Peaceful Easy Feeling (Solo Practice)

I looked at the weather and decided I better fly sooner rather than later – took off at 1 pm and went to ORH for my first solo out of the pattern.  It was great!  I really enjoyed being up there on my own, and though I did try a few steep turns and a bit of slow flight, I mostly just flew around, looked at the scenery, and then flew back home.  This was my first taste of the “freedom of flight” and it was quite nice!  Flying solo in the pattern is work, as is flying with Mario – enjoyable work sometimes, useful work, but work nonetheless.  This solo was really fun!

I checked the ORH ATIS and also called the ASOS at Orange airport to get a reading on the Quabbin area where I planned to fly.  It was sky clear, visibility 10 miles, light winds.  Real VFR, though when I finally got up there, it was actually quite hazy (but certainly 10 SM or more).  Getting up there took a little work.  First I had to have the tanks topped off in 69L, and discuss the solo endorsement issue with Mario (turns out he didn’t change anything except the wind allowances on the previous solo endorsement, even though it specified traffic pattern!).  Then I pre-flighted the plane, got in, started it up, and as I went to change frequency for ATIS, the fractional frequency knob fell off!  So I had to shut down and ask Jim if he could fix it (he had been fixing it on Tuesday!).  But there’s a lesson here:

•    Carry some tools!  Something that could be used to turn a metal dial shaft if the knob came off in flight!  And get a flashlight back in there too.

Actually I had a small screwdriver tool with variable heads that I bought in a dollar store recently.  I found that one of the socket attachments would rotate the radio knob with some effort.  GET SOME SMALL PLIARS FOR THE FLIGHT BAG.  Now I see why flight bags get so heavy after a while!  This was quite an eye-opener for me, the idea that I could be in a no-radio situation due to something as stupid as a plastic knob!

Jim fixed the knob and I was off, right at about the same time Mario taxied out in 661 for its first flight test with the new engine (he got permission for a special request to orbit over the airport at 3000 feet for 30-45 minutes to break in the engine within glide range of ORH).  I requested a straight-out departure to the west, took off, spotted Spencer Airport off the right nose at 2500 feet (as usual).  I was more aware than usual of the need to look for emergency landing spots and to know what to do (the ABCDE thing) in case I lost my engine.  I got up to around 3500 feet and headed for the Quabbin, keeping a careful eye out for traffic, but once I got to level cruise, I also got out the GPS.  It was not tracking (it had been on inside my flight bag), so I finally cycled the power and punched in a GOTO for ORH, giving me a continuous readout of distance and bearing to the airport, though I didn’t really follow this (I did check the heading indicator against it – I mainly wanted to see that it worked on a flight away from the airport, and it did fine).

I got to the NE Quabbin area and did some clearing turns, followed by some steep turns, maybe 3 in each direction.  A couple were pretty good, the others gained or lost more than 100 feet.  Practice!  That’s the name of the game.  I also did a little slow flight, though I was careful not to stall – not that I can’t recover, but on the off-chance of a spin… well, let’s not go there!  I will practice stalls on future solo flights, and I will also do a little touring around to approach the airport from different directions.  This time I just looked at the chart and where I was w/r/t the Quabbin, estimating a course of 135 deg. back to ORH.  When I got part way there, I tuned in ATIS and got “kilo.”  When I had ORH in sight, I realized it was less than an hour, so I did a couple of 360 deg. turns just west of Spencer, then realized this may have been in ORH’s Class D already (4 NM radius), so maybe I shouldn’t have been doing maneuvers there (this was not a steep turn, maybe 30 deg.).  So I cruised over to Spencer (town) and made my call, “Worcester Tower, Cessna 4669L, over the town of Spencer, inbound for landing with information kilo.”  Tower told me to report left downwind entry.  I entered the downwind at 45 deg. as I have done several times, descending from 3000 feet to 2000 feet (TPA) along the way.  The pattern was good (OK, I got a bit slow on turn to base, DUH), but the flare was a bit late and I bounced pretty hard, but kept the nose up and kept good control.  Taxied back to Amity and secured the airplane – done!  Very cool to take an airplane out by myself like that!

Note: the picture here shows the town of Spencer but not on this day - this was fall 2004 when I was doing some Piper Cub lessons. More on that some other day!

Pattern Work at ORH (Lesson #16)

One good flight deserves another, right? Well, the next couple of weeks will be busy, so I decided to take another lesson yesterday -- nothing for 10 months then two in two days! We got another late start on the scheduled 7 pm lesson and decided to stay in the ORH pattern (landing runway 11 this time, vs. 29 yesterday). This means we were landing a little south of east, 110º -- there was a crosswind from the north, so I had to crab to the right on the downwind, angling slightly north of the nominal 290º downwind heading to keep from toeing in and crowding the runway on downwind (something I tend to do anyway). It also increased my ground speed on base (tail wind) which contributed to my late turn to final (something I tend to do anyway!). I was so wide on the first one that I did a go-around (I tried to parallel the runway like an "upwind leg" but Mario told me I should be right over the runway for a go-around, so I flew over there). Good thing there was no other traffic there last night!

I never really "visualized" this crosswind, and I think this is what made my landings so rough. Since I was going EAST on final with a wind from the NORTH (left to right), I needed to crab into the wind to have the correct ground track -- bank to the left. Mario wanted me to hold in this bank (left yoke) and straighten the nose to track straight ahead by using RIGHT RUDDER. I more or less did this, but with overshoots and corrections, I was swinging all over the runway (good thing it's so wide). We did maybe five touch-and-goes, with Mario calling the tower to report left base each time (I was too task-saturated to think about the radio calls -- once he was so busy explaining something that he forgot to call base and got a mild reprimand from the tower -- "you seem to be on final, you can go ahead and land if you want" -- that's a real no-no at a controlled field, but it was otherwise dead there -- the controller was cool about it and Mario apologized).

Meanwhile it was getting dark (picture is from the Fly! simulator), another first for my flight lessons -- the last two were basically night landings. On all of the pattern work, I was quite tense and this showed on the yoke, PIO all over the place (pilot induced oscillation). As usual, when I'm busy I forget about trim, and I also notice overshoots late and tend to jerk the yoke back to where it should have been -- bad move! Things to remember and do:

· Use trim all the time! Trim is your friend! Establish the 67 knot descent near the end of the downwind and hold with trim. When off trim, I tend to get slow (nose high) then over-correct pushing the nose down. You don't want to be slow on base and final at 1000 feet AGL or less!

· Don't over-bank in the pattern -- 30º max, 20º even better!!! This isn't an F/A-18 carrier break!

· Think about the wind -- get a mental picture!

· Smooth, small inputs on the controls.

· Look to the end of the runway for the flare cues!

· Memorize the pattern procedure -- carb heat, power setting, descent, sight picture!

· Work on my instrument/outside scan! I tend to fixate on one or two things at a time.

· Memorize go-around procedure and the emergency procedures Mario gave me.

One cool thing that Mario demoed and I then tried was flying the pattern with ONLY trim and rudder, no yoke! Adverse yaw gives you your turns (right rudder to bank left), trim controls your nose (pitch) and therefore speed. This was a lot smoother than when I was horsing the yoke around. Mario says we will work on things like this to get me more comfortable with ALL the controls in the airplane (people have had primary control failures and used trim and rudder to land -- it can be done, and it could save your life).

I felt very overwhelmed and not very slick last night especially when Mario had to save a couple of the landings after a big bounce, but he said I'm doing fine for this stage, typical problems, and I'm not that far from solo. We need to work more on pattern and landings of course, and also on emergency procedures. He wants to put me under the IFR hood for a bit too, since I've never done that and it's important if you end up in a cloud. Somehow he seems more down to earth, patient, and positive than Kern -- I like him better as a CFI. I also bought a POH (handbook) for the C152 and my own fuel-tester. Yesterday I also got the E6B flight computer I ordered from Sporty's -- I prefer this over the slide rule thingy for the various calculations you need for flight planning. On my Korea trip, I will concentrate on completing the FliteSchool CD-ROM ground school course so I can take the written test in July. Depending on weather and other schedule factors, I hope to get 6 to 10 lessons in by September and solo the airplane. I will put $1000 in an account at Amity so I can get the $50 "club rate" on the C152 rather than the $56 standard rate.

Simulator Stuff
Meanwhile I decided to return the Saitek X36 stick/throttle set I bought last week, as cool as it is. I'll replace it with the new CH Flight Yoke LE USB (about $90 on the web), which will be much more realistic with Fly! I'll try using the existing CH Pedals with it (works OK with the Logitech though it's very jerky in the calibration screen), though I may later buy the USB Pro Pedals which include toe brakes (Fly! supports these). I think I can even work on pattern stuff that way -- set my RPM, watch my descent, put in a cross wind and crab or slip against it. Some of this is just getting the procedure to be totally routine, and I think Fly! is close enough to reality for this (though it's fuel-injected C172R with no carb heat to pull, vs. the 1980 C152 we are flying IRL - no biggy).

Time: 1.0 hrs dual, TT 19.1 hrs, C152 at ORH