Slow Flight, Stalls, Steep Turns, Patterns and Landings - Woah!

It's been a busy - and slightly overwhelming - couple of days. Two flight lessons, each incorporating an hour of ground and about 1.3 hours of flight, got me up to somewhere just under 5 hours of flight time total. I felt pretty good about my experiences on Tuesday, and on Wednesday things got more difficult and mentally overwhelming (but hey, I still enjoyed myself).

Tuesday Kelly and I did a ground lesson and covered aircraft systems and instruments. Then we were off to the airplane, which I pre-flighted. Found a small amount of water condensation in one wing tank, so that was a good experience - I got to see what it looks like in the real world, and kept sampling until it was gone.

When we took to the air, we climbed out and made our left turn, then headed south and a little to 3,000 feet. We reviewed and executed a few standard and medium turns, and then after a couple "clearing turns" (which allow us to examine the sky above and below for "other aluminum" as my instructor calls it), Kelly showed me how slow flight works in two control configurations: "Fully-configured," meaning in a landing configuration with flaps fully extended and running under high power) as well as "unconfigured" (no flaps, lower power, nose high). The C-150 can fly quite slowly - Down to about 45 miles per hour in the air with full flaps. In that configuration, which is similar to landing configuration, the nose is way up in the air and the plane is really dragging through the air.

Then we moved on to "power-off" stalls. Now, for those not familiar with how airplanes fly, I won't explain it all here. I'd just get it wrong anyhow. You can look it up on wikipedia or at any one of a slew of web sites (howstuffworks.com is a great resource for that sort of info). Let's just say that the basics are this: A wing needs to have air moving over the top and bottom of it, and the air needs to be relatively undisturbed. The way a wing generates lift, for the most part, is by generating lower pressure air on the top of the wing, as compared to the pressure underneath. Mother nature abhors a vacuum, as they say, so the wing is sucked into the lower pressure zone (above the wing) as physics tries to equalize the two pressure areas.

In a stall, the wing is climbing relative to the wind at such an angle that the lifting ability is killed. What actually happens is that the air moving over the top of the wing no longer flow over the surface, and the wing just stops flying. This happens when the air speed is low enough and the angle of attack angle of the wing as compared to the wind its flying into) is very high. So, you pull back on the controls, which pushed the nose of the airplane up into the air at a higher and higher angle until the wings stop flying. You can feel it slip when the lift goes away, and thankfully the C-150 airplane nose tends to drop, which is what you want. As it drops and the airplane starts to fall, wind moves over the wings again and lift is again generated and - voila - you're flying again.

Anyhow, that's a very rough explanation, which I really write only to help myself understand and remember. In actual practice I thought the stalls were a lot of fun, in a similar way to how skydiving has always been fun to me. I suppose I like the way it feels, heh. But, while it's important to learn to stall and recover from stalls in an airplane, that's not controlled flight, so probably not too good to get used to other than to be safe.

I did a few stalls and did well on a couple and got the nose really low on another (you want the nose to drop to gain airspeed, but you don't want to dive straight at the ground).

The idea behind fully-configured stall practice is that if you stall while in the landing configuration, you need to be able to recover pretty quickly. Nothing like being a couple hundred feet off the ground or less and stalling an airplane - not good. It also helps in terms of being able to execute a go-around, which is when you decide not to land for whatever reason and instead circle in the traffic pattern for another approach and attempt.

We finished up Tuesday with some steep turns, which are executed with the wings at 45 degrees to the horizon. You can turn around a spot on the ground pretty well in this configuration, and it was fun. Kelly tells me I am doing well on turns in terms f maintaining my altitude while turning. On my last steep turn I tucked in in pretty tight and could tell it was a nice turn, and then as I exited it got bumpy on the turn out. "You feel that?" Kelly asked me. "You just flew through your own wake, that means you did a great turn." Cool. Nice to do something well.

Anyhow - Tuesday was a lot of fun and I felt pretty good about it.

Between the Tuesday lessons and today's lessons I did some more reading and got a full night's sleep. I also wore myself out a bit on jet skis Tuesday evening, trying to get in some last-of-the-good-weather water time in before it gets all cold and rainy on us. But I was up and ready this morning and headed for the airport.

I pre-flighted our airplane, a different C-150 than we've flown for the past two lessons, and then joined Kelly in the classroom for some ground instruction. He told me that we were going to fly to a different airport this time - Aurora to be specific - so we talked about traffic patterns related approach in general, and for Aurora and our airport (Twin Oaks) specifically. We reviewed the approach/pre-landing procedures for the aircraft type, as well. Kelly is still handling all the radio operations (thank goodness), so I am focused - with his sometimes substantial help - on flying the airplane, maintaining attitude (of the airplane as well as me, heh), and performing the tasks needed for whatever flight maneuvers we're executing at the time.

I should stop for a moment and say something about my instructor. Kelly has a way of knowing what to explain. how to explain it and when to explain it. He doesn't overwhelm but keep the information flowing. So far he's pretty well matched my ability to take in more information and execute on it. I think flying in the distant past helps a lot though, since a good part of what I remember seems to still be ingrained in my little brain. It's the "wrong" stuff that I have to work through. I'm certainly not smarter than the airplane. It seems to fly just fine. If something's wonky, it's almost certainly me that's the cause. If I do something well, he let's me know. "You did that one all by yourself," he'll say. "Looked good." And when I'm all over the place, he's right there to keep us from being crushed in a tin can with wings, and to let me know what I need to do or not do. Thank goodness.

Today we taxied from the ramp (which I felt a little better about today - taxiing this airplane type is a lot like taxiing oatmeal - it's really mushy), and did the engine run up and final checks. Then he let me know we could go and I taxied onto the runway and applied full power. I remembered to keep some right rudder applied, and learned quickly that you have to pull back a bit to get a "wheelie" going. And then we were in the air. The C-150 really wants to fly, it seems. My nose was a bit high and Kelly told me so I lowered it slightly and we got quickly into a good climb at 70 MPH, got about 500 feet off the ground and did out left turn. Kelly had me maintain the climb on a heading that would take us toward Aurora (I had no idea where it was, but he does so that's good). We headed on up to 3,000 feet and I got my air-legs back a bit. Right rudder seems to be a rule. It feels weird but it's starting to make more sense.

Why right rudder? There are a few reasons. Basically it has to do with the tendency for the airplane to try to fly to the left. This is cause is large part by the fact that the engine's drive shaft and propeller rotate in a clockwise direction (as the pilot sees it), so the airframe it's attached to tries to push a bit to the counterclockwise. Also, the wash of the air over the airframe tends to corkscrew (one of the characteristics of a center-mounted propeller twisting the wind), and the wind tends to push on vertical stabilizer's left side, pushing the tail of the plane to the right (and therefore the nose to the left). So, as you can surmise, the more power and wind applied, the more right rudder is likely to be required.

Anyhow, we got to 3,000 feet and did a couple clearing turns to make sure no one was near us. Then we got back into slow-flight mode like yesterday and did some slow flight turns, which required more power to maintain altitude for sure. This aircraft type will fly at really low speeds and is pretty forgiving. It's also pretty gutless as far as power goes (only 100 horsepower). It's a pretty great way to learn.

Next Kelly reviewed the pattern flying information with me briefly and had me turn toward Aurora airport and configure the airplane so we could start losing some altitude. We were at 3,200 feet (3,000 above ground level) and needed to get down to about 1,200 feet (1,000 feet AGL) to enter the pattern at Aurora.

We entered the airport approach pattern at a 45 degree angle, which lets us see the airport and any aircraft in the area pretty well. Then I turned another 45 degrees to enter the pattern on the "downwind" leg, running parallel to the runway. So, the runway was to my left, visually cutting through the midpoint of the win strut, and I was at about 1,200 feet - the pattern altitude. Kelly walked me through the steps: Once we were abeam (90 degrees alongside) the numbers at the end of the runway, I applied carb heat, reduced the throttle from cruise speed to about 1500 RPM, set up 10 degrees of flaps (hold the button and count "thousand-one, thousand two, thousand-three" and let off), and dialed in a bit of nose-up trim to help keep the plane in the right attitude. I checked the plane's instruments (oil pressure and temp, etc.) and looked out behind me. I discovered I was already well beyond the runway and we started out left 90-degree turn to the base leg. While turning I set the flaps to 20 degrees by extending them for three more seconds, straightened out and checked our airspeed, which was pretty good. We had a long final leg back to the runway though since I had ran a little to long on the downwind leg, so I had to apply some more power to keep altitude while flying it in.

Obviously, if I'm flying at a runway I must be flying at a landing. Kelly was on the controls with me, but that's what was about to happen - my first landing. I seemingly forgot about using my feet for the most part once we got over the runway. I reduced power to idle and pulled back but I must have tried to steer with my hands. Kelly jumped in and talked me through the landing and thanks to him we survived. He graciously told me that was a "pretty good landing for the first time, not too bad." Heh. After taxiing off the runway we came to a full stop and "cleaned up" the aircraft (retract flaps, carb heat off, etc). He let me know the very basics of what went wrong and what went right. He's very good at not discouraging the student while still letting you know just why things went the way they did. Next he told me to turn right onto the taxiway and taxi to the end of the runway, where we would take off again and fly around the pattern and land a couple more times.

I could feel myself starting to get a better feel for controlling the airplane while on departure with each take-off. There's a little bit of art to take-offs, but there's a lot more art to a good landing it seems. My next "landing" was a touch and go. Again we flew the pattern and I was quite a bit better on my pattern distances and headings I think. We came in a little high so we throttled back to lose some altitude as we approached. The landing was quite a bit better, and once rolling on the ground with flaps up it was back to full power and back in the air.

The last landing we did was better. I drifted a bit to the left and the concept of lining up on the center line and staying there seems bit out of the realm of reality so far, but I think it will happen for me. The tendency to forget to step on the right rudder and keep my flight coordinated is something I need to concentrate on for sure. Probably appropriate given the name of this weblog, heh. It feels weird to step on the right rudder when the plan is feels like it's drifting right, but I know if I do it and apply the proper aileron controls it will work. I just need to "get it."

After a full stop and a quick review with Kelly we taxied and departed again. This time I felt quite a bit better about the departure roll. It just felt slightly more natural (or perhaps slightly less foreign is a more accurate way to describe it). I was better able to fly straight off the runways and maintain good attitude and heading with a good rate of climb. Nice to end on a positive note.

Kelly asked me to turn left and we headed northwest-ish with a goal of 3,000 feet altitude. One the way out I saw another airplane crossing our path just ahead at about a mile or so and pointed it out. Kelly called him on the radio and we made sure we could see each other, then it was back to flying up to our goal. Once back up at 3,000 feet AGL we did a couple of stalls and Kelly asked me if I wanted to see and try a couple slips. One Tuesday I was excited at the end of the flight lesson and asked if I could do a couple more stalls, but today I felt like I'd just reached the edge of my ability to process new information. Those approaches and landings were a little intimidating, and I told him I thought that was enough for now. He agreed, said he didn't want to over-do it and that's why he was asking me.

We headed for the Twin Oaks Airport, entered the pattern and landed the airplane, which went pretty well. I'm not completely on the controls and it's about the time I cross the runway threshold that I seem to not be light enough on the controls. I'm going to talk with my friend, Dave, who is just about done with his private license and is on his way to becoming a professional commercial pilot. Maybe he can tell me what it was like for him the first few lessons.

Kelly tells me I'm doing well and that I'll get it. I know I will eventually. But when you have to put a flying chunk of metal on the ground, you want to feel safe and get it there in one piece. That'll take some practice. In the meanwhile I'm still having fun!

I'm taking a couple days off from flying and will be back out on Saturday. That'll give me time to let things sink in, plus I'm feeling a little cruddy physically now so probably a good idea to take it easy. Besides, I need to read and study. Wow, there's a lot to know!