"Stick and Rudder" Revisited

Due to other commitments, I won't have a chance to fly for about 10 days or so. But I will have a bit of free time for reading, so I've decided to re-read Stick and Rudder by Wolfgang Langewiesche. This book was first published over 50 years ago and has been in print ever since because it's one of the most useful practical guides to flying ever written. I read it many years ago when I first started flying (maybe 1997). So I think it's time. While it generally applies to any sort of airplane, it feels especially right for flying a tail-wheel airplane with an actual stick (rather than a control yoke), and of course a rudder too.

FAA "Written" Exam (98%)

Supplemental entry (non-flying): This past weekend I was home and and able to focus on flying stuff.  Mainly I studied for the FAA written exam so I could finally get that thing out of the way.  I used the Gleim book and my preparation notes to brush up on general rough spots (light gun, magnetic compass errors, category vs. class, takeoff distance charts).  I also read a few chapters in the Jepp Practical Test Study Guide (a great book, BTW, even though it's from 1997 – I need to do more with this before my check ride).  This was mainly to review airspace topics, FAR's, and weather reporting formats.  Finally I re-took the final exam in the FliteSchool software and got 94% (6 wrong on that 100 question test).  I reviewed the missed questions and called it a night at 9 pm, drinking a couple of beers and watching a documentary on test pilots (Aviation Week video I bought some time ago at Buck-a-Book, very good stuff) and then the video of "Independence Day" (a live-action alien invasion cartoon, but it has some cool SFX). 

Sunday I went over to Amity where I checked in with Mario (to get my sign-off for the written) and with Bill Allen (the CFI who gives the tests).  The LaserGrade software is great – very user friendly, with on-screen figures and excellent review/summary features.  The 60 question test was harder than I expected, at first glance.  There were two pressure altitude questions that I forgot how to do (later remembered – it's just the right side table of the density altitude chart).  There were many questions I had not seen for a while on reviews and tests, including what to do if you suspect detonation on climbout (lower the nose a bit for better cooling).  On one of the landing distance graphs, I could not get anywhere near the answers they had, but I took the largest value, and I guess it was right (it was #3690, and I still get only about 1600 feet, while the answer is B, 1925 feet).  I hate those graphs!

Airspace questions gave me some trouble, and there was one I thought I missed but did not (#3622, Lowe Airport on Figure 27).  This is a private airport with no airspace markings (though it's in a MOA which confused me).  I finally said it was Class G, surface to 14,500 MSL, which was right (NB: this is a rule I didn't remember at all, but there are several cases for the lower limit of Class E, such as 1200 feet for Federal Airways, but default if none of these apply is that Class E begins at 14,500 feet, extending to 18,000 feet which is where Class A starts).  There were others that confused me (there was one I can't remember where I wrote "NFI" on my notes, but it wasn't an airspace question, and the one question I missed WAS an airspace/chart question, subject area J37 according to the printed test report – though I read through all the J37 questions in my Gleim book and as far as I recall, I answered all three that were on my test correctly – oh well).  I check-marked the questions I was unsure about and went back and reviewed them, keeping my original answers in all but one or two cases. 

It took me about 90 minutes, but the bottom line is – I did GREAT, missing only one question for 98% on the real thing, better than any practice test (other than a few of the 10 or 20 question no-figures-mini-tests I did on Kip's FAA Practice web site).  Mario says this can really help with the DPE (check ride examiner), since they tend to go easy on the oral stuff if you have a high score on the written.  I sure won't ASSSUME that, so I have a lot of study left to do, but it doesn't hurt.  There is a big difference between multiple choice and spitting out an essay question on the day of the check ride!

No-Fly for P-51 at Chino!

This is a "supplemental" post about two non-lesson flights that didn't happen, alas. In 2000, I was a member of the Chino Air Museum ("Planes of Fame") in the Los Angeles area, mainly so I could qualify for some war bird flights (you still had to pay, but members got some priority or something - hard to remember as I write this in fall 2009). I was in LA on business, added some weekend time for flying as I sometimes did even for lessons, and booked demo flights in both an AT-6 and a P-51 Mustang! I was psyched! But unfortunately even Southern California can have crappy weather ...

This week I've been in Los Angeles on business, and we've had some of the ugliest non-winter weather I’ve ever seen in LA — I went to Chino and hung around for 4 hours (looking at airplanes, not so bad), but my P-51 and AT-6 flights were canceled because it never got beyond about 2000 foot ceiling and 4 miles visibility.  You don’t want to zoom around at 300 mph if you can’t see better than that.  Bummer!  At least I got to sit in the cockpits for some photos and talk to some of the pilots at Fighter Rebuilders.  These lucky guys fly these war birds all the time, and work on restoring them the rest of the time.  John Hinton was going to be my P-51 pilot, and Matt Nightingale the AT-6 pilot (he’s been working at FR since he was 12!).

I looked over their German Me-109 which is in their shop — Steve Hinton (John’s brother), the head honcho, had the Me-109 in England for a Battle of Britain commemoration, and he lost one of his brake lines on a landing — he ground looped it to avoid running off the end of the runway, damaging the wings pretty badly, but he was not hurt.  It’s so cool the airplanes they have just sitting there, almost all flyable.  On the ramp today were the P-51D, TBM Avenger, P-47B (razorback version), B-25, AT-6, L-5 Sentinel, and Japanese Zero!  In the active hangar just behind the ramp there were two Hellcats, two Wildcats, a Corsair, a Skyraider, another P-51D, P-40, and some I forgot.  Just awesome.  They sent a number of aircraft to Hawaii recently to fly in a new Disney film about Pearl Harbor.  They were shrink-wrapped in plastic and put on a “garbage scow” for a slow two week cruise to Honolulu.  I think the film will be out soon (so this must have been last year).

Sitting in the planes was actually a lot of fun, and I got a few good photos of myself in the planes (and other plane photos too, of course).  The AT-6 has original instruments, while the P-51 has been upgraded to a more modern panel.  I had to be careful climbing in and out of the Mustang not to catch my foot on the landing gear lever—that would have been embarassing to collapse the gear on the ramp—I don’t think I can put a P-51 on my American Express!  So I went zero for five on flights this week—these rides and three C152 lessons I had scheduled at EMT with Bryon.  Oh well—I’ll be in LA again in the next few months.

Tonight I’ve been hanging around the hotel (packing for early UAL flight tomorrow) and feeling sort of overwhelmed about the near future – trying to keep everything in balance with family, work, travel, and flying.  If I don’t make flying a priority, it just won’t happen – weather and travel and kid-scheduling just wipe out most of the chances to fly.  Sometimes it feels like such a rat-race, but a lot of the time it’s fun, and I just have to remember how lucky I am to have all that I do have and to be able to fly at all.