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.

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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