The post that's bound to stir fear in the hearts of loved ones.

I was given some frightening and exciting news this morning. At the end of my lesson Joshua very matter-of-factly informed me that I should expect to fly my stage-check with Belinda sometime next week. That means that on that incedible and horrifying day, I'll fly with Belinda (the assistant chief flight instructor) instead of Joshua. She'll put me through my paces and if she likes what she sees, she'll give her approval. Then, the next time I fly, it will be solo.

In case it didn't sink in for you just then, let me put it another way: It's very possible that sometime next week I'll be making my first solo flight! Holy cow!!! I called my dad to tell him and asked him to tell my mom, too. But he says if he tells her now she won't sleep til after I solo, so he's going to wait til the day before. Probably not a bad idea... unless she's reading this. Hi, mom! You should really try to get some sleep.

Hey! Blogger has graciously decided to let me post pictures again. So here's that pic I promised yesterday. Enjoy!

Monday: great news, good news, and bad news.

As I was preflighting my new favorite plane (2143Y) this morning, I got a phone call from my lovely wife. It seems she got the financial aid job she's been trying to get since we arrived in AZ. So, bright and early tomorrow morning, she's driving out to Sierra Vista for her first day of training. Excellent.

A short time after I got off the phone with Jen, while I was still preflighting the plane, Joshua came out to have a brief word with me. It seems a new student is starting to fly, and for reasons unknown to either of us, he MUST fly at 8:15. The problem, of course, is that I'm Joshua's 8:15. So I've effectively been bumped to 6:45. Yup. A.M. I'm not thrilled about it, but I almost got bumped to the afternoons, and I'd much rather fly mornings, so I can't complain too much. Plus, since Jen and I both have to walk out the door at 6:30, neither one of us will have to worry about getting ready quietly so as not to wake the other.

So there's the great news and the bad news. The good news is that I finally made a really good landing this morning. As I mentioned previously, I've been having trouble with the flare. I finally got it today. Granted, it was only one good landing out of 4 attempts, but it's still one good landing! Plus, I might have a valid excuse for not doing better on my other landings. See, the new student who got my 8:15 flight time showed up this morning and rode back seat on my lesson. I did some calculations after my lesson, and it turns out our weight and balance this morning were not exactly kosher, so the plane wasn't handling the way the manufacturer intended. It would explain why Joshua kept warning me about being too fast on my landing approaches, when I've never had that problem before. The fact that I actually managed to pull off a good landing this morning is probably very significant in light of this, but I'm not sure exactly how. I'll let you know if it comes to me.

And, just because I haven't posted a picture in a while, I'm going to root through my files and see if I can find one to post. Enjoy!

Update: Apparently, blogger isn't letting me post pics right now. Reckon I'll try again later. I had a good one picked out, too. Sorry.

The week's lessons

Shame on me. I haven't been posting regular updates/summaries of my lessons. Frankly, there hasn't really been a whole lot to share. I've been flying the plane more smoothly, holding headings, altitudes and airspeeds much better than I was. And I've started doing my own landings. In fact, that's all we did yesterday. The problem is that I can't seem to grasp the concept of the flare. The flare is when you're just about touched down on the runway, so you slowly and smoothly pitch up to sink slowly and touch down gently. I stink at the flare. I either don't flare and land hard and flat, or I over-flare and drop like a rock. There's nothing wrong with a little over-flare, per se, but it's not good form and Joshua is unwilling to let me learn to be sloppy. So I'm stuck on a flare plateau; I'm not improving, but I'm not getting any worse, either.

On the plus side, my traffic pattern is more or less good, and Joshua told me my S-turns today were looking better than they have been in the past. So there's some progress being made, just not with the flare.

Lessons 10 through 12, and some kinda Friday.

The best reason I can give for not blogging about Lessons 10 through 12 the same days they happened, is that this wound up being a difficult/discouraging flying week for me, and I wasn't eager to rehash my last couple lessons so soon. But I figured, for posterity's sake, I may as well say something about them. So here goes.

Lesson 10 involved more hood work. It was better this time, but that's like saying losing one leg is better than losing both legs. Still not terribly pretty.

Lesson 11 had me back in the simulator. It also went better the second time, but it still wasn't too graceful. I felt like an imaginary rhino charging through an imaginary sky in an imaginary plane.

Lesson 12 didn't involve the hood or the FTD. That instantly made it the prize lesson of my week. And it actually wasn't too bad a lesson. I did a couple of really nice stalls and recoveries after a takeoff that was so good it earned me a compliment. But I also did some not-so-great S-turns (they were, however, quite possibly my best yet), and a few ho-hum turns about a point. I even had the benefit of using a round field as my "point" and I still made a mess of it. Downright stinky. However, and this was really the high point of my flying week, I made my own landing, for the very first time in AZ. And it didn't suck, and no one got hurt!!! Was it textbook? No. Was it a gorgeous landing? No. But it was mine, and it was, in Joshua's (apparently, he prefers JoshUA) words, "pretty good". I'll take it!

After my lesson yesterday, I invited Joshua to come over and play games or watch a movie whenever he wanted. I told him just to give us a call if he ever got bored, because we're ALWAYS bored. He seemed enthusiastic about that, and told us he wanted to have us over for dinner and games next Saturday night. Sweet! He also followed me home after my lesson, to meet Jen and see where we live. Aww, how cute. Josh made a friend.

Joshua also gave me a disk with Microsoft Flight Simulator '98 on it and showed me where to download the files necessary to fly a Piper Cherokee on it. So I spent a couple hours flying a virtual plane around a virtual Cochise College last night. You're probably asking how, exactly, that's different from the FTD. Well, the biggest difference is that I get to see where I'm going, versus flying by instruments only. Another nice difference is that I can fiddle around with it as much as I want, with no flight instructor sitting over my shoulder making me nervous. It just may prove useful in practicing the traffic pattern and things like that.

And now, about today. Today I called State Farm in Bisbee (the closest one, but they have a part-time satellite office in Douglas) to talk to them about how their rates compare to Bay City State Farm. Well, that wound up being a fiasco. I think the guy helping me was new, because he was a little jittery and kept forgetting to get info from me. Then he said he'd get my Michigan agent to fax over our premium info so he could tell me what the AZ version of it would be. While I was waiting for him to call me back, I remembered that it's illegal here to drive with an AZ license when your title and registration are out-of-state. Like mine. So Jen and I hopped in the car to go get that taken care of. The guy at the MVD (Motor Vehicle Division) was just about done getting my info in and about to hand me my new license plate, when their computer system crashed. And stayed crashed. This was at around noon. He told me I could leave and he'd call my cell phone when the system came back up. He also told me that the crash was state-wide, and that it sometimes goes down for a couple days at a time. So Jen and I came home and ate lunch. I called the MVD an hour and a half later, and was told the system was still down and please try again in an hour. So Jen and I left for Sierra Vista, so Jen could pick up her prescription at Walgreen's (the closest one). I tried the MVD 3 more times before their scheduled closing time, and the system was still down all 3 times. So I guess I have to go Monday morning after my lesson, to pick up our new plate and all that. Meanwhile, State Farm guy never called me back, presumably because he couldn't get needed info from the MVD because the system was down. So I guess I'm expecting their call on Monday morning, as well.

Oh, and on top of all that, I seem to have picked up a cold or sinus infection or something, pretty much out of the blue. It's got me pretty fatigued. At 8:30, I woke up from a spontaneous nap, and I'm thinking about going back to bed soon. Let's hope I'm fully recovered before Monday morning. Lots to do!!! On the bright side, I have an amazingly compassionate wife who is bent on nursing me back to health. Thanks, Jen! And thanks, God!!!

Lesson 9: Under the hood.

Today, I had my first taste of flying under the hood. The hood is a training device that restricts your vision so all you can see is the flight instruments. You're completely unable to see outside the cockpit. I had assumed that this would be relatively easy for me, since I have the bad habit of spending most of my flight time looking at the instruments anyway. I was wrong. It was hard. I didn't like it much at all. It was like flying the simulator, in that I had to fly completely by my instruments. It was different from the simulator in that I was forced to realize I was flying a real-life plane and mistakes could have very real consequences. For instance, at one point I put the plane in a considerable dive, without intending to. I know it was considerable because when I pulled back on the yoke, I could feel the G forces pushing me into my seat. That's not really good. And then Josh made me do a power-on stall without being able to see outside the plane. That went almost as well as the rest of my instrument time. So my experience under the hood was unimpressive, and it earned me a C in Instrument Reference.

After I took off the hood, things didn't improve too much. Josh has a sadistic obsession with making me do slow-flight, which means you're flying the plane at about 55kts (that's about half its normal cruising speed) with your nose pointed up in the air. And today was no exception. "Okay, Josh, you can take off the hood now. Hey, let's do some slow-flight." I shouldn't gripe. Josh is just trying to make me the best pilot I can be, and he's trying to help me polish my slow-flight so I can impress my examiner when I do my stage check.

Toward the end of the lesson, when it was just about time to land, Josh had me get involved in the traffic pattern and landing. It was a little nerve-wracking, but we got through it... And then he made me take off and do it all again. And we got through it the second time, too.

All in all, today was frustrating, but it's one more step on the road to me picking up the knowledge and finesse I need to really be the best I can be.

Days go by!

Holy smokes!!! Today is our one-month anniversary in Arizona! We arrived here on July 13th, after 3 1/2 wearying days of driving. Man, it seems like so much longer sometimes. Anyhow, to celebrate, we're going to Burger King for lunch! I know, you're envious.

Lesson 8: Gel.

First off, I need to make a note about the absence of a post for Lesson 7. See, there are certain "briefing" requirements my instructor and I need to meet. Lesson 7 was one of those times where we basically sat in Josh's office for an hour and talked about things I need to know about flying and the plane and paperwork and stuff. No flying involved. And, talented writer though I may arguably be, even I struggle to catch my readers' interest when it comes to relating a story about an hour's worth of talking.

So on to Lesson 8. I subtitled it Gel because I really felt like things were starting to gel for me today. Stuff is just starting to come together, and that's very exciting. When I walked into Josh's office for my post-flight briefing, after closing my flight plan and putting the plane keys back, he started by saying, "You did really good today." That's the kind of pat on the back that makes me feel like a million bucks!

My flight time started with my best takeoff yet; a good rotation followed by the proper climb angle. After we got up to our cruise altitude (6500 MSL), Josh taught me a little bit about which mountains were which out there. It was cool because our visibility was almost unlimited, so we could see a couple mountain ranges over in New Mexico. The goals of today's lesson were steep turns, slow flight, and more stalls. I admit that my steep turns were ugly. I couldn't get the bank angles I needed to keep my altitude constant. But, since it was really my first introduction to steep turns, I guess I did okay. Slow flight has, in the past, been difficult for me, but today it was good. In fact, it was so good that Josh complimented me on it. Maybe it was just my imagination, but he sounded almost surprised by my improvement (I know I was).

My stalls were pretty fair, too. Mostly we did power-on stalls, and I was introduced to stalls in a turn. Basically, you set up for a power-on stall, then bank the plane a little. Piece of cake. At the end of the lesson, Josh had me demonstrate a power-off stall. In the past, these have given me a bit of trouble, because there are 3 steps you need to do almost simultaneously to properly recover from the stall, and I always have trouble doing them quick enough. Today was no exception. We flew a little longer than usual today, and I could feel myself growing fatigued, so my already-messy power-off stall technique wound up being even messier than usual. It was bad enough that I flat-out said, "That was messy. I apologize." Josh agreed and asked me if I wanted to try another one, but I had a feeling that any other maneuvers I attempted would just grow progressively more sloppy, so I let him know I was at my limit. He respected my decision, and we headed for home.

Overall, it was a fantastic lesson, and it left me a little bummed that I would have to wait until Monday to go back up. I need to give all credit and praise to God. I prayed this morning that He would give me ability and knowledge, and He clearly answered with an almost-miraculous improvement in my takeoff and slow flight. I feel really cool after a lesson like today's, but so little of it is really me. I couldn't do this without Almighty God making it possible.

Takeoff!!!

And here's the pic of me taking off. It's not as good as the taxi pic, but it's still more than I had before this morning. Enjoy!

Follow that cab!!!

Here is one of the pics I mentioned in my last post. It's me taxiing the plane to the end of the runway. Enjoy!

Lesson 6: Redemption, after the crow-hop.

This morning brought my very welcome return to the real-life airplane, after yesterday's disappointing encounter with the FTD. And today went great! My preflight inspection was textbook and I filed my flight plan with ease. My preflight briefing with Josh went well. It also went long because I spent some time asking questions and trying to better understand some things. Josh seemed to appreciate that I was trying to fit things together better in my mind; he mentioned it in his pre-takeoff prayer, thanking God for my determination and desire to understand.

After we got in the airplane, things started to go wrong in a way that wasn't my fault. My seat back wanted to remain in a partially-reclined position, and that caused me to not be able to see well over the engine cowling. Then, just before takeoff, we discovered that I was incredibly loud when I transmitted on the com, despite out inside-the-plane voice being a little quieter than normal, even though we had our volume maxed out. Just goofy electronics, I guess.

And, since I'm taking a moment to acknowledge things that went wrong, I should mention my takeoff. It wasn't my best takeoff. It was, however, quite possibly my best impression of a hopping crow. See, when you're rolling down the runway and your airspeed indicator hits 50kts, you're supposed to gently ease the yoke back, thus lifting the nose (rotating) and getting ready to leave the ground. When your plane leaves the ground, you're supposed to get the angle of your plane all set up for your climb speed and attitude. Now, I know what my climb attitude looks like, but when I see it immediately after lifting off, I always assume that the angle is too low. So I pull back more which, if you're not very careful, will cause your plane to stall. Stalling immediately after takeoff, when you're still very close to the ground, is bad. You only have so much runway to roll on, before you go off the end and find yourself conducting an Arizona wilderness safari. So you have to get off the ground and establish a positive rate of climb sometime before you reach the end of the pavement. Stalling your plane will only increase your takeoff roll... sometimes considerably, sometimes dangerously. Well, I didn't stall today, but I did pull back too much, which made me panic and push my nose down, which made the plane sink back to the runway, which meant I had to sort of take off all over again. Not a great move, and it earned me a C for takeoff on my daily grading sheet.

After my hopping-crow impression, things went much better. My climb-out was good, despite a little bouncing around from the wind. I remembered my headings, I remembered my altitudes. Overall, I handled the plane pretty well. And I made a point of being much more vocal today: "Okay, I'm having some trouble finding my pitch attitude. What can I do to make it easier?" And other questions like that. Questions that helped me get a better feel for flying and fine-tuning, and helped Josh see that I really am trying my best and want to learn. And the questions helped me feel more keyed-in to my instructor. I felt like he was there to help me, not like he was just there to judge me and tell me I'm doing things wrong. He gave me several compliments today, little comments on how I was improving on some things I'd been having trouble with. I felt good inside.

The focus of today's lesson was refreshing my ground reference maneuvers, specifically S-turns and turns about a point. S-turns mean you're turning back and forth over a straight line (like a road), making even half-circles on each side of the road. Turns about a point are pretty self-explanatory: You pick a point, like an intersection or the middle of a field, and you fly in a circle around it. One of the keys to these maneuvers is correcting your bank angle for the wind. For instance, you have to bank pretty steeply on your initial turn, or the wind is going to push you away from your point or road, and the maneuver is pretty well ruined right off the bat. For some reason, the fields here in southern Arizona are mostly all round, versus the standard square or rectangle I'm used to seeing. This is very good for the pilot (namely, me), because it makes turns about a point VERY easy. All you have to do is make sure your butt is always on the edge of the field. Josh demonstrated one for me, then it was my turn. My first try wasn't too impressive, but my second attempt was flawless. In fact, Josh made me do a third circle, just to make sure the second one wasn't a fluke. And I stuck the third one, too. So, just to make a point (no pun intended), he made me leave my nice, round field and try flying a circle around an intersection of roads, where there was no circular visual aid to made it simple. And I flew something between a trapezoid and an elipse. Not good. But my perfect turns over the field earned me an A in Turns About a Point.

My S-turns weren't as good. That's not to say they were bad, necessarily. They just weren't that great. I'm still having a hard time finding the right amount of nose-up attitude when I'm doing steep turns. See, when you bank the plane steeply, some of your lift (the force that's keeping you from falling out of the sky) gets turns sideways and helps make the plane turn. So, if you give up some of your lift, you need to pull back on the yoke to bring the nose up, so the wings will generate additional lift to keep you from losing altitude. My tendency is to not pull back enough to compensate for the angle of bank, so I lose altitude during the turn but then, as soon as I level out, my nose is too high (the wings are generating too much lift now) and I start to climb. So I need to work on getting my nose up more during the turn, then releasing my back-pressure as I'm rolling out of the turn. Suffice it to say, my S-turns weren't as graceful or pretty as Josh's.

After the ground reference maneuvers, the lesson was over and it was time to head back to the airport. For the first time, I was able to figure out where the school was without Josh's help, and get us there, and make the right radio calls, and get down to the correct altitude for entering the traffic pattern. It was pretty, and it was all (well, mostly) me.

All told, this lesson was definitely a keeper. I enjoyed flying the plane today... except for that little hop in the beginning. And, as a bonus, Jen took a couple pics of me taxiing the plane to the runway, and taking off. However, blogger isn't letting me upload them right now. So, as soon as I manfinish sweet-talking the website, I'll get those posted for your enjoyment.

This is a test, to make sure I know how to post pics. This is my lovely wife hiding in our gaudy bedsheets.

Lesson 5: The FTD.

FTD stand for Flight Training Device. It's a simulator, which means you're sitting in front of a pretend flight panel, all your instruments staring back at you. But when you start "flying" you have no sensation of gravity and no view outside the "plane". So you really have to be watching your instruments, to make sure you're not climbing or descending or turning, unless you actually want to do those things. Then you have to watch your instruments to make sure you are doing them. It should also be noted that the simulators here at Cochise are probably at least 30 years old, are spring-loaded, and are not very responsive. All that said, here's how this morning went down.

I began my day a little bit excited about the simulator, because I wouldn't have to fly the actual airplane today. It would be a bit of a take-it-easy day. No stress... or so I thought. I found Josh in his office, we went over instruments a bit, then made our way to the simulator room. I sat down, fired up the old heap of garbage, and quickly discovered that "flying" the simulator makes flying the airplane seem downright easy. The machine being old and the springs being... well, also old, there's no such thing as a small correction. So as the simulater drifted left, as it's apparently prone to do, it's necessary to apply a small amount of right bank to correct for it. But, again, there are no small corrections in the simulator. So the tendency is to grossly overcontrol. "Oops, I'm turning a bit left. I'll just correct with a little right aileron... oop! Now we're banked right. I'll just correct that by easing off that right aileron a little... oops! Now I'm drifting back to the left." You get the idea. On top of the inability to make small corrections, there are no armrests in the simulator. That may not seem like a big deal to the uninitiated, but when you're holding your arm bent slightly in mid-air as you grip the control yoke for 30 minutes at a clip, you begin to notice that you really want to bank to the left, since your big, heavy arm is starting to droop. This, coupled with the simulator's inherent tendency to drift left, means you find yourself banking left alot.

In the post-flight briefing, Josh told me I did really well in several areas of simulator "flight", which surprised me alot. Maybe I'm still being way too hard on myself. Maybe I'm just not used to not instantly understanding things. Maybe I need to learn to just be patient and struggle my way through this colossal learning curve. On the bright side, though, after today's tango with the FTD, I'm actually looking forward to being back in the real airplane tomorrow morning, where gravity makes itself known and helps me understand the consequences of my flight-control deflections.

Tribal Air

In an hour, Jen and I will be leaving to go visit New Tribes Mission Aviation, or Tribal Air. I've seen it from the air a couple times this past week, since they're pretty close to Cochise's practice area. But today we'll be on the ground, getting a tour and meeting some missionaries. And that's a very cool thing.

Lesson 4: The one where nothing really went right.

Today was my fourth flight lesson here at Cochise. It was one of those lessons where I started out feeling really scattered and disorganized, and it just never got better. It all started when I went to grab "my" plane (Cherokee 6121H), and someone had already taken it. I call 6121H my plane because I've used it every day this week. In fact, all 4 of the VFR Cherokees were already in use, and there was only one IFR Cherokee left (the school has 3). So I wound up flying Cherokee 39954 today. Being an IFR plane, it has slightly different equipment than the VFRs, and some of the equipment I'm used to wasn't in the place I'm used to finding it. On top of that, I kept forgetting things on my preflight inspection, despite the fact that I have a fairly detailed printed checklist to follow. And then the plane had a low tire, so I had to use some of my training time learning where to get an air compressor and how to fill an airplane tire.

After we (my instructor, my passenger, and I) finally got in the plane and I got us off the ground, I had the hardest time just trying to get the plane to do what I wanted it to do. Straight climbs were like scaling Everest without oxygen. Simple banks were as elusive as bigfoot. Attempting slow flight may as well have been attempting to fly by flapping my arms. What probably made it all worse was the fact that during yesterday's lesson I felt like I had no problem rising to whatever challenge my instructor placed before me. Today I may as well have been trying to fly with my eyes closed. Josh (my instructor) assured me in my post-flight briefing, though, that there's alot to be learned in days like today. So I guess it wasn't a total loss.

On the other hand, I had my first test in ground training this afternoon. It took me 11 minutes. Seriously. Twenty-three multiple choice questions, and I was out the door. Even better, the instructor who graded my test lives downstairs from me, and I caught him as he was coming home to see what I'd gotten. 100%. Sweet! Never mind the fact that I already took this class 3 years ago; I really needed a little morale boost after this morning's flying, and I'll take what I can get.

Pics are coming soon!!!