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.