About This Blog

(This post is future dated to appear near the top of my posts - today's actual date is 12/15/14.)

This blog is a journal (of sorts) about learning to fly. It started as a retro-journal (writing years after the fact of my original 1997-2001 lessons, from notes I had kept for myself, which are not yet completely converted to this blog - there are gaps). I did a little flying in 2004 (only one post here so far). Then in summer 2011, I started flying again (tail wheel lessons), and it became a current flight lesson journal for a while.

Flying seems to be such a sporadic thing for me (except as an airline passenger, which is pretty regular). I flew a lot in July and August 2011, flying with Ed Urbanowski in his wonderful Citabria, finally learning to land a tail dragger. Then I stopped. Why? Business travel, general work-load at work, family stuff. The usual suspects. I really wanted to get the tail wheel endorsement this year but I just didn't make it, and here it is winter already.

As of this writing, my recent non-airline flights have been "warbird" flights with the Collings Foundation. One was on September 26, 2011. It was in a B-24 Liberator bomber, and I was not at the controls (but it was a VERY cool flight). I was briefly at the Norden bombsite (shown above). No stick time in this beast! The other was in an AT-6 Texan aerobatics flight at the Collings Headquarters in Stow, MA, during one of their historic airshows in August 2012. It was short, but lots of fun (see below). I got some stick time, and Rob Collings showed me some simple aerobatics, loops and barrel rolls. I would love to do more of that! That was the original reason I was interested in tailwheel training, since most common aerobatic planes are tail draggers.

I hope to get back to real flying one of these days.

See How It Flies

See How It Flies is an excellent on-line book by John Denker. The subtitle is “a new spin on the perceptions, procedures, and principles of flight,” and I think it is quite unique in the way that it integrates practical flying techniques with the physics of flight. Denker is both a physicist and a flight instructor, so I guess such integration makes a certain amount of sense. It’s really a book on how to fly airplanes, with a lot of background material on why things work the way they do. It’s been around since 1996, and since it’s an on-line book (and free, by the way), Denker has updated it over the years based on reader feedback. Copyright date indicates 1996-2008.

Denker seems to be the kind of guy who knows a lot about everything. He wanted simulated wind tunnel graphics for the book, so he wrote a wind tunnel simulator program. He’s done extensive flight instruction, so he knows the kinds of questions and confusions inexperienced pilots are apt to have (though I'm sure most experienced pilots could also learn a lot from this book). He’s a physicist, so he’s not afraid to put a few mathematical expressions in his book (though not a lot – there are many more diagrams and charts than equations). But he’s also a pilot, so he’s not afraid to provide simple, intuitive rules of thumb when they can help (some of them quite literally rules of thumb, like “a thumb at arm’s length subtends 4 degrees,” which is a nice glide slope angle, see figure).

If you want to print the book or have it available off-line, it’s a bit tricky because it is spread across many separate web pages. Saving it correctly with all its graphics and links intact is not easy (at least for me). I was able to find a couple of PDF links to the complete book, but none of the most recent version (this one is from 2001).

My Presidential Hat Cam

I decided to ban hand-held cameras from my tail wheel flight lessons this summer - too distracting when I need to focus on learning tricky new skills. But I was also thinking it would nice to have a hands-free way to record video of my flights so I could review them and maybe learn more quickly from my mistakes. I know there are various "action cams" available these days, but I figured they would be really expensive.

Then a couple of weeks ago Amazon had a daily deal on a tiny Kodak Zm1 VGA video camera for $30, so I ordered one, along with an 8 GB MicroSDHC memory card (4 hours of video). The Zm1 doesn't have a tripod mount, so I had to improvise with a small bolt, epoxy, a nut, and a couple of large washers. I drilled a hole in the brim of a baseball cap I rarely (never) wore (sorry Caroline), a Washington, DC souvenir with a large presidential seal on the front. Voila! The camera only weighs 2.6 ounces (maybe 4 ounces with the hardware), so it works pretty well on the brim of the hat. I have to be careful to position the hat so the camera points where I'm looking (and not mess it up when I put on my headset or move my head around the cockpit). The camera shoots upside down as mounted but I can fix that easily in the editing software.



Bottom line: based on one test flight, it works. Samples here and here (and above). The low res VGA video is not very pretty but is adequate for evaluating what went wrong with some of my recent landings. I can get enough of a look at the airspeed indicator and altimeter along with the front and occasional side views. The camera has no image stabilization, but the head motion and airplane vibrations are not a problem.

Unfortunately I saw a sample video that one of Ed's other students shot with a ContourHD mounted with a suction cup on the right door window. Really gorgeous full HD video, and the CountourHD costs less than I thought ($139). I'm sorely tempted but will try to resist and work with the hat cam for at least a few flights.

Citabria Intro Flight

When I learned last week that Ed is now running a flight school at Sterling, and that he had bought a Citabria 7ECA since I last flew with him (in his Cub) in 2004, I decided to sign up for some time in that airplane, with two goals in mind. One is to complete the tail-wheel training and endorsement that I started in 2004. The other is to get current on my private pilot certificate so I can fly solo again (starting with the Citabria, as soon as Ed and I decide I'm up to speed).

The Citabria is a tail dragger like the Piper Cub, but in most other respects, it's more like a Cessna 152. It's got the same engine as a 152, it's got an electrical system (for starting the engine, among other things), and it's got a full, modern instrument panel (not really modern - it's all round gauges as you can see above, not a "glass cockpit," but that's OK with me).

For this first flight, Ed handled most of the takeoff and all of the landing from the base leg (just before turn to final). We went out near Mount Wachusett and spent an hour letting me get familiar with the feel of the airplane with straight and level flight, turns, climbs and descents (the four fundamentals). It was mostly OK though I had some trouble holding a steady altitude (not trimmed quite right so I tended to gain or lose a hundred feet here and there) and a steady heading (mostly not choosing and holding external reference points to aim for, plus lazy feet on the rudder pedals).

Still it was a good flight, and I really enjoy this airplane. Although it's a tailwheel airplane, it has much better forward visibility than the Cub, which really makes takeoffs and landings much easier.

Citabria 1.2 hours dual at 3B3.