Postponed Phase Check

I was supposed to have my solo cross country phase check last Friday, but we got weathered out. Not by much; it was pretty intermittent but the deciding factor was the cloud cover over the hills at Sunol; we wouldn't have been able to get out. So we postponed to this coming Friday. I flew so much last week I didn't have time to write! On Tuesday I went out solo and did a bunch of landings, and Wednesday I tried but got a failed vacuum pump on run-up. Since I couldn't remember what the vacuum pump did, I taxied back and parked (I've since looked it up).

In the meantime, that gives me a great opportunity to practice my short and soft field landings (and my normal ones!). I met with Kevin on Thursday for a final review, and we figured out that I was flaring too LOW! Wow. I've always had a problem of being too high, avoiding the ground, and now suddenly I'm too low. Actually it's not sudden at all; I think I crept lower and lower over time -- on my first landing on Thursday, I flared about 4 inches off the runway!! I managed a nice smooth landing, but not at all in the proper attitude; the plane was very flat. So we worked on that, and by the end of the day (13 landings in all) I totally had it. I also had short field landings, which are easy as long as I maintain the proper airspeed on the approach.

So I went out this morning; the weather was sketchy again, but it looked good when I got there. There was a cloud system coming in, but I figured I could get some time in before the clouds. So I went out, and my first landing was my best ever!! It was amazing; a great flare, level, patience, patience, back, back, stall warning, dance with the runway, and down! Right on the center line, nice and gentle. That was very cool!

Feeling confident, I did a soft-field takeoff, which went great. As I was on downwind, I saw that the clouds were coming in faster than I'd thought. Still plenty far off, but getting closer. My soft-field landing attempt was not bad; I had a good flare, but I think I didn't quite get the yoke far enough back before landing, and I certainly did not maintain a wheelie after landing. More practice.

As I taxied back, I saw that a cloud had arrived and was just sitting there, exactly on short final, so I terminated. 0.4 hours, 2 landings..but enough to keep it in my head.

On Tuesday I am scheduled for a solo flight in the morning, and if it's nice I want to go to Livermore (LVK) and do some pattern work there. I'm also scheduled for my first night flight with Kevin that evening. Then another practice session on Thursday, and we'll try again for the phase check on Friday.

Unusual Attitude Recovery

Unusual Attitude Recovery sounds a lot like what happens when I get really upset about something, become really negative for a while, and then try to get back on track. But today it was about getting up in the mildly turbulent air over the beautiful coast, putting on the hood, and letting Kevin do bizarre things to the plane so that I could recover using only the instruments.

It went fine; I had one little slip-up where I wasn't really sure whether we were going up or down. As Kevin puts it, this is the training that JFK Jr. was lacking. But we didn't die, and we made it back to the airport OK in spite of having to avoid directly oncoming traffic, which was a bit disconcerting. Two soft-field landing attempts -- first one was terrible, and porpoised. Second was good, but needed help.

Now things are moving quickly. After one more lesson to try to figure out how the heck to do these landings, I'm going for my phase check. Not sure where I'll be going yet, but I got the name of a phase check instructor, and scheduled him for Friday. I'm a lot less nervous this time around; all the tasks are intellectual, and I know I can do them. Sure, I might sound like an idiot on the radio, but so be it. I just need to review my airspaces, just to be sure.

I'm also going through the Jeppeson Private Pilot Manual chapter by chapter, in preparation for the written test. As Kevin says, after my phase check, I'll have about six more flights, and then my FAA check ride, and I should have my written done before then. So far I'm still pretty early in the book, reading about aerodynamics, reviewing instrument errors (LAGS/ANDS/LEADS, left turning tendencies, adverse yaw and Fries ailerons, all that) but it's nicer because the Jepp book has great illustrations, which help my visual learning tendencies. I do need to review VFR airspace limitations, and all the weight/balance stuff -- though I'm sure I can do that. Oh, landing distance, fuel usage, basically anything that involves a chart from the POH.

I'll have two days to study; I scheduled a solo flight Wednesday morning so hopefully by Thursday's lesson with Kevin I'll be an expert at these darn landings..

Cross Countries

It has been a while since I've written, and I've had I think four flights in the mean time. I went out on Monday the 9th, and did a few landings before heading out over Woodside and practicing steep turns and VOR tracking. My flight back to the airport was uneventful; I found the airport OK, my calls were fine and I descended right back into the pattern and landed. It was nice!

I didn't fly again until Monday the 16th, because of the weather. So I went out and just practiced landings -- 1.4 hours worth of landing practice, 8 landings in total. I tried doing short field and soft field landings, but there was a crosswind which made things difficult. But, I did get good crosswind landing practice, and figured out a few things. It seems there are two schools of thought on crosswind landings -- the first is to adjust the rudder and aileron for the slip, to be headed straight forward, early on final, and then just hold the picture all the way in. The other is to crab in on final, and adjust the rudder and aileron shortly before landing. The first is more comfortable to me, but when I think about it, the second makes more sense -- the first puts you in a slip condition, which will cause your rate of descent to increase, which you may not want. In any case, I got lots of practice on crosswind landings.

So, feeling good about crosswinds, on Tuesday the 17th Kevin and I went out on our first cross country together (my previous flight to Oakdale was with Chris). We flew to Gustine -- I planned the flight, and we followed my plan. We were a little looser with timing checkpoints and everything, but I have a feeling the examiner's going to want more than that...anyway, so we made it out near Gustine, and Kevin says, "OK, let's see if you can find the airport." We had figured out that it sat along a certain radial from a nearby VOR, and we knew the distance, so when I intersected the radial, I said, "Alright, it should be right around here." Kevin, smugly, said, "Can't find it? If you need to look around you should do a 360 to the left." (to the left so I can look out the window, since I'm on the left). He said, "Then we'll see what you think" or something; at that point I knew. "We're right on top of it, aren't we?" Sure enough, as I turned my 360, we'd been directly over the airport! Which, by the way was TINY. Mini-airport. I would've worried about driving my car down the runway. But we entered the pattern, I figured out the non-towered airport communication protocol (which if you recall I had much trouble with on my solo phase check, possibly because nobody had ever taught me before), and we landed -- in a crosswind! It was a good landing; the only thing wrong was that immediately after touchdown I neutralized the ailerons instead of putting them all the way into the wind, so I had trouble controlling the plane.

We taxied back past some wicked looking cropdusters -- amazing machines they were, biplanes that were essentially a set of wings and an engine with barely room for a person, and giant tanks in the wings with nozzles to spray chemicals. No radios, nothing. We had to look both ways before getting on the runway; at uncontrolled airports, there is no requirement for a radio and someone could come along and ruin your day if you're not careful.

So we took off and flew back to KPAO, and this time we contacted the FSS (with some difficulty) to get a weather briefing, and then we contacted Norcal over Tracy to get flight following. It was a little uncomfortable talking with Norcal -- these are busy people who are routing jets into major hubs. But I have to trust that if they don't have time for me, they will tell me so. Getting back into KPAO was interesting -- I descended quickly enough that they allowed me to fly directly to midfield (instead of going all the way to the Dumbarton and coming into the pattern on the 45 -- the midfield intersection route cuts under the outer ring of KSJC's Class C airspace, which comes down to 1500'). But there was a 12 knot almost direct crosswind! So Kevin and I talked it through on the approach, and I handled almost the entire landing with some coaching from Kevin. The only thing was, right after landing, again I did not deflect the ailerons correctly. I just have to keep thinking about that -- otherwise, I think I've got the hang of crosswinds!

So we went out again yesterday, Friday the 20th. This time, we flew to Petaluma. I didn't really have a plan, because I knew we'd have to cut through KSFO's Class B airspace, which was a formidable task for me (I'm not even permitted to do that alone, until I get my license -- nobody can even give me an endorsement for that). But I did my best, and we followed my plan as much as possible. We took a straight out departure from KPAO. I realized that I'm not really sure where the airspace boundaries are between KPAO and KSQL, so that wasn't a good thing. But we switched to KSQL tower, and they in turn handed us off to KSFO tower. The communication from KSFO tower on contact was insane -- they said about 20 things, and I panicked. Kevin said, "2000 feet, Bayshore on the right." Which I repeated back at the tower. I now see that the only difference between talking to KSFO and KPAO or any GA airport is that the major towers expect you to be a pro, and they tell you a lot more stuff. But in the end it's a matter of parsing out the important stuff (where to fly, at what altitude, plus any squawk codes they give) and reading it back.

So we flew through KSFO's airspace, directly over my apartment, which was fun! And then up over the Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito, and Novato on the way to Petaluma. We got to Petaluma, and my procedures were great. I found the runway, I communicated well, I entered the pattern properly, and I even kept in mind noise abatement rules. We did one landing, and then we got out of there, but before getting back up, I pulled out my charts and reviewed my airspaces a little, which was wise.

The way back was good, except my radio work went to hell. It was understandable, I was pretty overloaded, but when we got back in touch with KSFO, I completely missed an instruction to "turn right and overfly midfield" which didn't make sense since that would've been a left turn. I was lucky that the instruction didn't make sense, because when I indicated confusion, the ATC said, "Actually turn left over midfield; sorry.." We ended up flying directly over midfield at San Francisco International, with a giant jet taking off directly beneath us! That was incredible!!

We flew back to Palo Alto, and were told to "make left traffic" which we were right on course for. Then weirdness ensued -- there was something going on that I didn't understand with another plane. Kevin later told me he'd figured out that someone was lost somewhere in the vicinity of the left traffic pattern, so he knew that we were probably going to get an instruction to go to right traffic. The instruction did come, but with the wrong call sign, so I missed it altogether. Kevin keyed the mic and asked if the instruction was for us, to which the ATC said, with plenty of attitude, "Yes, 6521J, I'm talking to YOU. Turn LEFT." So we turned left across the front of the runway just as another plane was departing directly toward us (I increased throttle and tried to get us out of there). We entered right traffic and listened to ATC misroute several other planes, including putting a Mooney close behind us on final (which is bad because Mooneys are way faster than Cessnas -- or at least THIS Mooney was way faster than US). I tried doing a soft field landing but leveled off a little too low and touched down a little unexpectedly. It was pretty funny: "Alright, hold it off for as long as you can." (skid) "That's OK, it happens to all guys..." (alright, so nobody said that last part, but I was thinking it!)

More entries = shorter entries. Next flight, possibly tomorrow!

Getting Back Into It

I've flown twice in the last 24 hours, after flying only once in the previous 4 weeks. I was definitely rusty, which really showed yesterday when I went out by myself in 9849L, just to do some pattern work. I did five landings in six attempts, in variable light winds. I think they were occasionally shifting to tailwinds, because I kept coming in high, every single time. The first attempt, I ballooned, added a little power to try to correct, but then wasn't sure how far down the runway I was so I went around. Good decision, I'm very proud of myself. I landed the rest of the attempts, but none of them were very smooth at all. The 4th one was particularly nasty -- I tried to correct a bounce. I did it, and had a little bit of a heavy impact but not too bad. The 5th one was the best, but I still added power when maybe I didn't need to on the approach. I need to not underestimate the effect that a _very_ little bit of power can have.

This morning, I went out with Kevin for the first time in..what, 2 months? More? It was great. I felt really comfortable on the radio, which was nice. We went out over the Woodside VOR to do some more navigation practice. It went pretty well! I remembered all the procedures, though the acronym that Chris had called TITT became the much more vulgar and memorable TITS, for Tune, Identify, Twist, Select heading. Nice.

Then came the real fun: He put the hood on me. The hood is a helmet-like contraption that prevents you from seeing anything but the instruments. He had me do turns, climbs, descents, climbing and descending turns with the hood on. I actually did fairly well, but there were definitely moments where my senses told me either something completely fictitious, or the EXACT OPPOSITE of what was really happening! What a trip -- you have to really trust the instruments, and at the same time not OVERreact. There was one moment in particular, I'd have sworn the plane was banking to the right, and I started to correct left. But I looked at the instruments -- I was already banking left! Weird.

Then, there was the unusual attitude recovery. This is something that will happen in my check ride -- I lower my head, the instructor steers around madly to disorient me, and then puts the plane in an "unusual attitude" -- usually a steep climbing steep turn (both the climb and the turn are steep), or a near-spiral steep descending turn. I then raise my head (still to see only the instruments; the hood is still on), and determine what's happening and correct for it. In a climb, priority one is to avoid stalling, so power full, nose down, then straighten the wings. In a descent, priority one is to avoid a spin, so power idle, straighten the wings first, THEN nose up.

We did a soft field take off and landing as well, but I need a lot more practice. The good news is that I set up the landing beautifully, which I was having a lot of trouble with yesterday. So, comfort level is back. I feel like going again right now!