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…