Lesson #16: Sun, Jun 2 2019

Yesterday I joined a local chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA): EAA #690 based at Briscoe Field in Lawrenceville. The EAA has traditionally been about building airplanes, but for me the appeal was joining a group of people who like to talk about aviation.

My instructor took me to the EAA 690 monthly pancake breakfast last month, but yesterday I went by myself and joined up. The only person I knew there was Greg Huseth, the chapter president. (I worked for Greg for a year at Georgia Tech back around 2002.) I sat a table with with a couple. He was a former private pilot, and she works with a firm that develops satellite wifi systems for commercial aircraft. We ended up talking about the recent Boeing 737 MCAS issues, and then branched off into a discussion of electric and self-driving cars. Geeky, interesting conversation.

After breakfast there was a speaker who was not all that interesting. But after that came the highlight of my morning: I went outside to see airplanes. EAA 690's facility is a hanger right on Briscoe Field. Some folks actually flew in for the meeting, and they had their aircraft parked near the EAA hanger. I saw a Stinson Voyager, a Sonex, and a Kitfox. At the end of the meeting Greg Huseth said that a member was offering to donate his aircraft to the chapter. A number of us went over to a hanger to see said aircraft, and it turned out to be a Long-EZ. I had no idea what that was, and the aircraft was partially disassembled, so it looked kind of questionable to my untrained eye. But later googling revealed that the Long-EZ was created by famous aircraft designer Burt Rutan. Even more interesting (if morbid), singer John Denver died in a Long-EZ.

Today's lesson back into my decidedly-not-experimental Cessna 172 was in contrast to my previous lesson: I was definitely the student again.

First, Steve demonstrated a short-field take-off. I'm here to tell you that a Cessna 172 can get up into the air in no time if you need to. The procedure:

• Go to end of the runway and turn around.
• Hold the brakes, and bring the throttle up to full power.
• At about 5 knots below normal rotate speed (50 knots in my case), pull back on the yoke.
• Climb out at Vx (best angle of climb) speed - 59kts
• No lower than 50 feet, bring down the nose and accelerate to Vy (best rate of climb) speed - 73 knots.

We always climb out from PDK at Vy (best rate) which gets us the most altitude in the least amount of time. However, sometimes you need to climb out in the shortest distance: if there were trees off the end of the runway, for example, you'd need best rate of climb (Vx).

We headed up North to do some practice turns-which we've done recently-and stalls-which we haven't done in a while.

Before I started my practice turns, I looked left and right for traffic. Usually there's no traffic, but today there was another aircraft at our level perhaps a few miles away off to the left. Not close, but we decided to turn to the right instead of the left. It wasn't a big deal, but it was interesting to actually see an airplane: away from airports, the sky is usually pretty empty.

After a couple of steep 360 degree turns, it was on to stall practice. I haven't practiced stalls since lesson 4 back in December.

It's hard to stall a Cessna 172. In level flight, we normally cruise at over 100kts. To stall, you have to get down near 40kts, and to get there you have keep pulling steadily back on the yoke. Pull pull pull PULL PULL...you start to hear the stall horn and feel the yoke shake, and finally the wing loses lift, and the plane dips. Push forward on the yoke just a little to gain speed, and just like that - you're out of the stall. We did that twice.

After that, we set our course back towards PDK with the intention of doing some touch-and-go's. Although winds were down around 7kts when we left PDK, 45 minutes later it was gusting to 15. We went around three times in the pattern. The first time we were too high (my fault), the second time .. I don't remember, but I didn't get down close enough to the field because of the gusting winds.

Steve offered to set me up on final for the final go-around. We approached the field with no flaps, because with gusting winds we want a little more speed: the slower we fly, the more sluggish the controls are. If it's gusty, we need more airspeed because we might need to counteract a sudden gust of wind, and to do so we need the flight controls to have more "authority."

Steve got the aircraft where it needed to be on final and gave it over to me, but I wasn't comfortable with my ability to control the airplane with the gusting winds, so I gave the airplane back to Steve. It was even more gusty at touchdown, and Steve had to work to get the aircraft on the ground.

So in the end, at either end of the flight I wasn't in control of the airplane. When you're a student, some days are like that.