May 2019 Archives

It's been three weeks since my last lesson. As I previous discovered, that much time off is not for maintaining muscle memory and ... well, just plain old memory. (Kelly quoting one her relatives: "What button do I mash to make it do?")

It wasn't by choice; N73924 was due for its 100 hour check, and the other Cessna 172 704RB was booked up.

But in the those three weeks I did pass one more significant milestone: the FAA office in Oklahoma City issued my Medical Certificate Third Class. My medical is good until November 30th, 2019 - only six months away.

My medical took seven months to get to this point because there were conditions that the FAA wanted to make sure were under control, so there was lots of back-and-forth with my doctor getting test results and forms filled out. If it took seven months to get the FAA to sign off on this one, I was concerned: do I need to started on my renewal immediately? (If it takes another seven months I'd already be late!)

A few months back I joined the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA). AOPA has a service where you can call or email them with aviation-related questions. I emailed them a question about the process, and they directed me back to the seven pages the FAA sent me, which revealed that for the renewal, my Aviation Medical Examiner would be allowed to sign off on the conditions the FAA had approved. So when I go back to see the AME in October or November, assuming everything is unchanged, they will be able issue my year-long renewal. Whew!

This morning we were the second flight in 73924 following the 100-hour maintenance. It's worth being extra through in your preflight checks following maintenance; occasionally something will not be reconnected properly during maintenance, and you'll discover that either on the ground or in the air. (Steve's personal preference is to remain in the pattern for the first hour of flight following maintenance. )

The result of my three week layoff was predictable: I was rusty again. This happens to experienced pilots as well; they don't forget the basics like I do, but "currency" is a thing that pilots need to be aware of.

I'm still working on mastering landings, so we stayed in the pattern, taking off towards the south on 21R.

The first time around the pattern was rough; Steve had to take the aircraft just before we got to the runway because I didn't have it set up correctly.

The next few times around were not pretty, either, but I achieved a milestone: Steve had me take the aircraft all the way down to the runway. I actually landed! We were doing touch-and-gos, so Steve then took over the aircraft to get us back in the air.

One thing I didn't realize: when I'm allowed to solo the aircraft, I will not be allowed to do touch-and-gos like I've been doing with Steve. The reason: it's all too easy to end up too far down the runway and end up running out of runway. So as a student pilot, if I touch down on the runway, I'll need to bring the aircraft to a "full stop". One doesn't actually come to a full stop on the runway itself: you turn off onto the taxi way that the tower gives you, switch over to the ground frequency, and then come to a full stop just after getting off the runway until ground gives you instructions.

The touch-and-go itself is a tricky maneuver. As so as the aircraft is firmly on the ground, you want to immediately put the flaps back up, push the carburetor heat button back in, and push the throttle back to full power. At that point you're back to a normal takeoff: you want to pull back on the yoke between 55 and 60 knots, build up your speed, and then climb out between 70 and 79 knots.

My landings were all somewhat rough: I'm still having issues keeping the aircraft centered over the runway. But I was very proud to have actually got the aircraft all the way to the ground three times, including our final landing. On the last one we bounced back up into the air a little, which is a sign that I had too much speed. The goal is to get the aircraft right down over the runway at perhaps 25 feet, then just try to keep it off the runway by raising the nose gradually. When the aircraft gets down to around 40kts it will stall, which is actually what you want, because you want to get onto the ground with no lift so you don't bounce.

I had my first experience of rolling out after a landing. On a small aircraft on a long runway you don't want to use the brakes. Instead, you just keep the aircraft going straight down the runway until you bleed off enough speed where you can turn off.

I've been working on pattern work for three months now since lesson #8 on February 9th. Even though much of the flying today was rough because of my three weeks off, it was still very satisfying actually land after 7 lessons.

Progress!

With this lesson, I'm up to 14.5 hours in the plane. Technically, these are referred to as 'dual instruction received' hours. They count towards my license, but I think if you were to walk up to future me and ask how many hours I have in the air, I don't think these count.

Today's lesson was a change up from the last bunch of lessons where I've stayed in the pattern at PDK. We took off to the south on 21R and then headed up north a ways.

My takeoff was a bit rough. Just as I got off the runway it got a bit squirrelly. That's a phrase I'd never use about a car, but in this case it meant that the nose yawed a little to the right just after we took off. I'm saying that as if it just happened, but of course it was because of what I was doing, or likely not doing. There was definitely some turbulence as we climbed out.

Steve made an interesting observation later. When the wind is coming more or less straight across the north/south facing runways coming from the west (as it was today), the air hits the hangers first, and that disturbs the air. The same wind coming from the east has fewer obstacles, and would be smoother.

We focused on two things today. The first was steep coordinated turns: steep in this case meaning about 45' of bank. That's reasonably steep; your typical commercial aircraft tries to keep banks under 30'. As the turn gets steeper, you have to add some back pressure on the yoke to keep the aircraft from losing altitude.

We did a number of those: probably 3-4 big turns to the left and then back to the right. The first ones were not great, but as I did it more, they got better. Practice.

I also got a better feel for the fact that you need less rudder pressure when you're turning left than when you're turning right. There are at least three reasons for that, but they all center around the fact that you've got a propeller out in front of you. A propeller is actually a wing, and wings generate lift. As you look at the aircraft head-on, the propeller rotates right to left, and a downward-moving propeller generates more lift .. and that's more lift (or force) on the right side of the aircraft. Since the lift/force is a little less on the left side, the plane naturally wants turn left a little bit. Yeah, this is one place where words don't really cut it. And when you're learning to fly, it's just one of those things you learn to deal with.

The second major thing we did was gave me a little more time flying on instruments. When I get my license, I will only be allowed to fly in VFR (visual flight rules) conditions - meaning, basically, no clouds for me. Flying in clouds means you learn to fly without being able to look outside, meaning you can only use your instruments.

Getting an IFR rating is a big undertaking in itself, just as big as getting to a private pilot's lesson in the first place. The purpose of the instrument work I did today was to give me some tools if I do happen to fly into IFR conditions. The basic advice in that case is to make a 180' turn and go back the way you came.

To simulate what it would be like if you couldn't see outside the aircraft, you can use _foggles_ over you eyes. Foggles let you see the instrument panel without seeing outside the airplane. Steve took the aircraft, I put on the foggles, and then Steve turned control back over to me.

The first challenge is just trying to fly straight and level without losing or gaining altitude. The idea is to scan each of the primary flight instruments for no more than a second or so, see if there's anything you need to do, and then move your eyes to the next instrument. If you do need to do something, you want to use the advice Ellie Arroway's dad give her in the movie *Contact*: small moves. Make a small correction and continue your scan.

At first I was just watching vertical speed indicator and the heading - am I going up or down or wandering off course - but then I realized I needed to watch the artificial horizon as well. The artificial horizon tells you two things: are your wings level and are you climbing or descending. My wings had already started to bank.

Then Steve had me do some turns. Steve's told me not to focus on the heading indicator, because once you start a turn, you're going to be turning for a while. I did pretty well with those until Steve intentionally distracted me; we'd been out long enough that we needed to get a new ATIS (weather) report from PDK, so he asked me to change the radio back to the PDK ATIS frequency. Apparently my flying went all to hell while I tried to do that.

All in all, though, Steve says I did a pretty good job on both my turns and my instrument work. In the case of the instrument work, I think doing OK means I didn't end up a dive or going in the opposite direction.

As we were approaching PDK, we had incident. Peachtree Tower advised us there there was traffic "at our 12 o'clock 1 mile away". When ATC tells you something like that, what they want to hear is that you've spotted the traffic, because then it's your job to avoid them. We looked, and spotted an aircraft at our one o'clock cutting right across our path at about our altitude. It looked relatively close to me - Steve said afterwards it was perhaps 1/2 mile away. We were doing perhaps 80 knots or less at the time - that's about 135 feet per second. At that speed it would have taken us 20 seconds to cover that distance, and the other aircraft was cutting across our path going faster than that. So not an imminent danger, but *much* closer than we normally get. I think it gave the controller a bit of a scare, though. In Steve's opinion, the tower was to blame for the closeness: they should have told one of us to do something.

Steve had already decided that because there the winds were too gusty for me to fly any approaches, so took the aircraft and landed.

One more weird note about this lesson. I got in an email Monday morning that saying that the next pilot to fly N73924 had found the master switch was on. Turning on the master switch is a little like turning your car ignition to accessory: when the master switch is on, the light on the airside work and some of gyroscopes inside several the instruments spin up. The gyroscopes have a distinct whine that is hard to miss - so it's unlikely you'll just forget it.

One of the things Steve likes to do is leave the beacon light at the top of the tail switched on so that if you leave the aircraft with the master switch on, you'll see the beacon light blinking.

Neither Steve nor I can think of how this might have happened. He has no memory of the master switch being on, and he says as he walked away from the aircraft, he turned back to make sure the beacon light wasn't on.

The lock on the door to 73924 doesn't work, so it's possible that someone could have opened it up after we left - but to do so, they would have had to take the cover off, because we put that on when we were done flying the aircraft.

Anyway, it's a mystery. Occam's razor suggests we just left it on and didn't notice it. I'll be more diligent in the future.