Recovery
Today's flight was much, much better. It's amazing what a good night of sleep will do for you, not to mention a little rehearsal. My slow flight was not bad; I anticipated the altitude drop, so overpulled on the slow down, and gained about 100 feet of altitude, but otherwise it was fine. My steep turns were not bad; I gained altitude once and lost altitude another time, but overall, I was OK. I got confused by the mountains and pulled out early once, I overbanked and started feeling the Gs stuff me into my seat, but it was not bad. My stalls were alright, but I still am not pulling up enough when I get up to 60 knots.
It'll come -- the important thing is that I did not feel the fear that I felt last time. That was really unpleasant; every time I turned 10 degrees I'd freak out. Not this time; I was fine. It's interesting; the biggest problem I had this time was that I'd anticipate what was going to happen and wind up overcorrecting. Kevin told me that I have to wait for things to happen and then react to them with the controls, not the other way around. It's kind of the opposite of the rest of life, where if you can anticipate something and prepare for it, you're a step ahead of the game.
Today's main lesson was "Turns About A Point." We flew out to Livermore from Palo Alto, in 5346D, and found a tree. The tree was standing all by itself; the objective was to fly a perfect circle around the tree. Without wind, this would be trivially easy, but with wind, it's pretty difficult. So we worked on this maneuver for a while, and then headed back to PAO. There, he had me overfly the runway a few times, trying to learn how to do landings. It was hard -- but mostly because I didn't realize till the final time that in order to stay over the runway, I don't have to point my nose at the runway; because there was such a heavy crosswind, I have to point into the wind to come in straight. Very weird; next time we'll be doing a lot of this. I expect in a week or two I'll be able to land a plane by myself! Very exciting.
I also debuted my new headset today -- it's AWESOME!
Lessons: Being tentative and tense helps nobody. Emergency situations in aviation require quick, decisive action.
It'll come -- the important thing is that I did not feel the fear that I felt last time. That was really unpleasant; every time I turned 10 degrees I'd freak out. Not this time; I was fine. It's interesting; the biggest problem I had this time was that I'd anticipate what was going to happen and wind up overcorrecting. Kevin told me that I have to wait for things to happen and then react to them with the controls, not the other way around. It's kind of the opposite of the rest of life, where if you can anticipate something and prepare for it, you're a step ahead of the game.
Today's main lesson was "Turns About A Point." We flew out to Livermore from Palo Alto, in 5346D, and found a tree. The tree was standing all by itself; the objective was to fly a perfect circle around the tree. Without wind, this would be trivially easy, but with wind, it's pretty difficult. So we worked on this maneuver for a while, and then headed back to PAO. There, he had me overfly the runway a few times, trying to learn how to do landings. It was hard -- but mostly because I didn't realize till the final time that in order to stay over the runway, I don't have to point my nose at the runway; because there was such a heavy crosswind, I have to point into the wind to come in straight. Very weird; next time we'll be doing a lot of this. I expect in a week or two I'll be able to land a plane by myself! Very exciting.
I also debuted my new headset today -- it's AWESOME!
Lessons: Being tentative and tense helps nobody. Emergency situations in aviation require quick, decisive action.
posted by MKT at 11:56 PM
1 Comments:
LMAO, halo, that's hilarious! Thanks to your comment I found a site about the Zen of flying -- it's now linked on the right hand side.
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