I've had an affinity for flying since I was a young boy. Because of a medical condition I had when I was younger, I was never able to fulfill that dream. Now that I'm older and have overcome my problems, I've been given a second chance. Follow me as I attempt to earn my private pilot certificate.
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. Leonardo da Vinci
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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? My E-logbook
Recently we have had nothing but lousy weather. This weekend has proved to be nothing short of spectacular. I had 2 hours reserved on Sunday for some ground reference work. I left early to be at the airport on time but as soon as I got there, I realized that I left my log book and medical certificate at home. I won't fly unless I'm legal so I called home to ask the wife if she could bring me my logbook and medical certificate. While I waited, I talked to some of the other instructors about my new role with the flying club and what they wanted out of their flying club. It was good to know how everyone felt and what I needed to do to keep the general membership happy.
My wife finally arrived with my daughter in tow and I took them down to the airplane for preflight. Once we got our preflight done, my wife and daughter went back to the FBO and watched me taxi and takeoff. I flew southeast for a little while then went south to do some work of turns about a point. After I did that for a while, I flew over the park where my wife and daughter were playing. I wagged my wings and went back to doing some S turns. It was a little bumpy but not too bad so I continued my practice exercises and even flew over the park again.
Since I was just off of the south end of the runway and we were landing to the north, I got a straight in approach to runway 35. I did my impression of a landing, taxied back to parking and shut it down. All in all, a beautiful day to fly. Looks like my next flight is going to be a long cross country on 3/8. Weather permitting and if everything else works out, I'll get that out of the way. I can't wait.
I've soloed several times recently but only after a few laps around the patch. Today was a first. It was all me. I had been watching the wind all day because it was supposed to be "breezy". Luckily for me, when it came time to go flying, the wind was just about straight down the centerline, but at 15 knots. I did my preflight and even had the guys from the FBO come over and top me off for my big 0.6 hour of fun. Getting down the runway for takeoff was easy but as soon as I was airborne, I realized that I had to land. Pilots have an old saying that goes "Takeoffs are optional. Landings are mandatory." I will say that I am a lot more comfortable flying now but I always have some reservations about my skills. Today was a good example of my growing confidence.
My first landing was OK, slightly off the centerline, as usual, but smooth. My second one was a lot messier. I realized too late that I was carrying too much speed for my approach and when I flared, I was too high so I had a little one hopper to the shortstop. I was having an old recurring problem with the airplane. This particular airplane has a tendency to sometimes have a bad nose wheel shimmy when the nose wheel touches down. The only fix I know of that keeps the plane from shaking apart is to pull back on the elevator and take weight off of the nose wheel and it goes away. This did it to me twice today. By the time my nose wheel touches down, I am usually under 45 knots so I can't take a whole lot of weight off of the nose wheel but I do what I can.
After several touch and goes, I decided to call it a day and enjoy the nice sunshine of the afternoon, all 30 minutes that was left of it. I had fun but I still need to grab Richard and head to someplace we can get some good crosswinds and keep working on landings. A funny side note is that our last flying club meeting had the topic of "The Perfect Landing." It reminds me of a joke that goes "Santa Clause, a perfect landing, the Easter Bunny and some rain all converge on the same spot. Which one has the right of way? The rain because the other 3 are figments of your imagination.
I have been trying to make the second part of my cross country happen for about 2 weeks now. It looks like I have to wait again for a shot. Our weather here has been so wacky that it is hard to plan anything more than a couple of days out and even that is a big risk. I had scheduled this coming Sunday (Feb 17) for my next attempt. Unfortunately I have to fly this on a weekend because that job thing gets in the way. Now it looks like Sunday is going to be a wash because of the weather.
With that in mind, I also need a little brush up on cross wind landings (can you ever get enough?). So as a birthday present to myself, I went up for an afternoon of flying the pattern. I had just enough wind and direction to make for a nice little crab to stay tracking the runway on my final. My first landing was a little off the centerline but very smooth. It was funny to hear Richard tell me that I was off center but smooth. My next one was a little off too but just as smooth then I finally got into the swing. I could tell Richard was getting bored when he asks me what are we going to do next. I did get a lot of challenges thrown at me because we had such a busy pattern that day which made every one of my approaches different and unique. I got to make right hand traffic, extend my downwind leg for instrument traffic, land behind a departing Citation (caution wake turbulence) and even get vectored because I couldn't see traffic because of the sun. Finally, during one of our last passes, Richard just pulled power and said "You just lost your engine. Put it down." I had plenty of altitude and was close enough to the airport that I just put the airplane into it's best glide speed, made a very high approach, added flaps and put it down just past the numbers. I was feeling better about landings that I have felt in a long time but I only spent .6 hours flying today (it's still better than no flying).
After getting finished, I deviated from my normal post flight because I didn't do my normal pre flight. When I got to the airport, I was late but so was the guy who had the plane before me. When I got there and walked out to the ramp he left the keys in for me. So I didn't have to go to the key locker or remove the gust lock from the yoke. This screwed up my post flight because I didn't replace the gust lock and about an hour later I discovered I had the keys to the airplane in my pocket. So before we went out for the usual family birthday tradition, I had to go back to the airport, replace the gusset lock and put the keys back in the key locker. Happy birthday to me.
This story borders on the surreal so I'll tell it slow so when I re-read it I won't think that someone else wrote it. This all started about a week ago when I called the communications officer of the flying club I belong to and asked a silly question about getting some shirts embroidered. Since we don't have anything to offer the membership, I thought that I would take it upon myself to do the legwork needed to make this available. I called some great people I used to work for (thanks to Kim at Alford Media) and got the info I needed.
I had to take the information to a board meeting to present it to them to make this an official request. While there, an old topic raised its head. Our vice president of membership retired last year and no one wanted the job. Part of the reason that no one wanted the job was the fact that Keith was amazing at this job. He had the charisma, knowledge, drive, connections and skill to do this job better than the average bear. The board was still looking for a replacement but no one would bite. I got a lot of mysterious looks and winks when the topic came up but I told them that the demands of my new job were keeping me very close to home until I was in full swing.
The fun begins when I get home and talked to my wife. I told her about what transpired at the meeting and she just looked at me and said that I should go for it. After I finished shaking my head I asked her why I should try to fill such big shoes, never expecting the first response. She told me that she knew how much I love flying, and everything that goes with it, and I should try to share that with the flying club. I really do like everyone that I have dealt with to date in the TFC. So I mulled it over and the next night, I called the president and told him, in so many words, that I was his man. I also called the communications officer, whom I have tremendous respect for also, and let him know what I was doing. He was somewhat disappointed because he wanted to groom me for his board position but was happy for me to join the board.
So at our membership meeting on Saturday morning, I was announced as our new vice president of membership. I am very excited that I can contribute to something that I enjoy so much. There are a lot of responsibilities, as I found out at the end of the meeting when I had to do the paperwork for a new member. I want to project on to every new member, just how exciting this adventure can be. If everyone gets just a portion of what I have received from this experience, they all will be rich in ways that they have never knew existed. I take on this role with a lot of respect for the ones who served before me and am hopeful that I can follow in the large footsteps that they have left.
Respectfully yours, the new TFC vice president of membership
