Category: Flying

I’ve recently flown a version of the Citabria with nearly 180 horsepower.  The standard version I fly is down around 115.  The extra bump doesn’t seem like much on paper, but man, it really gets the plane moving in a hurry.  I can climb far faster than I’m used to, stay at altitude, and cruise at max speed no matter what.  And before you ask, no it doesn’t burn much more avgas than the standard version.

The downsides of this new plane are: it’s more expensive to rent and I am now “behind the airplane” a lot more than I used to be.  More things for me to learn and aware of on the flights around the area, I suppose.

That’s my sad slug for flying under simulated instrument conditions, night time flying, and doing recoveries from unusual attitudes.  When combined, these three activities equal some serious fright (yes, it’s a sad pun, but deal with it).

Simulated instrument flying is flying around with a “hood” or view limiting device on your head so that you can only see the instruments in the cockpit.  That leaves me with no idea where I am and following the directions barked out by the CFI behind me.  It is a bit disorienting to fly this way as I feel lost and a bit off kilter the entire time, but it is to remind me not to ever fly into clouds or other instrument-like conditions.

Next up is night flying.  This is a bit similar to the instrument flying, but you can kind of see lights and the outlines of stuff on the ground.  The challenge is, at least in the Bay Area, that there are these pesky mountains that get in the way of your airplane.  So it is very easy to fly into one (or a cloud) at night.  And landing is a bit of a trip, also, since it involves heading for a dark spot in a town with only a few lights around the edges of the runway with no real depth perception.

Finally we have recoveries from unusual attitudes.  It is exactly what it sounds like:  the plane gets into some state where it is climbing, banking, stalling, or falling in a way that it shouldn’t, and then I have to do the right things to get it out of this condition.  But the way you get into this sad state is the kicker:  I am asked to close my eyes, take my hands and feet off the controls, and put my head down towards the floor.  The instructor puts the plane through some violent maneuvers  and then says “look up” and I have to fix it.  All the while, my brain and inner ears are telling me that things aren’t what they appear to be and I have to learn to trust the instruments in front of me and not just what I’m feeling.

This training, along with the cross country trips, supposedly moves me closer to the final testing and sign off for a private pilots license.  Let’s just see if I can make it through the next few recoveries without losing my lunch.

It’s true, I’m sorta, kinda, afraid of solo flying.  Not the “normal” flying stuff, but anything new.  This poses a bit of a problem, since at this point in my learning to fly I need to be doing the flying all by myself virtually all of the time.

On Saturday and Sunday this week I flew solo.  Saturday was just laps around the pattern, landing, takeoffs, taxi backs, the normal stuff.  That is fine and I’m comfortable doing it for the most part.  Sunday my CFI pushed me to fly out to the coast and do some “air work.”  This is the stuff of stalls, slow flight, and controlling altitude and bank angles in turns.  I don’t really enjoy doing that stuff with the CFI in the plane with me, so it was really tough to be motivated to do it without him there.  Worse, there was mild turbulence on the way to and back from the practice area.  When you are all alone in the cockpit, the tower has released you with the “frequency change approved” kiss off, it can get a bit crazy there in the cockpit (or your head).

In my case, it was just a chunk of time with my brain alternating between moving the arms and hands to do the stuff they are supposed to do and the mind’s tendency to be freaking out with all of the rocking and rolling of the winds.  I eventually started talking to myself (cue the “wacko” tag here) to restore a since of calm and order in the plane.  Once over at the practice area, which today is a grand vista of the Pacific ocean and bits of Half Moon Bay visible, things smoothed out and a sense of purpose returned.  It wasn’t until the return to the airport that things went all to pieces again.

Once headed back in I got to see the real disaster in the making: at least 12 different planes in the pattern in various states of take off, landing, maneuvering, talking to the tower, and getting completely and utterly lost. I only did one more circuit around the pattern in this airplane soup, since the poor tower folks were just getting hammered.  In the end, on the ground, I realized that there was never really any danger to me, but when you are all alone surrounded by O2 and smog, bouncing around, you just don’t have a lot of common sense when facing the unknown.

Today I soloed in the Citabria for a second time.  It ended up being no small feat, thanks to the ever increasing winds.  This puts me within just a few flights more of being able to fly regularly on my own, even if it is only around the airport and practice areas.

I’m glad to have hit this milestone but I sure wished it had come sooner.

After a lot of travel and very, very few continuous days at home I have managed to get the first solo process completed at Palo Alto Airport.  This is, I’m told, a pretty important milestone in my flight training, and I’m glad to have finally done it.

However, as part of this process, I was nearly landed on, twice, by another student flying the pattern.  The infraction was bad enough that the tower started asking planes in the pattern to land full stop and clear the traffic so that they could concentrate on the problem pilot.  I was also asked a series of probing questions from the club’s chief pilot, to see if they could determine how rough it was up there.

All in all, I’m glad its done, even if it was a blur.  I’m sure I’ll remember this flight for a long time to come.

In between flights all over the US, I managed to sneak in a few more flight lessons.  #30 was to get me back in the swing of things again, doing another flight over to Livermore and some pattern work.  #31 was all about doing some ground school learning, something I don’t do often enough.  #32 was a bunch of touch and goes in the strongest wind (nearly 18 knots) I’ve seen so far.

I’m told that I’m nearly ready to solo, again.  Now I just need to study up and be in town long enough to actually do the check ride.