated time was 1:22. I won't bore you with details but we did make it about 3 minutes late.


The pancakes were awesome as was the hospitality. My friend Kyle was out videotaping my landing. If I can get my hands on a copy of it, I may post it (depends on how good it looked). Calvin won some micro-fiber wipes that will help him keep his airplane clean and he also won a shirt that the gave to me. Time was flying by so we had to get out. I refueled and then went in to do my flight plan while Calvin watched the airplane. We said our goodbyes and prepared to head back to McKinney. Of course with my luck, when I got my winds aloft forecast, my 34 knot headwind I fought getting there was now only an 19 knot tailwind. Just my luck. As we were coming up on HQX, Calvin started the guessing game of when we thought we would touch down at McKinney. I could have won if I hadn't started to slow down so soon. My best guess was 11:57 AM and Calvin has straight up noon. I could have kept my speed up and just dropped down to 1,600 feet and slowed down once in the pattern but I slowed it down 5 miles out. Of course I was number 2 behind another Cessna and had to extend my downwind leg out past Hwy 380 so that ate up more time. All in all, we put it down at 12:00, as Calvin predicted.


I had such a good time and even though Calvin gave me some critiques of things I need to work on, it is going to be hard to wipe the smile off of my face for a while.


My video for this post is some cool shots of crosswind landings. Most people have a tough time with crosswind landings when they first get started. This is at the other extreme. These people shouldn't be able to land these things but when your skills are as honed as theirs are, you get amazing results. Then again, there is something to be said for the go around too.



My E-Logbook

I'm Back

After a month of layoffs because of work (and any thing else you can think of), I finally got back in the air today. I couldn't have asked for a better day to fly. It was dead calm when we took off so I didn't have to fight any crosswinds. This is exactly what I needed for my confidence. I had the best day of shooting landings I had ever had. I did soft field, short field and did some slips also. I did a slip beginning my turn to base and also slipped to final. I have never slipped an airplane as much as I did today. It was by far the most fun I have ever had flying.

Just before we decided to call it quits (that's because Richard gets bored when you do something right), we headed southeast to do some turns about a point. Since we had calm air, he thought it would be good to see what it was like to do this without any wind. The interesting thing about wind is that it is truly dynamic. What was calm 20 minutes ago, now may have a northeast wind blowing you around. Richard kept telling me that the wind should be coming out of the southeast but as I looked at the wind patterns on the lake, it was coming from the northeast. That explained why my TAP was not very uniform. Now that I knew where the wind was really from, we did much better.

I am so happy with my performance today that I want to go fly some more. Richard wants me to get back to flying solo again but I may have him go with me to do some more crosswind landings, just to get current again. I still need some night flying, instrument work and some hood work but it will all come in time. I feel really good and want to keep this feeling going. So instead of flying anymore today, I'll take my daughter swimming.

I'm going to try to find some cool videos on YouTube each time I post something. Today is about VERY short takeoffs and landings. See if you can get as good as these guys are. Good luck.



My E-Logbook

Steep Turns

I'm finally out knocking the rust off of my skills. I went flying with Richard on Sunday. As an added bonus, we took my boss's son and her husband with us. Luckily I was flying N733NB because it can carry a lot more weight and I could feel the difference a couple of hundred extra pounds in the back made. The one good thing was that I didn't need quite as much back pressure on the yoke while doing the steep turns because I had so much weight that far back. The farther back you go with weight, the more tail heavy the airplane gets. That also means that the nose gets a little lighter and easier to pull back on the yoke. Just don't go too far. That is part of the weight and balance equation and you don't want to get out of the envelope.

After we took off, we headed east then north. We got out to an area where we could do some high altitude (4000 feet) work. I did some steep bank turns at 45 degrees. After you get past 30 degrees you start loosing lift so you need some back pressure on the elevators to maintain altitude. Once I rolled past 30 degrees, I added the back pressure to maintain altitude. My requirements were to roll out within 10 degrees on the heading and no more than 100 feet either way of my starting altitude. This was a lot harder that I thought it would be. Once I got the hang of it, I had to be careful of overdoing it because of my 2 passengers.

Next we headed off to Sherman to do some touch and goes. The first one was OK but the second one sucked so we headed over to Grayson county to do a couple more. Both were mediocre at best. I guess that means that we'll be back doing touch and goes for the next time out.

Finally we needed to head back to McKinney so we made a dash south. when were were about 10 miles out, we called the tower and announced our intentions. I got to do an approach I have never done before at McKinney. Since the winds were out of the north we were landing runway 35. The normal traffic pattern for 35 is right hand traffic, which puts all of the traffic east of the airport. Since I was coming in from the northwest, I was given a left hand approach (over town). No big deal because we do right and left hand traffic all of the time but it was just a different picture I had never seen before. We landed and got off of the runway quickly then taxied to parking on the north ramp.

Both passengers seemed to be OK but didn't like the steep turns. It was bumpy also but that still wasn't as bad as the steep turns. I guess it is all a matter of perspective. I kind of liked the steep turns, but I also had the yoke in my hands.

Update:

I ran across this on YouTube. It is a really good piece on Harrison Ford. I loved the line "I'm just another Pilot".

My E-logbook

Starting Over Again

Today was an interesting chapter in my pursuit of the allusive pilot certificate. After my last rant, I managed to get in touch with another instructor, who happens to be the president of the board, and made a date to fly today. I reserved N737TY, the old plane I flew before it went away for 5 months. It was good to get back in it, especially since it has a new Garmin GNS 430W in it. Along with a new GPS, it has a new engine and a rebuilt firewall. In my previous rant (that was not fueled by alcohol), I was frustrated at my inability to fly. Calvin helped ease a lot of my frustrations and get me back on track.

I thought I needed to start back at the basics just to get a whole new perspective on what I am doing. So I told him that I wanted to do some basic ground maneuvers. I started with S-turns around a road and slowly got myself back into flying shape. I was rusty but I wanted this to be a kind of re-birth so I listened to how he explained what I needed to do to make the maneuvers better. We then moved on to turns about a point and I finally got a much better explanation of what I was doing wrong.

We got the plane back from a guy who was in my ground school class with me and it had about a half of a tank. While we were pre-flighting Calvin suggested that we head toward Greenville and get some fuel there to offset the incredibly high fuel cost at McKinney. The fuel at Greenville was only $4.00 compared to $5.69 at McKinney. I got to save $1.69/gal for 24.2 gallons. We then headed back to McKinney and were given clearance to enter the pattern on a right base for runway 35. Here is where the old habits kick in and although my approach was good, when I flared, I pulled back to hard too fast. That is what you get for not flying for a month. Of course a month is relative, but when you have as few hours as I have, a month without flying is an eternity. So I got busted for a less than stellar landing but we did survive and the airplane was still in good shape.

Calvin told me I needed to get back in the saddle and continue flying. I need to be flying with an instructor before I solo again. I knew this was coming, hence the reason for asking for Calvin's help. I can't tell you how much it helped to have a new and fresh point of view in my head while flying (I also liked his very calm and soothing voice). I will be flying again soon and more often, after an agreement with my boss who is letting me come in late once a week. I like to fly early in the morning to keep the brutal Texas sun from baking me too bad.

My E-logbook

I've Hit A Bump In The Road

I have a dilemma. I started a new job in January that demands more of my time during the day. I used to be able to occasionally get out to the airport and do some flying during the week. With the new job, I don't have time to do that. I have to be on the road by 7:45 AM, at the latest, to be at work by 8:30 AM. Traffic sucks and the best thing about it is I get to ride with my wife and use the HOV lane. I get finished at 5:30 PM and it usually takes an hour to get home. By the time I get home, eat and change clothes, it is 7:15 PM.

Here is where the flag for piling on should be thrown. Since I can only fly on the weekends, I have a very tough time making sure that we have acceptable weather and an airplane. Everybody wants to fly on the weekends. For the last month, we have had bad weather and grounded airplanes. These I can live with. What I am having a problem with is the fact that every time I try to get my instructor to fly on the weekends, he is out of town. I know that he flies a lot during the week. While that may be great for people who have the luxury of being able to sneak away for a while during the week, it really sucks for me. I am so frustrated that I can't get any instruction to finish this wonderful journey I have started, I am even considering giving it up because of this major hurdle.

I have endured financial hardship, a loving and wonderful wife who has sacrificed a lot for me to be able to do this, medical hell just to keep my third class medical current and now this seems like it is the one that may actually derail me. I keep this blog so all of my friends who have supported me can keep up with my training and now I don't have anything good to write and that bothers me. I'll try to do what I can to remedy this. As a matter of fact, I just reserved one of the airplanes for Saturday after I had a talk with my instructor. Of course nothing good is going to come from this as the plane I reserved is now grounded. Maybe it will be fixed by Saturday. Then again, I still have to get another instructor who is available. It sucks to be me right now.

Remos G3

Our flying club had the great pleasure of getting to try out a new airplane today. The way the story goes is that I was reading my AOPA Flight Training magazine and came across an article about places to train for the sport pilot rating. The sport pilot rating is a more restrictive license than a private pilot but has some other advantages that offset the restrictions. In the article they named the US Flight Academy in Denton Texas as a place that offered an accelerated course in the sport pilot rating. I had a weekend off (Hard to believe, huh?) and drove up to Denton to check out the facility. While there I was able to sit in one of their Remos G3 light sport aircraft. The weight restrictions for a LSA are that the gross weight cannot exceed 1320 lbs. Our Cessna 150's are a lot heavier than that and have a smaller usable weight than the Remos G3 does. They claim to have a 695 lb usable weight where our C150s have about 470 lb usable weight. When you are as big as I am, an extra 225 lbs goes a long way. If you do the weight and balance on a C150 for me and my instructor, we can put about 5.5 lbs of fuel in and be at gross weight. The Remos can not only take both of us and a full tank but it leaves us over 125 lbs for other stuff.

We gave away a couple of demo rides to club members and both of the lucky winners are still raving about everything from how fast it climbs to the view from the cockpit. I was lucky enough to get one of the rides and I'll be making a trip to Denton soon myself. Below are some pictures from today.

My E-Logbook

I Need Practice

After a grueling month I had to get back into the swing of flying. I knew that March was going to be tough but I really didn't expect it to be as bad as it was. I had one last obligation to my former employer and it was a whole week in Indianapolis. Of course in that business, one week on show site means at least a week of pre-production and then at least a week of post-production. I have a very challenging new job and all of the added stress of finishing this one last task took it's toll on me. To make things worse, I got home on Monday night only to turn around Tuesday and get on a plane to San Francisco for the night, attend a meeting the next day and fly back that night. Enough of the whining.

I finally got back in an airplane on Saturday. I was supposed to go on a cross country but I didn't have time to get with my instructor to adequately plan it. So I didn't get a sign off to fly the cross country but I did go and do some touch and goes just to get the cobwebs cleaned.


I couldn't have asked for a better day (actually I could have but I won't complain). It was in the 60's, not a cloud in the sky and the winds were almost non existent. This is more of a problem than I would have figured. Without any wind, I was carrying just a little more ground speed that I usually do. On my last cross country, when I landed in McKinney, I had about a 10 - 15 knot headwind and when I touched down, my ground speed was so slow that I had to add power to get off of the runway on to the taxiway. That was not the case this time. Several other little small things changed without any wind. I flared just a touch high and didn't get the sink I was used to so I dropped harder than I wanted on my last 2 landings. I knew I was going to have a bumpy landing when I heard the stall warning go off about 3 feet of of the ground. After my 5th landing I asked for a full stop landing and taxied to parking. I did notice that the tower has changed the way they tell us to taxi. When I requested taxi instructions for take off, I got "Cleared to taxi to runway 17 via taxiway alpha." We used to get "Cleared to taxi runway 17." It seems that the FAA wants the taxi instructions to be very clear.

One nice note was that after 5 months, we finally got our damaged 172 back in the air. N737TY is finally flying once again. It has to have 10 hours put on it without touch and goes to get everything seated and then the oil gets changed and can be put back into "full" service. Here is a shot of the first takeoff as a rented airplane.

It will be good to have a choice now to fly on weekends. We are looking into another 172 to buy and if that happens, I may be able to get an airplane on a weekend without having to reserve it a month in advance.

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Collin County Regional Airport on Skyvector.com

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The Real Solo (No it really is)

I just got back from the time of my life. I did my long solo cross country today and I still have a smile on my face that will not go away. I flew the same route I did when Richard and I went to do this at the end of January. The actual course is from KTKI (Collin County Regional Airport or McKinney as we call it) to F46 (Rockwall Municipal) to KGLE (Gainesville Municipal) to KCWC (Wichita Falls Kickapoo Downtown). The route looks like this and covers 140 nm.After I decided not to do a touch and go at KGLE it got bumpy. I was flying at 3000 ft and between KGLE and KCWC it got bumpy. I was a little concerned that I might not be able to safely land at KCWC. I started my descent about 10 miles out and got to about 2200 feet and it smoothed out. When flying, we calibrate out altimeters to MSL or mean sea level. So when you go to an airport, you have to know the height of the airport above sea level. You always try to reset your altimeter about every 50 miles. 25 miles out of KCWC, I tuned into their automated weather and got the current altimeter settings. KCWC is 1003 feet above MSL so when I was at 2200 feet, I was 1197 feet above the ground. This makes me think that I was in a boundary between the surface winds and the winds aloft. Winds blow at different directions and speeds at different altitudes. Today was supposed to have surface winds from 170 (South) at 8 - 10 knots. The winds at 3000 feet were from 300 degrees at 11. I was somewhere in between in the soup.

I finally got into Wichita Falls, canceled my flight plan, got some more fuel, grabbed a snack and some water, filed a new flight plan and then was back in the air. It got tricky here. I tried for over 20 minutes to get in touch with someone with FSS to activate my flight plan. It wasn't until I was past UKW (the Bowie VOR station) that someone finally answered me about activating it. I'm sure glad that they didn't automatically activate it or I would have been in big trouble. If you don't close your flight plan when you land, after a half of an hour passes, they start calling your house looking for you. If they don't get any response there, then they start a search party. So always remember to close your flight plan, even if you activate it late.

The rest of the flight was awesome. I turned north so I could get a straight in approach to KTKI on 17. I really wanted to do another ILS approach but didn't ask for one. I was granted a straight in approach, which suited my ILS need just fine. This landing was probably one of my best ever. Straight down the centerline, perfectly aligned and smooth. Just like my friend Tony says, a perfect grease job.

All in all, a 10 on the wow factor. Let's hope that there are more days like today. Can you see the excitement? It's quite stunning, eh?

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