Category: PPL Training Page 5 of 6

What a good way to end the week, by committing aviation.  I finished up work and headed out to the airfield so I could fly a little airplane.  Awesome!  I did the normal but important stuff, weather, preflight then a brief with my instructor before we headed out to do some precision flying.

Lined up on runway 3, made my callouts… “Engine instruments, green, green, green, airspeed alive…. approaching 50 kts, elevator back for rotate.  Pitching for climb a Vy, 65 kts., staying aligned with the centerline of the runway.”  Starting to come more natural.

We turned crosswind and continued climb to 3000 ft into the practice area.  We started out with some cruise turns at 20 degrees and 30 degrees.  These are a piece of cake now.  Then we adjusted to 95 kts, 3000 ft level and started right hand steep turns.  Today… bang on holding altitude.  YAY!!!!!  Next left hand steep turns… I lost 200 ft… BOOOOO!  What the heck… I had no issue with left steep turns before… hmmm.  After a few minutes of mulling it over… I think that the haze on the horizon was throwing off my site picture.  also, it was a little bumpy today, so even in level flight we were up and down a bit.  I know I know… excuses excuses.

Next we dropped to 70 kts and tried a few slips.  I did better this time but still not great.  The first slip, I didn’t add all of the rudder.  The second slip was better but still not pitching forward hard enough.  Overall I did better this time.

Lastly, before heading back to the airfield we worked on transitioning to slow flight, 50 kts dirty (dirty means landing configuration, 30 degrees flaps).  My instructor warned me about having to give it right rudder to keep the heading and noted the heading on the compass and heading indicator.  First time, I thought I did well… held altitude right on. “You deviated from you heading by 20 degrees.”  uh, what? Ooooh right, dummy, you should have picked up on the clues.  So we try it again.  This time, I’m paying a bit more attention but still deviated 15 degrees.  Sigh……

So one of the reasons I was having a hard time today in some of the maneuvers was we have now started working on the precision part of flight training.  After the flight we talked about the check ride tolerances that I will need to meet and part of that is, holding altitude within a certain range on a steep turn and holding heading to a range during slow flight when the aircraft wants to pull left.  Pretty cool but I gots lots of work to do.

So…. we head back towards TTA and setup on a 45 degree entry into downwind.  We are aware that a warrior just took off and is staying in the pattern so we make a radio call to make it clear that we are going to slip in behind the warrior number 2 for landing.  This time, I memorized the before landing check list.  Seatbelts fastened and locked, Mixture Rich, Carb Heat on, airspeed 70 kts.  YAY!!!!!! I am ahead of the airplane.  Abeam the numbers, I am ready to go, throttle 1500, drop a notch of flaps pitch the horizon halfway between the nose and the compass.  YAY!!!!  I am still ahead of the airplane.  Once the runway is 45 degrees off of our wing, clear left and turn base…. hmmm a little low… lets wait to drop flaps.  Yay, I’m with the airplane. As we turn to final, drop the flaps to 20 degrees and shoot the numbers… Yeah, I got this.  We are a little high, pull back throttle.  My instructor says “Good but we need a little throttle” . I add back a little throttle.  “Shoot the numbers at 65, shoot the numbers at 65”  As soon as the numbers disappear under us, I look at the trees at the end of the runway… level off….. as we sink I slowly pull back until the trees disappear… hold…. hold… wheels touch… but…. um we are going back up a little….. we keep holding and settle down for a touch down.  “Too Fast?”  I say.  “You didn’t remove all of the throttle.”  ………..

Crap!

I was so focused on everything else and so confident… I forgot to pull out the rest of the throttle.  Here I was, ahead of the airplane, dealing with a smidgen of crosswind and forgot a basic part of landing…. well, it is progress I suppose and I got my first bounced landing out of the way.

We taxi back to runway 3 for another cruise around the pattern.  This time, I extend my upwind (Takeoff) leg to allow for another plane to enter the pattern at 45 degrees.  I climb to 1200 ft (pattern altitude) on runway heading before turning crosswind.  This time I was ahead or with the airplane all the way around.  Landing was ok not great and I’m sure my instructor did a lot of work but… it felt pretty good.  And this time, I cut the throttle all of the way.

Overall, I felt like I was flying the airplane today and not letting it fly me.  Most of all, I feel like that I may actually be able land this thing one day on my own!

I finally feel like I am getting the hang of a few things.  Pre-flight, Run ups, Takeoffs, cruise, slow flight, turns… all seem to be clicking.  I am holding speed an altitude decently, and feel like I am in command of the airplane.

In this lesson, we worked on a clearing turns, steep turns and stalls.  Again, my steep turn to the left was spot on.  I think I have that sight picture down.  To the right…. not so much.  I can’t seem to hold 45 degrees.  I seem to only hold around 38 degrees.

This time we worked on stalls and keeping as much altitude as possible approaching the stall.  The first time I exited, I lost around 700 ft…. NOT GOOD!  Imagine if I was on approach for landing… pancakes anyone?  The second time I attempted, I only lost around 200 ft which evidently is much better.  The Cessna 152 seems to just mush stall for the most part.  I haven’t felt a real clean break yet.  I may not be pulling back enough… not sure.

Next we moved on to some pattern work.  I wasn’t quite expecting that but I was ready for the challenge.  Time to put together everything I have learned to this point, including, Rectangular ground reference maneuvers, approach speeds, slow flight…

First pattern entry…. I felt ready.  We had incoming traffic on a long final so I was trying to locate him.  Once located, he became my source of to line up my “Abeam the numbers” profile.  Carb heat on, 10 degrees of flaps, RPM’s to 1500, site picture for descent.  Once the runway was 45 degrees, clear left, turn left, drop to 20 degrees of flaps and hold the nose down because it wants to rise.  Once re-established,  get ready for turn to final.  Once we turn final, time to shoot the numbers at 65 kts, using throttle to control our descent speed.  Everything looked pretty good, as we touched down but I seemed to relieve back pressure too soon.  Hmm… that is a big no  no.

We taxi back to runway 3 and perform another run up.  This time we take off but stay in the pattern.  As I turned from crosswind to downwind, I didn’t setup for 70kts and blew past our pattern altitude.    I get things back under control and notice that I am not flying parallel to the runway but slowly getting close.  sigh…. the airplane is way ahead of me.  The rest of the pattern went about as well.  I turned to base too late which had me too low on final and I had to hold my 20 degree flaps until we were on final. Then I ballooned a little over the runway… too fast!!!  Airspeed!!!! Pay attention!!

The last time around the pattern I felt like I was with the airplane a bit more.  Nailed the pattern altitude, was configured… then… turn too late on base again.  Once that happened I was flustered, as we got close to the runway, I was high… somehow.  And to top it off, I rounded off too early even though my instructor was saying “Not Yet…. Not Yet…. Not Yet…” but I kept on rounding out and we were too high above the runway.  This makes for an awkwardly sluggish mush all the way down to the ground.

As we taxi’d back, I commented on some of my frustrations to which she said that this is my first of many and will get better over time.  I sure hope so.  I was mentally exhausted.  It is amazing  how much concentrated concentration like that can drain you.  As I tied down the aircraft, I had 45 minutes to grab something to eat because I had brilliantly scheduled my lesson before my 3 hour ground school class that starts at 7pm and ends at 10pm.

Even though I was exhausted and dissapointed with my performance I reminded myself…. “You got to fly a plane, how cool is that”.

A little bit of a shorter lesson this time, working on steep turns and slips.  We were not sure if we were going to get up on this lesson as we were scheduled to fly from 9am -11am timeframe and the Tafs (Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts) were calling from 13kts with gusts to 23kts.  Our little 152 has a limit of 12kts crosswind so even though the direction was close to the runway heading, the gusts were putting us near 14kt crosswind component.  After careful evaluation, my instructor said we would be good if we got up early and down before the winds moved in.

As I arrived, we moved fast.  I did our preflight, we got in and performed the start and run up.  Departure was runway 3 today and we had a light wind coming from the northwest.  I am really starting to get comfortable with the takeoffs and did really well through the hole takeoff up to cruise.

We quickly moved into 45 degree steep turns.  These are a little more tricky than a normal 20-30 degree banking turn.  Due to aerodynamic forces, at 45 degrees the wing tends to want to continue the roll, so you have to balance it out with a little bit of opposite aileron as well as a healthy does of back pressure to keep us from dropping altitude.  It is really a balancing act of the three axis’ of the aircraft.  After a quick demonstration, I took the controls.  First to the left, I pretty much rocked it.  So much as I rolled out, we felt some buffets and bouncing to which my instructor said “Feel that?  We just hit our own wake turbulence”.  I have read enough about steep turns to know, that is a good thing.  So I felt pretty good about it.  I quickly moved on to the right hand side.  This time, I didn’t do so well.  The site picture was different and I had a hard time holding 45 degrees.  At one point she said it was more like 37 degrees.  I need to figure out better cues to determine whether I am at 45 degrees or not.

Next we moved on to another helpful tool in the aviation toolbox, slips.  Slips are used to drop altitude quickly without gaining airspeed.  This is useful in an emergency landing situation or if you may be a little high on your approach and need to drop a little faster.  It was widely used in the days before flaps in order to slow down.  The principle here is to bank the wing into the wind and apply opposite rudder.  This will add drag to the aircraft and if you maintain speed, you will drop faster.  I understand the concept well enough but in practice I had a hard time.

As I entered the slip I tended to either pull pack or not push forward on the yoke.  This was causing me to lose airspeed. I was dropping well enough but if you lose too much airspeed you could quickly enter a spin.  Since we were practicing these for landings, a spin at landing altitude would be a sub-optimal situation.  This is something I requested we practice a little more in my next lesson.  After slipping practice, we headed back to the airfield.  I could feel the wind picking up and we had a decent bit of turbulence as we entered the pattern.  I followed along on the controls as we extended our downwind for traffic on a long final.  My instructor also included a bit of a slip into the wind for the crosswind landing to demonstrate our lesson.  As we taxi’d back,  I expressed my concerns with both concepts today and felt that I needed a little more practice.  So next lesson, we will do a little remediation as well as some more steep turns and slips!

Today started off pretty well.  My instructor said she would be watching closely today and if she is confident, my next flight I would Solo!   Well not exactly what you think, Solo Weather Brief and Preflight inspection.  She listened in on the weather briefing and was pleased so out to the airplane for the preflight.  She watched carefully as I went through my checklist making sure the bird was airworthy.  All green, and we had 3 Aces…. Weather good, Pilot good, aircraft good.

I go through the normal procedures for starting and run up, get the AWOS that indicates a runway 21 departure, call out our taxi and away we go to setup for takeoff on runway 21.  We listen to the CTAF (Common Traffic Advisory Frequency) for any incoming traffic for landing or into the pattern.  About halfway to runway 21 we pick up that a Citation is 10 miles out on a long final for runway 21.  I ask my instructor if she sees him and she says “Negative, but he’s moving so fast he’ll be here shortly”  At that point she radios the Citation asking for a pirep on turbulence since some was noted during the weather brief.  The Citation indicated that it was relatively smooth today.  At about 5 miles out I could see his landing lights and as we taxi’d up to the hold short line, the Citation crossed the apron for a smooth touchdown.

As the Citation taxi’d off of the runway I made the radio call “Raleigh Exec Cessna 4640B departing runway 21 for the west practice area… Raleigh Exec”. I almost sounded like I know what I’m doing.  As with most students talking on the radio doesn’t come naturally so I am being introduced slowly to the concept.

We depart runway 21 and climb to the west to an altitude of 3000.  We made the radio call to alert traffic where we would be practicing and I lined up on a road for our first maneuvers.  We started with some clearing turns, 20 degrees to clear then some 30 degree 180’s in both directions.  Next we practices slowing to 70, descending at cruise and 70.  Then she had me add flaps and slow down to 55 and stabilize.  At this point I made shallow turns as if I was in the pattern or landing.  We practiced going from slow flight to cruise and back.  After getting comfortable, we entered slow flight and then my instructor told me to pull the throttle to idle and don’t let us sink.  I realized what we were doing, my first stall.  As we approached the stall, the controls got really heavy and I had to use rudder to keep the airplane coordinated.  Then I felt some buffeting and a faint sound of the stall horn.  At this point she commanded to drop the nose and full throttle and try to keep from losing altitude.  We didn’t quite enter a stall, it was called an “Imminent Stall”.  The idea here was to get me  acquainted with what the controls feel like as we approach a stall.

Next we did a few more ground reference maneuvers, more turns around a rectangle.  This time I did quite well all the way around.  After 3 or 4 turns around the pattern we returned to the airfield and landed.  Overall a great lesson, and a lot of fun.

Second flight, this time we had a little bit of wind.  Not much, around 7-8 kts, but enough that I needed to pay attention to my ailerons during taxi.  Also on takeoff, this was the first time that I need to hold aileron into the wind as we started our takeoff roll.  This is where I think that my mental cup overflow-ith.  Not to mention we have a blackhawk inbound straight ahead.  I have seen all of the videos of what happens when a light GA aircraft flies through the rotor wash of a helicopter.  Never ends well for the airplane.  For some reason, I had reservations but my instructor radio’d to make sure they knew we were getting ready to take off head to head, and they replied they would adjust their course for us.  Ok here we go, Heels to the floor … check, eyes to the end of the runway … check, aileron into the wind .. check, slowly coming up to full throttle … check, on centerline … err crap I’m left, right, left.  My instructor telling me “Slow corrections”.  I got it back on centerline then realized that I haven’t pulled back on the yoke to get the nose light, my instructor is doing this now.  We are in the air and straight… now I am back on my game and crabbing to the right to stay on centerline of the runway.  we are crabbing about 10-15 degrees into the wind and when I look behind us… still on centerline..  sweet!  Last time I got compliments on my takeoff, this time… even though she never said it, I blew it a bit.  It was only my second take off but I had higher expectations of myself.   I have read that you will hit points where you have absorbed so much information that you can’t absorb anymore at a given point, I think I experienced a little bit of this.

We climb out Vy 65 kts and it is a little bumpy this time but not bad just more of an annoyance when trying to hold heading, speed, and altitude.  We go through the four fundamentals of flight, straight and level cruise, ascending turns, descending turns, and cruise decent.  Then we are off to find a square field.  We line up on down wind of a closed airfield that just happened to be the field that my instructor solo’d at.  Pretty cool.  Then I hear, “Where is the wind and what is it doing to you?”  I point the direction of the wind and say I need to crab a little into the wind to stay straight on downwind leg.  Then I hear, ” When you feel you are half a mile away on 45 degree, clear left and make a level turn”.  I look over my shoulder and the end of the runway is 45 so I say ” Clearing left, making a level turn, adding a little rudder, keeping the horizon cutting through the cowling.”  then I hear “you know you are half a mile away when the runway is halfway up the wingstrut. Is it?”  uh, crap.

So we go through this again at each turn of the rectangle and every time on the one turn from downwind to base, I am too close, what the hell!  Every other turn I am keeping the runway half a mile or halfway up my wingstrut.  Then finally I realize what is happening.  the end of the runway has some trees that are starting to overgrow and when I am at 45 degrees, what I think is the end of the runway is actually about 1000 feet down.  Ok so on the final attempt I nail all 4 sides.  At this point, we head back to the airfield.  My instructor seems to be concerned because there is an aztec milling about. Once we were in the patter on downwind, we hear the aztec drop in the pattern behind us.  Aztec’s are much faster then us.  At this point I reach the second point of overload.  Abeam the numbers my instructor, accelerates our checklist before I can read it and starts dropping flaps.  We then turn for a very short base and final.  At this point I realize, there isn’t going to be much of a lesson on landing because my already 10 steps behind.  at this point we are a little high so she says “I’m going to slip us down a bit” at that point she dips the wing and kicks the rudder and we slide down quickly.  It was pretty cool.  I have read about it but never experienced the sensory of it.  We touch down and get off the runway in time for the aztec to just touchdown.

As we taxi’d back, she asked if I had any questions/comments.  I told her how I felt about takeoff and landing and that I wished I was able to do a little more of the landing.  She explained that part of being a pilot is also being a good neighbor and that Aztec was much faster than us so we were trying to be considerate.  Cool to me, so far Pilots have shown to be a special bread. Especially when it comes to helping each other out.  Can’t wait until the next lesson.

So yesterday we actually got off the ground!  Perfect day for flying blue skies and almost no winds. Couldn’t ask for a better day for my first flight lesson!

Okay so let’s start at the beginning.

Once I arrived, I did the usual stuff, Weather briefing, preflight, taxi, run-up.  I have decent practice at those sort of things.  This time was a bit different, instead of taxiing to one end of the airport and back, we taxi’d up to runway 3.  We checked radios for traffic, looked both ways up and down the runway, made our call and pulled out onto the runway.

So here I was, staring down 6000 ft of runway just like I have done a million times in my head.  Slowly push the throttle in, a little right rudder to counteract the P-Factor, keep the white line between my legs.  So far so good.  Actually not too bad at all, She must be helping a bit…. hmm.

Airspeed alive… 50 kts, lightly pull back a few inches on the yoke, nose feels light and a little wobbly but we are going straight.  around 60 kts we start to lift off the ground, holy crap we’re flying.  I need to keep us aligned with the extended centerline… we are drifting a little to the right… add left rudder?  My instructor says we are doing OK, not to worry about it too much.

I am reminded every 500 ft until cruising altitude that I need to drop the nose and check for traffic.  700ft, dropping the nose… weird sensation… no traffic, up we go.  1200ft, no traffic, time to turn west towards the practice area.  I am told to focus on some water towers to the west and then find a cloud or something to keep us going in the right direction because, we are going up to 3000 ft.

We spend the first part of the flight touring the edges of the practice area while she quizzes me on where we are.  At first my grinning response was “I have no idea!  But we’re in the air”.  She astutely points at some power lines on the map and then outside.  After a rotation of the map, I think I know where I am.  Think being the operative word.  I start following a road that should lead me to KSCR.  And like by magic, it did.  So I guess I did sort of know our location.  I turn to follow another road toward the next point in our practice area triangle.

Once we probed the edges of the practice area we proceeded into climbing and descending turns.  I got the impression that is normally for lesson two but seemed to be a piece of cake. I think the key to everything is the understanding that pitch controls speed and throttle controls altitude which I seemed to be OK with.  I have been studying those concepts for years and employing them in flight simulator for just as long. It sort of seemed natural.  Climbing… reduce throttle, descending increase throttle.  I kept us with 75 ft of our intended altitude for the flight.  The winds were calm so I am chalking it up to that.  I would imagine that I would have struggled a lot more with some more wind and turbulence.  It was good to see the concept in action.

We then headed back to the airport for a 45 degree entry into the downwind leg of the pattern. We need to drop altitude from 3000 ft to 1200 ft before entry.  We cut power and lifted the nose to achieve 70 kts for our pattern entry.  We entered the downwind leg and I was instructed to drop 10 degrees flaps once we are abeam (beside) the numbers.  So I did and had to give a little nose forward pressure to keep us from rising.  Next milestone, look to see when the numbers were 45 degrees back and to my left.  Once this happened, we made a 90 degree left turn and then dropped flaps to 20 degrees.  A lot started happening fast at this point.  we turned to line up on with the runway.  My instructor said “Shoot the numbers with the nose”. This put us on a steady decent to the runway.  As we got closer and numbers were hidden, I cut the throttle and we slowly started to roll the nose up for touchdown.  I honestly didn’t even feel much of the touchdown, just focused on pull the yoke back to keep the nose up as long as possible on the roll out.  I don’t think I helped with the landing too much but hey… my first time right?

We slowed down as I applied gradual brakes towards our turn off.  once clear of the runway, went through the post landing checklists and cleaned the configuration.

Taxiing back to the ramp felt great, the flight was great, everything was perfect.  As we are debriefing, my instructor said she was really impressed with my take off saying “Normally, students are back and forth across the runway and I have to keep us straight”.  Sounds like I did a pretty good job on the pedals. 😀  She also complimented me on my ability to hold altitude.

As I was getting ready to leave she said that I was such a “Precocious” Student (Honestly I had to look it up… I have heard the term before but wasn’t fully sure of the meaning, feel dumb about that, stupid public education), that she was going to jump to ground reference maneuvers on my second flight and handed me a fat packet up paper to study up on.  Sounds good to me… I guess some students spend a couple of more flights on turns, climbing, descending?

Can’t wait until my next flight!

So since last time, my lesson yesterday was cancelled due to rain.  Boooo!   With the impending hurricane, it looks like my Friday and Sunday Lessons will be a bust as well.

Still waiting to get actual air time.  Fingers crossed for good a few hours of decent weather on Friday.  In the meantime watching some Flight Chops!

If this is your first post, start from the beginning -> Clicky Clicky!

“Rain rain go away,
Come again another day.
Little Johnny wants to play;
Rain, rain, go to Spain,
Never show your face again!”

Went to the airfield for flight lesson #2.  I had been watching the weather and conversing with my instructor and we seemed to be on the edge of being able to take to the skies.  We were looking at 2000 ft ceilings and around 7 kt winds.  This was good enough to do some pattern work but not much else.

As I arrived at the airfield, we both took a look outside and it seemed some of the clouds were lower than 2000ft.  So we did an area weather brief.  We called airports in a 360 degree pattern around our location, taking winds/ceilings/temperatures etc.  We started to notice a pattern.  7-15 kts winds with Gusts to 15-18 kts.  We also noticed that the wind seem to be variable between 330 and 060 degrees.  Our runway is position at 30 degrees so we would be seeing a dramatic shift from one side to the other on landing.  So with 2 strikes on the weather, we decided to work on some ground school, preflight, engine start/run up, and taxi practice in the wind.  There would be no getting off the ground today. 🙁

So this time, I handled the weather brief (for practice) and did the preflight waiting until the end to get feedback.  My instructor said that I completed an excellent preflight and needed no prompting.  YAY!

Next, I followed the engine start procedure.  I performed a brake check, ran the engine up to check magnetos and I completed my first radio call for a radio check.  Today I learned that taxiing is more difficult in wind and at this point it was up to 10 kts steady. I had to learn how to hold control inputs in order to keep a gust of wind from toppling us over.  During this time, I spent way more brain power on trying to figure out the control inputs than I should have but…. what can you do.  I did feel a lot more comfortable controlling the airplane on the ground.  I think I am getting a feel for the steering and brakes.

So, I have .7 hours in my log book and have yet to get off the ground.  I don’t think it is a loss as I am still getting comfortable with basic procedures.  I did cancel my next lesson because the weather is looking bleh.  My instructor wants me to get off the ground for my next lesson.  I agree with this and so… my wait continues.

Today I went for my first lesson.  3 hours in total and .4 hrs of it in the airplane.  Not quite enough to get off the ground but got some sweet taxi time. 😉

We started off filling out some paperwork and getting to know each other.  We then progressed into learning fundamentals of the aircraft.  I have studied most of this stuff for years but it was good to hear a different perspective.

Next we called for a weather briefing.  It was early in the morning and there was fog between our field and the practice area so we had to wait a bit.  It looked like we would be good to go in the next 30 minutes so we moved on to pre-flight.

In the pre-flight walk around, we spend a lot of time going over what to do and how to do it correctly. Starting inside of the cockpit, we removed the control lock and turned on the master switch, dropped the flaps and turned on the lights.  Quickly, we walked around the aircraft checking to make sure the navigation lights and landing lights were functional.  After this, we turned the master switch off to conserve battery.

Next we checked the left side main gear, fuel, fuselage, elevator, rudder, flaps, ailerons, right main gear, leading edges of the wings, cowling, front gear, prop, spinner, oil, filter, exhaust manifold, pitot tube, fuel tank vent… and i’m sure a few other things from the checklist that I forgot about.

I asked a lot of questions and got a lot of background on things to look for.  By the time we were in the cockpit to run-up the engine and make sure it was working to spec, we only had 20 minutes left on the reservation of the aircraft.  So my instructor had me taxi to the other end of the airfield and back in order to get a feel for steering with my feet.  It was a weird sensation but it was something that I was use to from flight simulator.

Even though I didn’t get off the ground, it was pretty awesome.  I have my next several lessons scheduled and am looking forward to getting off the ground next time.

I was assigned an instructor this evening and scheduled my first flight lesson for tomorrow morning.  Nervous, Excited, tired….. a little hungry.  It is finally happening! First Flight Tomorrow!

This is totally how I picture myself!