Slow but sure improvements

It was a busy week in my little world of flight. After Monday's lesson I has a few days off and then flew again on Friday afternoon and Saturday evening. As of right now I have 12.3 hours and 48 landings logged in my book.

Wow, 48 landings? It sure doesn't seem like that many. Ten of those were all on Saturday, though (and on a couple of them I shared the controls for review purposes - more on that in a bit).

I'm having fun. It's a heck of a challenge, to be sure, and I have found myself both frustrated and a little discouraged at times - not to mention mentally and physically exhausted on a regular basis. But I am enjoying it. The challenge is a big part of what makes it meaningful to me.

I wrote about Monday's lesson earlier this week. It was a fun one, and was my first time doing slips and ground reference maneuvers.

Between my schedule and Kelly's, we were not able to get back in the air until Friday. Weather also kept us from flying on Friday morning. I had scheduled an early lesson that was supposed to start at 9 a.m., but Thursday night Kelly called and let me know he and one of his students had just made it back to Twin Oaks after some suddenly fog made them alter plans on their return leg of a cross country flight. Since the fog was still thick on Friday morning, we decided to scrub the flight and to meet at 11 a.m. and go an hour of ground school classroom work. When I arrived, though, the weather was just starting to shape up.

It turned out Kelly's lesson that was to follow mine had cancelled, so we took advantage of the available time and scheduled N45720 for a couple hours. After a ground lesson covering weight and balance of airplanes we headed for the airplane, which I fueled up, and got into the air. Kelly wanted to review a few procedures (power-on and power-off stalls, steep turns, engine failure landings and normal patterns and landings, so that's what we did. It's interesting how some people really have a hard time with stalls. They don't bother me at all. Some people find landings to be natural, and I don't so I guess everyone has their natural maneuvers and the ones they need to get comfortable with.

We flew to the Portland-Mulino airport, which is a smaller airport operated by the Port of Portland. It was kind of fun, since it has a low hillside at one end, so you're turning over the trees and whatnot a little closer than on flat ground. It's also a right-hand pattern, meaning all the turns are to the right, you fly counter-clockwise around the runway. A "normal" pattern has turns to the left. This was my second time (if I recall correctly) flying a right-hand pattern.

Kelly let me know this was going to be a day of him throwing things at me from time to time without warning. He told me he would be issuing go-around commands, maybe 50 feet from the ground, or maybe not until we were 5 feet off the runway. I just needed to be ready. He also threw a couple engine-out failure drills in there for good measure.

I had one or two pretty decent landings, and I floated and bounced a few more. Overall I was dong better than the last lesson, but I must be a little edgy about it, because every time Kelly would start to tell me the next step, even if I was already starting to do it I would hesitate and freeze up a little. I think I'm just not quite there yet confidence-wise, so when he'd provide a helpful next step cue, my mind slipped automatically into self-questioning mode. Needless, to say, that doesn't make for smooth operation. But, the information was very helpful and bit by bit, slowly but surely the plane is starting to feel better and I am improving.

You know how once you've driven a car for a while, especially one you are quite familiar with, you don't think so much about sitting in a chunk of metal and rubber with fuel burning in an engine to push you down the road? You forget the whole "man-in-a-tin-can" reality and the vehicle starts to feel like an extension of your body. I know in my police days, the high-speed and pursuit driving courses were very much like that. You push yourself and your vehicle to the edges of your respective limits, and in doing so you learn how the vehicle feels, and driving it becomes intuitive.

That's how flying is starting to feel, at least a little bit. I can sometimes feel the airplane and the subtle movements and control pressures. Air maneuvers especially feel that way to me. It's just slow flight close to the ground that feels awkward. Of course, it might also be the fact that the ground is right there, heading right at me, and I have to land on it without breaking anything (or anyone).

So, Friday was a pretty decent flight. It was calm as calm can be and I felt like I was making progress.

On Saturday I'd scheduled the flight for later in the day. After some minor schedule adjustments, Kelly and I planned to fly from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., no ground lessons today. I showed up a bit early and took my time "pre-flighting" in the aircraft (we would be flying in one today I'd never flown - N19333). I got it fueled up and we were off.

The plan for the evening was to fly to McMinnville airport, which is about 15 miles from our home base of Twin Oaks. Once there we'd spend the session doing nothing but landings.

Before we left Twin Oaks, we took a few minutes to review where we were going and what we were going to do. I got out the sectional map and located the two airports and Kelly showed my how to use my E6B flight computer (a fancy slide rule) to figure out distances and flying times. From that we figured it would be about 10 or 11 minutes to fly over to McMinnville airport.

After climbing out we headed up to about 2,000 feet and turned in the direction of McMinnville, to the south. I flew over the Newberg VOR (a radio navigation facility for air traffic) that's located on top of a 1,500-foot ridge between the airports, and before long Kelly was pointing out the airport in the smoky haze. The summer burning bans have been lifted all over the state now that it's not dangerous anymore, and a lot of crops have been harvested, so everywhere people are burning fields and brush. It makes for a hazy day, but you could still see almost forever.

We joined the pattern and I handed the plane over to Kelly. I'd asked him to fly a couple of the landings today and just let me observe - still on the controls but mostly just watching and getting a better feel for the process. It turned out to be a good thing. I was able to follow along without the opportunity to screw something up, heh.

I then took back control of the airplane and flew a couple patterns, doing touch-and-go landings on the runway and focusing on trying to maintain the centerline. Today we had a cross-wind on the runway, from the left as we were landing. It threw me off quite a bit at first, and eventually I started to get a little better feel for it. Ironically, I think probably my best landing was one I made with zero power. Kelly simulated an engine failure and I turned short for the runway. Concentrating just on maintaining speed and getting to the runway, I settled in pretty straight and set it down not too hard.

There was also a Chinook helicopter from Columbia Helicopters flying some training patterns on the runway, including a power-out autorotation landing. That's a huge helicopter, fun to watch.

After I'd done a couple landings, Kelly grabbed a few $20 bills from his wallet and used them to cover up the speed and altitude indicators. That was a good idea. I was forced to look outside more (which apparently I needed to do) and determine my speed and the altitude using my eyes and the feel of the aircraft. I'd call out when I thought I was close to turning or pattern altitude, or if I felt high or low, and he pulled the cover off the gauge to check my guesses a few times. I was pretty close on my estimates. I should have made a couple bets for those $20 bills, it would have paid for a good chunk of my lesson, heh.

The one thing I kept failing to do, over and over, was to step in enough right rudder adjustment when the plane was at full power. You have to compensate for the tendency of the plane to want to go to the left due to four forces on the plane. Keeping the plane in coordinated flight is important. The aircraft we were in today requires a lot of right rudder, more than the others I've flown in so far. It's a little ironic that the name of this blog is the one thing I regularly failed to do. Right rudder, right rudder right rudder...

The crosswinds were pushing me to the east while in the air, so staying in line with the runway on departure and keeping a reasonable distance from the runway when flying parallel in the pattern was a little bit challenging. By the time we finished up with the lesson I was getting the hang of compensating for it a little better.

The return was uneventful. It was a good day and I felt pretty good about the progress I've made so far. I fly again Monday and Tuesday next week. I'm scheduling flights later in the day now, both to accommodate for the morning fog that's so common this time of the year and to adjust to work-related schedules. In a couple weeks I will be traveling for work to Europe and Las Vegas, so I hope to get as much flying in as I can before then.