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.