06/14/08 18:00

Stats: 1.2 Hours Dual, 2 Day Landings, Taxiing, Turns, Take Off, Climb, Descent, Straight and Level, Climbing Turns. Hours to Date: 1.2

Here it is; the very first lesson. Driving over I was both excited and nervous. I had no idea what to expect. I met my instructor, Ron McCormick and we went through the syllabus and did some paperwork and then we were off.

Ron walked me through the pre-flight procedures which involves making sure the airplane is airworthy, has gas and oil, no new damage, and checking the electrical, mechanical, and flight control systems. We spent a lot of time on this since it was my first time. I figure I will get it down to a 10 minute process at some point.

O.K… we start it up and get ready to taxi to the active runway. If you weren’t aware, when an airplane is on the ground, you steer it with your feet. This is totally new sensation that humbles you real quick. I’m just glad it wasn’t real busy on the taxiways because I seemed to be everywhere but right on the yellow line. It became very clear that airplanes were meant to be flown and not driven around on the ground.

We stop in the “Run-Up” area to do, well, a run-up test. This is where you check the engine and magnetos at higher RPMs to make sure everything is up to par. It’s way better to find out you have a problem on the taxiway rather than on the runway, or worse at about 500′ AGL. Everything checks out and we are off to the runway.

At this point, I can hear him talking to me, but I’m only getting every 4th word or so. The other words are drowned out by my heart pounding. I remember from the ground school that I need to add right rudder as soon as we leave the ground to counteract the torque and P-Factor. But wait, when do we leave the ground? For some reason 58 knots sticks in my head so I go with that. Throttle in to full and here we go. As I write this, I’m sure Ron was telling me what speed to look for and to check the gauges to make sure everything was in the green and saying right rudder, right rudder as I increased power, but like I said before, I really didn’t hear that stuff. So, here we are at about 58 knots and I pull back on the controls and the nose wheel lifts off the ground followed quickly by the main gear. Set the climb attitude, (more right rudder) and we’re off. That’s all there is to it.

Sidebar: I have logged hundreds of hours in Microsoft’s Flight Simulator, and I will admit that it is helpful in some regards. You learn the principles of flight and a little bit about ATC, but I quickly realize that the feel for a Sim and a real plane are completely different. I won’t trade my Sim experience, but I now know that the greatest Sim pilot out there will still have plenty to learn in a real plane.

O.K. back to the first lesson. We head out to the practice area. I slip and skid my way through the turns as I really don’t have a feel for the rudders and how much pressure it takes to make coordinated turns. I understand the concept, but it’s like patting your head and rubbing your stomach, it takes a little practice and some dexterity to get it right.

Turns and climbs and straight and level. Things go pretty well and by the time it was time to head for home, I felt like I had a better feel for the rudders and could keep from sliding around in my turns. Now we head back. Somehow, we have to put this craft back on ground. Ron generously offers to make the first landing as an example (I’m thinking first, we should only have to land once. My brain is already fried). We enter the pattern and Ron is talking about airspeed, flaps, rate of descent, when to turn, calling on the radio, rudder, throttle, flare, etc. etc. etc. Like I said my brain is pretty full at this point so I follow along his controls as he puts us down. We touch down, he pulls the flaps up and says, you have the plane, get full power in there, right rudder and take off into the pattern. I think I actually said, “Um, OK”.

As we start our descent, things are going fairly well, I turn final and realize I’m high and well to the right of the runway. Ron “helps” by adding full flaps which I forgot was going to pitch the nose up due to the increased lift. After recovering from that, we settle in toward the runway and having no idea what I’m doing, I spend a lot of time overcorrecting and then trying to correct my first correction. We end up left of the centerline and I start my flare too early and too abruptly, ballooning the plane and subsequently bouncing it. We finally get all 3 wheels on the ground, the flaps go up and says, “OK, do it again”. As we fly the pattern, he’s giving my instruction on how to make the next one better. It ends up being a little better. After this one he says, “Again?” to which I reply, “Um, my brain has had enough for today I think”. We hit the brakes and turn onto the taxiway.

We had the engine running for 1.2 hours and it seemed like about 10 minutes to me. On the way out he asked if I was going to come back next time. Without pause I said, “Yes, sir. I’ll see you Monday”.

06/16/08 19:00

Stats: 1.5 Hours Dual, 3 Day Landings, Power off Stalls, turns, climbs, descents, slow flight, and crosswind landings. Total hours to date: 2.7

As promised, I came back for lesson number 2. There wasn’t a whole lot of highly eventful happenings this time around, that was until Ron said, “let’s do some stalls”. If you are not familiar, this is where you get up in the air and intentionally tell the plane to stop flying and it starts to fall out of the sky. Technically the wings move past the critical angle of attack, air stops rushing over the top of them, and you lose lift. To break the stall, you reduce the angle of attack until the wings start generating lift again and add full power (if not already there). Seems simple enough. That is unless you’ve never done it before and push the nose down too far causing a Negative G situation for awhile. It’s what roller coaster enthusiasts call “Air Time”. You are lifted out of your seat. If you’re not expecting this in a craft that you are in control of, it’s not as much fun as when it happens on a roller coaster.

After surviving the stalls, we head back for a few landings. Today we have the added “bonus” of a crosswind condition. If making coordinated turns is like rubbing your stomach and patting your head (as I mentioned before), then crosswind landings are like writing your name in cursive with your non dominant hand, conducting an orchestra with your other hand and tapping a 2 different beats with your feet that are different from the beat the orchestra is playing. Suffice it to say, I didn’t break anything on the plane, but I had a lot of help from Ron on a couple of the landings.

Never fear though… I’m coming back for more…

06/17/08 18:00

Stats: 1.9 Dual Hours, 5 Day landings, ground reference maneuvers, slow flight, steep turns, crosswind landings. Hours to date: 4.6

Today I was introduced to ground reference maneuvers. These are sort of like ball handling drills you might do in basketball practice. You don’t really use them in real life, but they help give you a better feel for what is going on. Oh, and they are on the test you take with the guy from the FAA who decides if you get a license or not. So, first up is the rectangular pattern. This is very similar to flying the traffic pattern and is really no problem. Then comes turns about a point. You pick out some point on the ground and fly a circle around it. Seems easy enough, apparently, I was mistaken. It was a wee bit windy that day and I was getting blown all over “the road” up there. Ron was patiently explaining how to adjust my bank angle to adjust for the ever changing force of the wind. I, however, was not getting it. We tried going the other way (turning right instead of left) it was a little better, but I made a mental note to re-read that section of the book now that I had the chance to actually try the maneuver.

Next we did some slow flight, which is basically additional training on controlling the plane while it is just above the stall speed – like when you are coming in for landing. The controls get all mushy and I found that the rudders actually become as useful as the ailerons in this situation. I would equate it to trying to ride a bicycle through sand.

Ron decides it is time to try some landings… at a different airport. So we head for Indianapolis Metropolitan Airport, aka Metro. This is a small airport just west of 69 and 96th street and is only about 5 minutes from my house. We even flew over the house on the way.

Sidebar: The planes I am training in all have what is called the Garmin G1000 Integrated Flight System. One type of a glass cockpit as it is called. There are 2 – 11″ LCD displays with an audio control panel between them. The left display is the primary flight display and gives you all kinds of cool info like: how high you are, how fast you’re going, what direction you’re going, a horizon indicator, radio info, a mini GPS display and so much more. The right display is the multifunction display and is used for everything from a large moving map GPS display to weather radar data, real time lightning data, XM satellite radio channels, engine monitoring panels, and traffic avoidance info. Flying with so much info at your fingertips is great. However, it’s easy to get lost in the cockpit and forgetting to actually look outside every once in awhile.

So back to getting to Metro. If you read the sidebar, you can see it is a piece of cake to find out where you are and where you’re going with the live GPS display. I assume I will still learn about VOR navigation and pilotage and dead reckoning since they’re on the test. So landings go o.k. at Metro, I still have a bad habit of pulling back too soon during the roundout and landing pretty hard, but he’s letting me learn on my own the hard way so hopefully it will click here soon.

I indicate that I’m ready to head back and we depart the pattern and head back to Mount Comfort where he manages to get an extra landing out of me…

06/18/08 18:00

Stats: 1.6 Dual Hours, 5 Day landings, ground reference maneuvers, slow flight, power on stalls, power off stalls. Total Hours to date: 6.2

Here we are with lesson 4. At this point, Ron is letting me do the pre-flight by myself and I am now handling all the taxiing, take offs, and radio communications as well as all the flying unless he is demonstrating something new. I guess I’m a little surprised at how fast I am moving, but the best way to learn is to actually do it, so that’s what I’m doing.

Today we head to the practice area to learn a new ground reference maneuver… S turns along a road. Basically you fly toward a road as to intersect it at a 90 degree angle and as soon as you are over it, you start a 180 degree turn when you get to the road again, you roll out and start a turn the other direction and do it over and over. I like this maneuver. It really helps build turn coordination as well as wind awareness and keeps your head out of the cockpit so you can keep an eye on where you are and how your turn is progressing. Now, just because I like it does not mean that I have mastered it yet, but I’m better at this one than turns around a point… so far.

Next we head over to the Shelbyville airport to practice some touch and go landings there. All is going well until the 3rd one where out of no where, he pulls the engine to idle and says, “You just had an engine failure, put it on the ground at the airport.” Wow, I was not expecting this. It turns out I would have made it across Interstate 70 (which is good) but not quite to the runway as I didn’t immediately start my turn toward the runway, and I added flaps a bit too early. He was kind enough to let me have power back so I didn’t have to put it down in the grass. I guess the good news was I made a pretty decent landing (after getting the power back).

We head back to Mount Comfort and he shows me the Shelbyville VOR station (which at 3500′ ASL is a medium sized white dot on the ground with a fence around it). An o.k. landing back home and we call it quits for the day.

06/19/08 18:00

Stats: 1.5 Dual Hours, 5 Day Landings, Steep turns, ground reference maneuvers, stalls, emergency procedures. Total Hours to date: 7.7

I’m convinced today is going to be my best day up there yet. The winds are very light, it’s warm but not unbearable. Everything is going great and then we do some steep turns. Ron says to roll into a left turn and take it to 45 degrees. As I’m trying to figure out how much rudder to use, I happen to look out the side window and straight down at the ground. If you’ve never done it, I certainly recommend it, but just be sure you’re prepared as it can be a little weird. I, of course, mention it to Ron and he comes back with, “You have to do 60 degrees for your commercial license”. I couldn’t come up with a good response. We were only at about 3000′ AGL, but I’m going to blame lack of oxygen, yeah, that’s it.

I completely bomb on turns around a point, so we do some S-turns to make me feel better. Then as we head back to Mount Comfort, Ron introduces me to the forward slip. This is another one of those tricky coordination maneuvers, but this one has real life use. Basically, you roll the plane one direction and use the rudder in the opposite direction to keep it going in the same direction. It is very handy for losing altitude as it adds a lot of drag since the plane is essentially flying sideways. I kind of like this one, which is good since I’m going to be using it a lot.

As we prepare for landing, Ron has me keep my approach a little high (which I seem to be good at anyway) so I can try the slip on final. It goes o.k., but I will definitely need to keep practicing this one to get it down.