Category: Flying

In a last ditch effort to squeeze in a bit more flying and learning time, I drove up to Palo Alto to fly one more hour in the Citabria, my last flight for the year.  It involved more touch and goes, slow speed turns, stalls, spin recognition (scary) and slips.  This is just what I need to help get me through the muck that is sure to be known as commercial air travel.

Another weekend, another couple of flights out of Palo Alto.  This time around it was a series of landings and simulated emergencies on the way to and from Livermore Airport, with some decidedly better (if I may say so) landings than I had the last time.  The instructor seems to think I’m getting a little bit better, so he’s ratcheting up the workload in the air.

On the 24th lesson I was swapped into a similar plane with 40 more horsepower. The difference was like driving my 4Runner around some cones and tight corners, then getting out and hopping into the vette to try the same thing.  More power, better handling, and boy can things get out of hand right quick.  I felt like I was behind the airplane the whole flight.  It climbs better, goes faster, and really gets off the ground in a hurry.  Have to be careful with all that power, it can get addicting.

Today with all the wind, rain, and rough weather I headed out for another hour in the front seat of the Citabria.  It ended up being not as bumpy a ride as I had first thought, and in general I made my way around the field in relatively good shape.  Kudos to the instructor for keeping me flying right, even though the runway and pattern were now being flown from the left.

Landings proved to be tough again, as were my turns to base and final.  The instructor snuck in a few extras, like a short field landing, forward slips, and a go-around.  I’m starting to feel a bit more confident about my flying now, but I’m still not sure if I’m ready to fly on my own.

I managed to go to a new airport and put a plane into the fix-it shop in this installment of flight training 101.

First up I got to go to San Carlos, just a quick hop up the peninsula from Palo Alto, and just close enough to completely throw off my check list for landing.  Other than one completely hosed approach, things fared fairly well.  Well, I think I did OK, anyhow.

This morning I headed out in the same plane as flight 17, and no one had flown it since I brought it in the night before.  After doing all the checks, the instructor and I took off and headed for Livermore.  About 1200 feet and a half mile from Palo Alto the instructor and I had this conversation:

CFI: Did you pull the power back?

Me: Not that I know of.

CFI: Level it off.  We’ll check some things.

Me: OK.

CFI: Hmm, that’s not right.  We’re missing about 150 RPM.

Me: So I guess we’re heading back to the airport?

CFI: Affirmative.  Let’s go now.

After all of that, it was a quick, and slightly unnerving rush back to Palo Alto to land.  It seems that the engine on this plane decided to start losing power, and did it slowly and smoothly enough that I was at a loss to explain what happened.  It also led me to do a forward slip, which is a pretty scary thing to do, to get down to the runway, pronto.  It was the shortest and most eventful flight I’ve had so far.

The most recent flights were more of the same: flying the pattern, learning how to properly setup to land and then takeoff again.  Should be getting easier, but I’m still finding ways to blow the base to final setup and then to be a bit early on roundouts at landing.

One exciting new event that happened was my near-night flying where I began losing spatial awareness, cutting my downwind leg short, and ending up a little closer to the runway than I’d like prior to landing.  That was a bit rough, but nothing compared to the student ahead of me who wandered out onto the active runway in front of the plane ahead of me.  He had the tower asking him what he was doing, then having the plane ahead of me abort his landing.  I politely slowed down as much as I could, buying some time for the other student to get out of the way.

Hope I don’t do that when its time for me to solo!

I can now say that a long break from flying does indeed dull the skills.

After my long business trip I had two back-to-back lessons and found that I’m not as sharp on my landings and pattern work as I once was.  Even going out to do the normal maneuvers proved to be a bit sloppy for me.  Lesson 13 was just about trying to remember what I had learned previously, and I did slip up a bit, but the landing went OK.  Lesson 14 took me to Livermore, where I blew the whole approach, landing, and pattern, but did OK on one of the touch-and-go’s.

Practice does make perfect when it comes to flying, that is for sure.

I’m now in the phase where all my flights are about pattern work, radio work, and landings and take-offs.  The short summary of the last three lessons goes like this:

Flight 10: engine runs rough, making the 3 touch and goes a little slow and climb out a bit challenging.  On the 4th attempt at the runway I call it quits and decide that this engine just won’t work today.  Just a half hour of flying this time around.

Flight 11: more touch and goes.  Getting a bit better at judging where the runway is, when to start down, etc.  Still not so good on flares at landing, and the steering on takeoff is a bit scary.  Get almost an hour in this time.

Flight 12: instructor decides to throw a curve ball: we fly from Palo Alto to San Jose, talking to Moffett in between, and then do touch and goes next to 737s.  The radio work is frantic and I really get lost.  And the pattern is higher, the runway longer and wider, so I don’t have a good idea of where I am.  Oh, and on top of all of this its raining and visibility is crud.

Again, the instructor says I’m getting better but I feel like someone beat me with a bat when I get out of the airplane.  I hope the goodness kicks in here after a few more flights, as right now its all very taxing.

At this stage in the game I’m learning to fly the pattern and pratice take-offs and landings.  It’s pretty hard going, as the lessons come fast and the margin for error is very low.  It also requires a lot of talking to the tower, watching for other planes, and generally going through a mental checklist very, very quickly.

The instructor says I’m doing well at the landing approach, and OK and landings, but I can’t help thinking that the issues I’m still having with take-offs and operating in the pattern are large ones.  Hopefully things will improve with time, since I’m now out at the field twice a week to keep the training flowing.

Last week I did two flying lessons in the same week. The hope was that this would allow me to retain more of my know-how without sliding backward into regression. Well, it sort of worked.

On the 5th lesson I really blew the take-off roll and the landing was a mess. Too much rudder, then not enough, then a lot more than was needed: that was the take-off until the instructor stepped in and fixed things. On the landing I put the nose right in the middle of the runway, in a crosswind, and found myself on the far left side of the field just before time to land. Again the CFI (certified flight instructor) wrestled the plane back into position in time for me to land a bit hard, then nearly steer off the runway.

At lesson 6 I was still pretty heavy on the rudders on take-off, but not as bad as before. Most of the lesson was spent learning to stall the plane, something that really isn’t good to do, but important to know lest I do so accidentally during a landing. When it came time to land I remembered the last mess, and corrected by keeping the nose to the right of the runway. This allowed me to be centered up, but too high until just before the edge of the strip. CFI stepped in again to crab the plane down to a manageable height and I helped put it down on the tarmac.

The instructor says I’m getting better, but I still feel pretty terrible at the end of each lesson. We’ll see if I really get better as I get closer to 20 lessons.