April 2006 Archives
Today was my first "cross country" (defined as > 50 miles distance). Our first destination was Willows, CA.
The highlights:
- Cutting through Sacramento International's airspace: a bit unnerving
- New skills: flight following, ATC's approach/departure control, estimating ground speed based on visual references and the clock
- Listening to radio chatter for YOUR plane's call sign, and ignoring everyone else's, from the tower controllers for said air space: difficult (hopefully with practice, this will get easier for me, but my hearing loss does not help this situation any)
- Private air strips make lousy references if they aren't paved.
- Power lines make lousy references from 4500 feet - even the big ones, you just can't see.
- My predictions for ground speed, based on some rather vague forecasts, weren't too far off from reality
- Damn, that was some good burger! That tasted like local grown beef, not the commercial crap.
- There is a Walmart parking lot *right* next to the airport. Keep this in mind if you suddenly at 5000 feet think you need a wallyworld!
Saturday, looked to be bum day for lessons. The airport I normally practice landings at had some pretty squirrely variable winds that would not be super productive for me to try and land on with the level of experience I have. The clouds were too low, for us to practice stalls, spins, slow flight, etc (we always want a huge margin of safety for that sort of work).
So, instead, we said screw the lessons - and just did a joy ride through the Sacramento Delta. We followed the Sacramento river, figuring out where we were mostly by recognizing the towns and bridges (I commute via the delta weekly). We ended up over the Antioch Bridge, where the view from 2500 feet is way better than from the measly 500 feet of the bridge itself. The amount of water that runs through the delta is staggering.
Coming back was tougher - all those water ways look alike, and the aeronautical charts are not detailed enough to use the water ways for pilotage. Eventually we hooked up with highway 12, saw the towers at Walnut Grove, found I-5, and followed that back up to Executive Airport. "Nothing to see here, move along."
Want to see my flight log at www.logshare.com ?
Today, I had SureWest install broadband and phone service. They only service limited Sacramento region neighborhoods (Carmichael, Natomas, Arden), and just recently got to my part of Natomas. They offer phone, broadband, and video over fiber.
Phone and 10 megabit symatrical (that's 10.0/10.0), $90 a month. The phone has unlimited nationalwide and some basic phone features that I use; the broadband, covers 40 gigabytes a month. We're not trying the video service, as we're happy with our Dish (and the PVR).
speakeasy's speed test, shows me getting 9.1 megabit down and 9.6 megabit up. Wow!
Today was my first completely solo solo. My instructor gave me the keys inside the office, and said "have a nice day!". 8 actual landings, 3 go-arounds. Nobody's dead, but the fox by the runway if it isn't lucky, just might earn a set of wings.
Whee! I have my complete solo endorsement now. I can now rent the plane any time it is available (versus when both the plane and the instructor are available), and go practice at my home and neighbor airports (SAC and F72). Someone better warn the birds at Franklin... and tell'em I own that airport now!
(Just kidding. Scuttlebutt says that the recent air force C5 transport went down, due to a flock of birds taking out an engine, and another engine failed on top of that..)
Today's other fun was a taste of cross country, using radio navigation aids (okay, I'm spoiled with GPS, but this isn't too bad), and more practice with steep turns and emergencies.
My normal (rental) plane (N739GY) is a 1979 Cessna 172 "N". I think the "N" stands for "normal". It is a basic trainer; not too much clutter in the cockpit, and very forgiving to a novice pilot. Alas, this plane was still tied up for its 100 hour inspection, so if I wanted to fly at all today, I'd have to go fly one of the bigger planes.
So, instead, N5101E was used. This is a 2001 model Cessna 172 "S". This has a larger power plant based on fuel injection; a much more modern stack of radios and GPS and direction finding gear; much more accomodating seats and seat belts. All in all, a much nicer (and newer) model. Planes have improved over time, much like cars.
Now, the fun parts to this plane. The startup procedure is a bit funky (to me at least). The checklist is a whole lot more verbose. Fuel vapors appear to be a concern for hot days. And, actually flying this thing, the yoke was stiff, and the rudder very twitchy. I took 5 passes at the remote airport today in this plane, and I only actually touched down once. Trying to get this plane stabilized was difficult, as the plane was quite squirrelly. Maybe I am spoiled with the flying habbbits of N739GY..
On the plus side, I needed to practice go-arounds.. and this plane provided that!
I don't plan on soloing at all in the 172SP. For solo work, I'll stick with the tried and true.
This one took a few days to get posted, because it took a few days to digest my feelings on it.
Last Sunday was my first solo. After a few good landings, my instructor got out of the plane, and had me run a few take offs and landings on my own. The first two were good. The third, was not.
On the third pass, I hit the flaps too soon, lost too much altitude. So, I ramped up the power, and got back up to the proper angle on final. My air speed went up as well, so I started compensating. Power out, full flaps. My approach was a bit high, but still managable.
At flare out, something went not quite right, which I still don't quite know what happened. Perhaps I flared too soon. In any case, I landed fairly hard, bounced back upwards much more than I liked, and decided it was not worth saving. Cram the power! Cram the carb heat! Hmm. Flaps. I'm at full flaps, which means, I'm not going to get off the ground like this. The right thing, would have been to level out, then reduce to half flaps, and wait until I was far off the ground. The wrong thing, is fit the flaps fully, while close to the ground. This had me still descending, as I still hadn't had enough forward speed. I tipped the nose down for a moment, just to get speed back, and leveled out again - then climbed out normal, and did a go around.
The fourth approach, was spot on; but that third approach definately left a shadow for the day.
I know not to slam the flaps all the way on a go around, but .. I still did. I mixed things up a bit with a touch-and-go (which, you fully retract the flaps, once you're on the ground), which we had done prior; and, I overreacted, knowing that full power plus full flaps wasn't going to get me off the ground.
The cool thing, I didn't panic during the event. The uncool thing, was that the rest of the day (and all freaking night), I kept replaying things in my head, trying to figure out what why I went wrong. It took a few days to fully digest; but now that I recognize what happened, I'm feeling much better about it.
