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.
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