After a couple weeks of fairly wet, foggy, misty and cruddy (for flying) weather, some east winds started to scream down the Columbia River Gorge yesterday, drying out the air and leaving us with clear skies and great visibility.
On Thursday morning I jumped in my truck and drove to Twin Oaks Airpark. I had scheduled a large block of time in one of the C-150's today, so I could do some assigned solo flying to a few airports in the area. All told, I flew 3.9 hours solo during the daylight hours, as well as .6 hours at night with my instructor, Kelly.
I can't really type details about four hours of flying, and it wouldn't interesting to read anyhow. But there are a few things that stand out in my mind.
First of all, the C-150 climbs a lot faster with one person in it. I'd noticed that when I did my first solo flight a few weeks ago, but today I was able to experience it flying short flights between airports.
Kelly has signed me off with approval to fly to several airports in the area on my own: Mulino, Aurora State, McMinnville, Sportsman, Hillsboro and Scappoose. I made it to landings at all of those airports today, except Hillsboro. I just ran out of time, so I'll go there the next time.
My landings are not as good as I want them to be. I seem to be flaring too early frequently on larger (wider) runways. I think it's because I'm used to landings at Twin Oaks on a narrower runway, so in my mind the same "sight picture" of the runway means a higher altitude on the larger one, so I tend to flare before I should. I need to really concentrate on looking all the way down the runway to judge my altitude before landing, rather than falling trap to the sight picture, which will always be different.
Anyhow, after some stronger wind landings at Aurora, I went to Mulino and did some more practice approaches, landings and departures. From there I flew to McMinnville, where I did a couple touch and go's before flying over Bald Peak to get back to Twin Oaks for fuel and lunch. The winds crossing the ridge at Bald Peak were quite surprising. I flew over a lower spot on the ridge right next to the peak, and the contour of the far side of the ridge causes that wind from the Gorge to funnel right through the gap. It was a headwind, but it was pretty intense and a bouncy ride, for sure. In other words, it was pretty fun. As soon as I passed over the top of the ridge the ride smoothed out and I turned to land and Twin Oaks.
After taking a 45 minute break for lunch and to top off the fuel, I took off again and called the Hillsboro tower to request a transition across their airspace to go to Scappoose, an airport over in Columbia county. While there I did a number of landings and take-off's, and also had a video camera set up in the back of the airplane looking out the front window. I'll probably post some of the video in the next few days.
By the time I returned to Twin Oaks (I flew around Hillsboro's airspace on the way back rather than transitioning though), I was ready for a longer break and some dinner. Flying's a lot of fun, but it can take a lot out of you.
I drove into town and went to Home Depot to find a flashlight with a red lens or LED for night flying, and then grabbed dinner and some gas for the truck. By the time I got back to Twin Oaks it was getting dark. Kelly and I met for a few minutes in the classroom to discuss night flight and some of the important things to know After that we headed out to the airplane and I did my first night takeoff. It was a little different, but doable. About the time we reached 900 feet altitude, a sudden layer of strong winds from the north started whipping us around. It was amazing how different the winds were a that altitude as compared to the winds on the ground. As I flew the pattern (in the dark) the winds continued to abuse the airplane. It was flyable, but on my first night flight it was a little weird.
My first landing I dropped onto the runway a little harder than I liked, and Kelly couldn't help but laugh a little. I'd approached high and a little fast. He explained that Twin Oaks is quite likely the most difficult airport in the state to fly into at night, and that everyone does that on their first landings, even him. Okay, so I felt a little better, but still... Heh.
Landing at Twin Oaks in the dark of night is a bit like flying through a black hole to land on a small rectangle marked by low intensity lights. On the approach there's a large area of pure darkness that feels like there's nothing there.
On my second landing I put it down a little easier, and the third landing was substantially better. WIth the intense winds throwing us around while flying in the pattern, we called it good for the evening and parked the plane.
Out plan for Friday is to finally complete a dual cross-country trip to Corvallis, Oregon that I've had planned out for a couple of weeks. The weather for Friday and Saturday looks like it will probably cooperate. Assuming we get the flight done on Friday, I'll be doing a solo cross country flight on Saturday. I'll need to pick my destinations and plan the flight. I have a few ideas, but the weather forecast will dictate a lot of what I can do.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment