Coordinated Flight

Use the tools you have available

2011-12-15T14:35:00.000-08:00

On an instrument flight lesson yesterday, while shooting a non-precision approach under the hood (at least as I remember it):

Instructor: "Look at your GPS here, see where you are? Wait, are you ever looking at your GPS?"
Me: "No, I thought I wasn't allowed to."
Instructor: "Oh gosh no, look at it. I mean, you can't use it as primary means of navigation but yeesh it makes your life easier so use it."

Hah. Good point. There I was flying the approach, looking only at the VOR indicators, and he pointed out that there's more info on the panel that I might find useful. In my mind, using the information on the portable aviation GPS (A Garmin 396), which is not legal to use for IFR flight primary navigation, would be cheating. The proper instruments to use, again in my mind, were the IFR-certified ones: The VOR indicators. But in reality, using the information from the GPS (which, ironically, provides more accurate information than the VOR radios and indicators) enhances situational awareness substantially.

For that matter, if my autopilot worked properly (it just came back from the repair shop and is going to be re-installed I think later today), I could also use that to help fly headings and keep the plane going in the right direction, not to mention wings-level.

Conversely, I suppose there's something to be said for using just the basic tools and becoming proficient with those, rather than relying on the extras early in the training. I looked at the GPS a couple times after that, but honestly it still felt like cheating. So, I think I might ask if we can just turn it off sometimes. Call me a rebel... :)

Experiencing the first few instrument flight lessons

2011-12-13T18:52:00.000-08:00

I've spent about five-ish hours "under the hood" now flying with my instructors (they're a pair) for my instrument rating training. For those who want the super-short summary version of what it's like, I'll just say this:

"My brain hurts."

Seriously. Similar to the learning "hump" pretty much every private pilot student runs up against at some point in flight training - often just before solo time - my experience in instrument training thus far has been one of true brain drain. The main differences in this phase of training are that instrument flying is much more precise and the hump you have to work over and through comes much, much sooner. As in almost immediately.

I'll have to shoot some video of a flight lesson or two and post it here to try to show how complicated the process of flying the plane with a hood blocking your vision can be. Everything's blocked from sight except the instruments on the panel (dashboard) directly in front of you. There's no option to look outside through any windows. And you're situated like that for quite a long time, too: I've spent a full hour that way a number of times now. Your instructor sits in the seat next to you and looks outside for other aircraft and obstacles, while you fly the plane around in the sky, essentially blind to anything in the outside world.

To add to the complexity, while you're under the hood making turns and climbs and descents, your body completely lies to you as far as what you feel like the airplane is doing vs. what it's actually doing. Think of it as being a lot like when you were a kid, spinning around in circles really fast, getting all dizzy and then trying to walk normally. Add blinders so you can only see the world right in front of you. It doesn't work to fly by feel. And doing so without the ability to see outside and view the ground/horizon can kill you. So instrument flying proficiency is important.

When flying with the hood on, you body (specifically the fluid activity in your inner ear) gets thrown off with the turns, climbs and dives, and your brain doesn't have the benefit of any visual cues to counteract the physical signals going to your brain. So you get "the leans," meaning your body tell you you're in a turn or a climb or a dive (or some combination thereof) while the instruments clearly show otherwise. So, the tendency for new instrument flight students is to "feel" their way around and fly all over the place. One of the primary purposes of early instrument flying with the hood is to train the pilot to overcome the tendency to rely on feeling and sight, ignore the signals that will incorrectly guide you in flying the airplane, and to rely solely on the instruments on the panel, which tell you how fast you're going, ascent and descent speed, turning bank, direction, altitude and other key information.

It doesn't come naturally. And it's a *lot* of information to process while your head and body are sending you false and conflicting information. Hence the brain pain.

But, it's a lot of fun. For me, there's nothing cooler than the technical challenges associated with flying and doing it well. So instrument training, while somewhat intimidating and definitely difficult, represents some serious fun in my book.

And it's a great skill to develop and rating to achieve as a pilot. Not only does the instrument rating allow a pilot to fly though and in clouds (which can open up the ability to make trips otherwise impossible), it also makes people overall better pilots. And that's a good thing.

I'll post some specific flight lesson experiences in the near future, to try to share with others what this second major phase of flight training (after the private pilot phase) is like. Instrument training is pretty much universally described as the most difficult flight training pilots do. So I think sharing some information and details can be helpful. Plus it will help me to reinforce what I am learning and experiencing in my own training process.

Short list of airfields around Portland I have yet to land at

2011-12-13T18:25:00.000-08:00

I got out the Seattle sectional this evening and made a quick list of airports in the Portland area (on the Oregon side of the river) that I have not yet ever landed at - which means I need to go there. Turns out the list is pretty darned short:

Skyport
Sandy River
Vernonia

I've driven to each of those, but never flown. All the other airports in the area - at least the ones open to the public - I've flown to at some point (as well as many of the private airfields).

On the Washington side of the Columbia River the list is slightly longer, but not much. I'll tackle those another time.

Considering an interior refurb

2011-12-05T16:01:00.001-08:00

I spent about an hour today trying to determine whether or not I can reasonably redo the interior of my not-worth-too-much airplane. Looks like I can do it for a relatively reasonable price and make it much, much nicer inside. Pretty sure interior on the plane is 37 years old - all original.

When the aircraft is worth around $30K (and I paid substantially less than that when I bought it), you just can't easily justify investing thousands and thousands of dollars into seats, carpeting and trim. But if I could make it work on a budget and get good quality for what I would spend, an interior upgrade could breathe a substantial amount of new life into a tired and worn out cabin. The airplane itself - meaning the airframe and engine - are great. It runs strong and is solid structurally. But he seat cushions are old, flattened and worn out, the fabric is faded, plus the window and wall trim is mostly warped, cracked and generally gross. In other words, it looks like it was made int he 70s and has been used since then.

I intend to fly this airplane for years to come, so I'm thinking an interior redo is in order. But refitting teh interior means not doing other things, like avionics upgrades or other changes. At any rate, I'll try to document some of the changes and the decisions here as I go, along with some of my flying experiences.

2011-11-13T01:17:00.001-08:00

After I completed my private pilot certification and got my airplane, I stopped posting here. But now that I'm starting training for my instrument rating, I realize I should have been writing here all along. At any rate, I hope to document some of the instrument flight training as well as more information about my airplane, N639MR.

I've completed two flight lessons to start my instrument training, and am looking forward to more. It's a true brain drain to fly for an hour or an hour and a half at a time "under the hood" - but it's also a lot of fun. "The hood" is a sort of visor worn by the instrument student that blocks your peripheral vision and allows you to see only the instruments on the dash/panel inside the airplane. The idea is that you should not be seeing anything outside the plane, which simulates flying in a white-out condition such as inside the clouds. It can be interesting, and many times already I have experienced "the leans" and other disorientation where what my brain and body are telling me are in no way accurate in terms of airplane attitude (pitch and roll).

Also, I recently wrote a couple posts about installing micro vortex generators on the Warrior, which you can read all about:

I'll try to post some other catch-up information here, as well.

Flying and more flying, and being an owner

2009-04-17T12:09:00.001-07:00

With more than 35 flight hours now logged in my Warrior, I'm getting to know the airplane pretty well. I've flown solo, with one person in the seat next to me, with one passenger in the front and another in the back seat, and in one case with one in the front and two in the back (they were light/young people, so still well within the weight and balance envelope).

Aircraft ownership brings with it some things you never have to deal with as a renter. When I cracked one of the stabilator fiberglass tips pushing the plane into the T-hangar parking spot, I had to buy a new one and have it installed. When the engine worries my novice and slightly-paranoid ear and I need to learn about better engine leaning and carburetor adjustments, I pay for the shop time to check it out. When the nose gear strut needs new seals and servicing, I pay for that. I just did pay for that, in fact. :)

Renters have all that stuff taken care of. If a rental is out for service, there's probably another plane you can fly.

But this airplane is mine. I can drive down to the hangar, pull the airplane out whenever I want, and fly it wherever I want - and for as long as I like. I have to buy the oil and fuel and parts, but in exchange I can fly for $30 an hour in fuel and oil (and then pay for as-needed parts and labor, plus inspections and whatnot).

Doing the calculations, I am flying quite a bit more in my own airplane than I would in a rental. I've flown more than 30 hours in the Warrior in about two months of ownership and sustaining this rate or something close to it won't be too difficult. With that many hours per year, I'm well past the affordability threshold for making ownership worthwhile, especially when you consider the low price I paid for the plane.

I've been able to share flying with friends, too - and that is the best part for me. While flying is something I actually enjoy doing alone (most activities I prefer to do with someone else), it's even better when someone else is in the airplane. I've even been thinking it might be fun some day (after I get a lot more experience and training) to teach others to fly. Now that would be fun!

First 15-or-so hours in the Warrior

2009-03-27T12:29:00.001-07:00

I’ve flown about 15 hours now in the Warrior, and am getting to know the airplane better the more I fly it. It’s quite different than a Cessna is a couple notable ways (and almost exactly like a Cessna in most ways, of course).

The differences become most apparent during approach and landing. In a nutshell, airspeed matters a lot more in the Warrior when landing. Too fast over the runway and you’ll float, float, float.

The Warrior is a Cherokee with a tapered wing. Mine is a 150 horsepower model. What I’ve found is that unless my approach speed is about 75 miles per hour, I’m too fast over the runway and the ground effect float is just too much. If I try to raise the nose slightly while in ground effect at, say, 80 miles per hour, the plane just wants to climb. At 70 to 75 miles per hour I can descend through the ground effect much more effectively while keeping good control authority, substantially minimizing the amount of runway needed to land. the high wing on Cessna aircraft really fly differently when you’re a few feet above the ground. Of course, that’s in my plane. Yours will almost certainly vary.

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been able to fly in slices of decent weather. A couple days were downright beautiful. I’ve flown to get lunch in Independence a couple times, flew over my home, took a friend and his dad up for a scenic flight over the Columbia River, and over the past couple days the neighbor kid (who’s on spring break this week) went flying with me for a night flight over downtown Portland and then yesterday for four hours of cross country and fun. I think he’s hooked. He’s already asked how old you have to be to get a pilot’s certificate and how much it costs. Hah.

The plane has flown more in the past couple weeks than it did in the past four or five years combined. When an airplane doesn’t fly one has to be a bit skeptical about the potential problems that can result from non-use. But things are looking good. The engine is running well and everything seems to be working just fine, so at this point I’m glad I found a great deal (and got a thorough pre-purchase inspection). Oil consumption is very low and the engine is delivering power quite well. There are a few minor things to be addressed, two of which were negotiated as part of the purchase: The carb heat lever needs to be adjusted because it slips a little bit, and the interior red light is “inop” (so I use a head-mounted red LED light, which works pretty well). Another minor issue that needs to be addressed is a slightly “sticky” front landing gear. It holds proper pressure and the mechanism works just fine absorbing any landing shock, but the O-ring seals are older and have hardened somewhat so they need to be replaced, which will allow the seal to travel a little more freely up and down.

So far, so fun. Time to start planning some cross-country flying and find some places around the area to visit that I have never been to before. Looking forward to exploring!

New aircraft type to fly – My Warrior

2009-03-14T13:28:00.001-07:00

I’ve just started flying in a new airplane. My private pilot training was done almost exclusively in the little Cessna 150’s, good airplanes that are small in size and power, but fun to fly around and great to learn in. I also flew one lesson in a Cessna 172, which is noticeably larger (four seats), more powerful, and more stable in the air.

A close equivalent to the 172 is the Piper Cherokee. Later models of the Cherokee include the Warrior, designated as the PA-28-151. It has a low-wing, four seats and a 150-horsepower engine. I was fortunate enough to find out about a Warrior based at Twin Oaks Airpark, my home airport. It’s been sitting in a hangar and not flying very much over the past few years, and while the interior is dated and tired, it is in pretty darned good shape and all the radios work, it has a current annual, and checked out okay. So, I test flew it myself and had it checked out by a mechanic, which is what you do if you plan to fly an unfamiliar aircraft a lot.

And then I bought it. For something akin to a steal of a price. Yes, you read that right: I own an airplane. It cost less (a whole lot less, in fact) than my truck. Airplanes can be much more affordable than people think. Most people I know are driving cars and SUVs that cost substantially more than this aircraft. I got a very reasonable price, thanks in part to the current economy and the deflation of airplane selling prices over the past few months. This airplane would have sold for almost twice as much a few years ago. In short, it looks to be a great time to but an airplane if you’re in the market and can afford one (there’s more than just the purchase cost involved in owning an airplane. Just spend a lot of time looking around, and don’t pay the asking price – It will almost certainly be too high. My purchase price was around 25% less than the asking price, if that tells you anything.

The plane’s tail number is N639MR (link goes to a web site I set up for it), and here’s what it looks like (click on each of the images to view larger):

Over the past few days I received some dual instruction in the airplane from my flight instructor at Fly-Oregon.com, Kelly. Being properly checked-out, I was able to fly about 1.5 hours solo yesterday for the first time. I did several take-off’s and landings at a couple airfields, and then flew to Portland-Hillsboro airport, where I met up with my friend and fellow pilot Dave. He got on board and we flew for a couple hours. We had a great time. Dave will also be flying the plane, as he’ll be building time while he works toward his professional pilot goals. I got to fly over my house for the first time and did two night landings.

Flying a low-wing plane, not to mention a larger and heavier airframe, presents some real differences compared to the little high-wing Cessna 150. Ground effect in the Warrior is much more pronounced thanks to the low wing, so a proper approach speed at landing is fairly critical in order to avoid floating in the air down the runway (especially if there’s any tail-wind). It’s very stable in wind and turbulent air, and flies wonderfully. And it climbs much faster and higher than my little training aircraft.

It is also a great cross-country flier, and makes respectable airspeed even though it’s not a super fast bird. Visibility outside is quite good – much better than in the C150. It’s comfortable, will get you where you want to go relatively quickly, and is quite fuel-efficient in cruise. I can likely burn less gas in the aircraft that I would driving over the ground on long trips (and get there much faster). I’m looking forward to visiting some fun places and using the plane as an alternative to airliners here and there!

First two flights with passengers as a private pilot

2009-03-03T21:11:00.001-08:00

When my good friend Dave got his private pilot certificate last year, I was his first passenger. So after I got mine yesterday, he met me at Twin Oaks Airpark this afternoon so we could go flying, only this time with me as pilot in command.

We took off from the airport and made our way south, ending up about half way between McMinnville and Salem before heading west a little ways, and them turning back north. We did a touch and go at McMinnville and then flew over Henry Hagg Lake before returning to Twin Oaks. We saw all kinds of cool stuff and did some fun turns and whatnot. It was a lot of fun flying with Dave again, and we will be spending a lot of future time together in the air, I'm sure.

A little later in the afternoon, another good friend and former roomie, Cory, went with me to the airport, and we took off for my second flight of the day. Our trip took us to Hagg Lake and the area to the south of there, then Aurora, where we did a touch and go then to Mulino, where we did a full-stop landing. From there we returned to Twin Oaks. By the time we got about 5 miles from the airport, the winds were really starting to whip up out of the southwest and west, and as I approached the airfield I started to wonder what the landing was going to be like.

In fact, Betty Stark (she and her husband own the airport) got on the radio when I announced I was approaching and intended to take a look at the windsock. She asked me what I thought, and I observed that the windsock was presenting a direct headwind, so I would fly the approach and see how it looked, but be safe in doing so. I flew the pattern to runway 20, but once I was on the final approach leg and getting close to the runway my strong headwind turned into a nasty 25-knot quartering crosswind - too much for that little Cessna 150, and especially way too much for my own personal limitations. So, I applied full power and climbed out on a go-around, crabbing into the wind.

At that point I had to decide what to do. I could go to Aurora, where I knew conditions were better, or I could go to Hillsboro, where the runways are more plentiful and facing more directions. Or, I could fly around Twi Oaks again and observe the windsock and the winds to see what they might do. I chose to head toward Hillsboro (at the Stark's suggestion) and in the process flew the box pattern around Twin Oaks again.

Once in the downwind leg for runway 20, the winds had calmed somewhat and were again running straight up the runway. As long as they stayed like that, I'd have no problem landing the airplane. So, I announced I was making another try for the field into the headwind and flew the approach. Kathy, an instructor who'd helped me with a mock check-ride exam and flight last week, happened to be in the ground in an airplane and she confirmed the winds were coming up the runway. She and her student sat on the ground in a bigger 172 while I flew the approach. It got a little squirrelly but the winds cooperated and I neatly put the plane on the ground, then got it off the runway. I have to say, it felt pretty good when Kathy keyed the radio and said "nice job." Heh. Well, I'm glad I was able to do it!

My instructor, Kelly Wiprud, had put me in situations like that one, with strong and highly variable winds, when we were early in my training and he was in the airplane with me. I hear some people hardly see crosswinds at all when they train, but I have had far more than plenty over the past few months. And I'm glad, as it's made me much more prepared for surprises like the winds this afternoon.

So, 3.3 hours just today, and it was fun. I added up my log book this evening, and was a little surprised to find out I have 77.9 hours of flight time under my belt. Pretty cool!

I'm officially a private pilot!

2009-03-02T23:36:00.001-08:00

Wow, what a day! I woke up this morning and started in on some non-flying related stuff that I have on my list, and at about 8:45 this morning Kelly called me. Turns out one of the local FAA examiners that conducts check rides for private pilot candidates had today open and so he wanted to see if I could be at the airport for my FAA check ride at 1pm today. It wasn't quite where my mind was focused at the time the call came, but I quickly started shifting gears in my brain and agreed to be at Twin Oaks to meet Kelly at noon so we could make sure all the paperwork was in order.

I'd figured that I would have at least a couple more days to study and prepare, and I could have waited. But after I thought about it a bit, I decided I was ready to go and that now was the time. So I collected by books and equipment, loaded up the truck, and headed to town and to the airport.

I got there at about 11am, which allowed me time to get all the documentation for the airplane, like the log books showing the maintenance and whatnot. I also had to plan a cross-country flight from Twin Oaks to Corvallis, including the weather and a route to follow, as well as the standard weight and balance and other typical flying paperwork. One complicating factor for the flight was that I weigh about 180 pounds and the FAA examiner weighs about 210 pounds, which meant in the little Cessna 150 we'd be flying I could not take off with full fuel tanks, else we'd be overweight and unsafe. Luckily, Kelly offered to siphon some fuel from the already-filled airplane, and he told me later he didn't get a mouthful of fuel in the process. Been there. Not good.

The check ride consists of a session in the classroom where the examiner conducts and oral exam to determine if you know the myriad of basic information a pilot needs to be familiar with. We reviewed weather, charts, airspace, electrical and fuel systems, weight and balance, performance limitations of various types, a bunch of rules and regs imposed by the FAA, and various procedures. After a couple hours of that, we finished in the classroom and went to pre-flight the airplane.

The examiner watched as I conducted the pre-flight inspection and even offered a couple useful and seasoned suggestions for looking at the aircraft from a distance to get a big picture view of the airframe. It turns out he's been a pilot since 1965, and flew 17 different aircraft for the U.S. Army (rotary and fixed-wing), and since then has been a pilot, instructor and examiner in various model of Citation jet and other big/fast aircraft. So his advice was welcome and based on many years and many, many hours of practical experience. I can safely say I learned some new things today. Quite a few new things, in fact.

We did the pre-departure routine and then got off the ground. I started the first portion of my planned cross-country flight to the south and flew over the Newberg VOR (UBG), then lined up on the VOR radial I'd planned for the flight toward Corvallis. Now, I already knew we were not flying all the way there. The standard practice is to divert to an airport not on the flight plan once you get into the flight. Sure enough, after about 15 minutes of flying and discussion, he diverted me when I reached one of my visual checkpoints and told me to find McMinnville Airport. I located it out the right side of the plane and pointed it out, and told him the info necessary to get there. He was satisfied and told me that while I was not to fly there at that time, I needed to remember it because at some point he would likely be requiring me to return there later in the flight. Hmm, interesting.

We continued south and I executed some clearing turns to make sure the airspace around us wasn't occupied by any other aircraft. I flew the headings and made the altitude changes I was told, and then transitioned to slow flight. He them told me to descend at 70 knots until I reached 3200 feet, at which time I was to transition the nose high under no power and enter a power-off stall. It was a great method of simulating an approach to a landing, and the stall went off without a hitch. He then had me immediately recover to normal flight and climb back to 3200 feet, and then immediately enter a power-on stall. It took a while for the stall to happen (I was surprised at that, considering we were basically at max gross weight), but when it did I recovered properly and returned to level flight.

Next came the hood, a set of blinders that allow you only to see inside the airplane, with your view restricted to the instrument panel. He had me put it on, did a couple turns to disorient me a little and to make sure the area was clear, and then handed the controls back over to me. I flew straight and level, did some turns to specified headings, did a climbing and descending turn. Then he covered my eyes and told me to do a left turn, then a climbing left turn, and then to transition to a climbing right turn. The purpose of this was to force me into an "unusual attitude." That term means the airplane is not in a normal flight attitude - It's nose high or low, rolling left or right. You don't really know what the airplane is doing until you open your eyes and look at the instruments. Then you have to react and correct the problem immediately. I recovered fine from the crazy attitudes and he then had me fly a couple more turns and headings before telling me to remove the hood.

Upon removing the hood, he directed me to look outside the airplane and see if I recognized any of my flight plan landmarks in the area. Sure enough, just to my left was the Woodburn drag strip. I told him that and he said, "Okay, just don't land there..." as he pulled the power on the airplane. "There's way too many wires to hit on that piece of property," he said. Heh. I started the standard drill for a simulated engine out. First fly the airplane. Trim for 60 knots. Look for aluminum sharing your sky. Determine the winds for a landing and start looking for a place to land. Do the engine failure equipment check and try to restart as appropriate (simulated). Dial in 121.5 and make a mayday call if it won't restart (simulated). I was at about 2500 feet and there were several good fields in the area below me, so I did a forward slip and lost some altitude in the process. I then determined since I was just over 1000 feet above the ground that I would fly a proper right-hand pattern to a clean, large field on my right, and started the descent and turned base. I them simulated setting the mixture to rich and turned to the field. My speeds and everything were right on the money and the field was definitely "made." About 500 feet above the ground he instructed me to discontinue the drill and to climb back to 1200 feet as quickly as I could.

I climbed at Vy (70 knots), and leveled off at 1200 pretty quickly. Things were starting to get thrown at me pretty quick now. The pace of the instructions he was throwing at me starting with the simulated instrument maneuvers was accelerating, and we were flowing from one maneuver directly to another on a regular basis. There were a couple times when I just took my time and made sure I was truly ready before starting the next maneuver. It's amazing what five or ten seconds can do to get you ready for the next objective.

I was told next to immediately select a point in a nearby field and execute a turn around that point. I first did some clearing turns for safety and then did a fairly tight right-side turn around a dead tree. It wasn't the best turn-around-a-point I've ever done, and it was pretty darned tight and steep, but it worked. He had me transition immediately out of the right turn into a left turn as the beginning of flying S-curves over a line in the ground that the tree happened to be sitting on. He had me fly the turns pretty tight, and I thought I did a pretty darned good job on them.

Once the S-turns were done, he told me to find McMinnville (the airport from before when we did the diversion decisions). At 1200 feet it's a little more difficult to find an airport several miles away, but I found it and started flying toward it. I entered a 45-degree entry for the downwind leg and followed the examiner's instructions to execute a soft-field landing. I have to say, my landing was probably barely passable. I was truly disappointed, and the fast pace of the prior 30 minutes was probably pushing my brain a bit. I applied power over the runway a bit too late and as a result we skipped lightly once on the runway, which was aggravating to me. At that point I had to question whether I was going to be able to pass the check-ride. It just wasn't a good example of the maneuver. It wasn't terrible or dangerous, but it still sucked. But hey, it happens.

We did a few take-off's and landings at McMinnville: Soft-field takeoff (went well), short-field landing (went pretty okay), and a short-field takeoff (which I screwed up a little by lining up not all the way on the end of the runway). Td then hen, after getting back in the pattern, the examiner told me my flaps were broken and that I was to fly the whole pattern and turn into the base leg with no flaps and to stay at 1000 feet AGL and not descend as one normally would. He had me fly most of the base leg at 1200 feet an then told me I could start my descent and turn to the final approach. So, as I started my (very) short base turn I was at about 900 feet above the ground and already pretty close to the runway. I entered into a full-defelction forward slip, which effectively turns the airplane sideways as it flys to the runway. You lose a lot of altitude really quick, and somehow the aircraft still flies. It's a weird feeling. We dropped like a bowling ball and I straightened it out before we got too low. He instructed me to go-around, and I applied full power and climbed out from the runway.

We departed the McMinnville airport and the examiner instructed me to return to Twin Oaks. I set the course and started the climb over the Newberg VOR again, and then descended and did a decent landing at my home airport. And when I call it my "home" airport I mean it. I have spent more time there than at home much of the past few months, and I enjoy the people there. It's a great place to learn to fly.

As I taxied off the runway and to the ramp to park the airplane, I started to think about my soft field landing and the short-field takeoff where I had set the airplane up not quite on the end of the runway. Those weren't terrible mistakes, I thought, but if they were out of line with the standard and he failed me as a result, I would understand. Not a problem, I told myself. Just do this all again in a week or so.

As I killed the engine, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. It had been a whirlwind few hours to be sure. When I opened my eyes again, I saw the examiner's hand extended in front of me. He shook my hand and said, "Congratulations, Greg. You're a private pilot!"

Yes!

My legs were rubbery when I got out of the airplane. I'd say it felt good to be on the ground, but in truth I love being in the airplane. It was stressful, sure, but it was also a lot of fun. I called a few people to tell them the news and found a few text messages from people close to me asking how I did. We did a bunch of paperwork to satisfy the United States Government, and I was handed my temporary pilot certificate, which will be replaced with a fancy-dancy wallet card whenever the FAA has a chance to print it up.

Tomorrow I'll fly with my good friend Dave, who became a pilot last year. I was his first passenger, and he will be mine. It's almost surreal to think that I've actually reached this goal, and that now I can share the experience with others along for the ride. I've learned a little thus far, and look forward to learning more and more. Wow!!

Signed off for the check-ride

2009-02-27T04:11:00.001-08:00

I flew on Thursday with my instructor, Kelly (check out http://fly-oregon.com) after some classroom quizzing. It was a relatively quick flight with a number of things packed into .8 hours (VOR navigation work under the hood, recovery from unusual attitudes, soft-field takeoff, short field landing, a simulated engine-out landing right after taking off the instrument hood, etc). Once back on the ground, Kelly had me fill out the FAA form used as an application for a check ride, and he signed me off for my training. So, the next official step is to get on the FAA examiner's calendar.

I'll be flying on Friday for a little while with a different instructor for a mock check-ride to help get ready for the real thing. I totaled up my hours on Thursday and discovered I have about 70 hours of flight time. All those solo practice flights over the past couple months sure added up!

Still flying and studying - Night flight, prep for check ride

2009-02-12T01:46:00.001-08:00

I haven't posted an update in a while, but I have been flying and preparing for my check ride with the FAA examiner. I flew today for about 30 minutes, just to get a few laps around the pattern in since the weather was agreeable mid-day and I had about an hour to spare. I've been trying to grab a free airplane here and there on days like today, just to practice different take-off's and landings and to keep sharp. The weather has been a challenge much of the time the past couple months, so taking advantage of VFR windows is important.

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to fly a 180-horsepower Cessna 172 Skyhawk (N734KU) for the first time. On top of that, it was a night flight with my instructor, and a friend of mine who is also a pilot jumped in the back seat for the flight. On top of that, our flight was to Portland International Airport (PDX), another first for me. PDX is a Class-C airport with a bunch of big, long runways and big, fast airplanes flying in and out.

The 180HP Cessna 172 is a lot more airplane than the little Cessna 150's I've been flying to date. There's plenty of elbow and shoulder room and it's a rocket, relatively speaking. The sight picture looking out the windscreen is different than a C150, but I got used to it pretty quickly. It was nice to fly a bigger, solid airplane and see what's different. Any dreams I might have had of someday buying a 150 were pretty much crushed that night. Heh.

PDX was an interesting airport to fly into. Luckily it wasn't too busy, but there were a couple handfuls of airliners and corporate jets arriving and departing. The tower controller gave me instructions to set up for a left-hand approach to the runway that runs west-east next to the Columbia River, and Kelly (my instructor) handled some of the radio traffic for me, since I was flying a different airplane at night into a huge airport with lots of airplanes.

We got squeezed in for our landings between 737's and Airbuses, as well as a couple corporate jets. The controller let me do a few full stops and touch-and-goes, which was surprising. I kind of expected I'd have to leave after the first landing, but I guess it wasn't too busy there after all (could've fooled me though!). Each time I landed he's ask if I wanted another one, and after finishing a few we let him know we'd get out of his hair and head over to Hillsboro. At HIO I did some more landings and then headed back to Twin Oaks for one last landing. It was a great flight and a lot of fun, and it was fun to be at the controls with my friend Dave in the back seat. I can't wait until we can go flying together, both of us as pilots.

Since that evening over at PDX, I've flown a couple times with Kelly during the day. Our most recent flight was particularly stressful, as he intentionally tried to rattle me (with some success) for about an hour. Shifting his weight, getting a bit impatient, even opening and closing the door once in the pattern. And pulling the throttle on me or telling me it was "stuck at 1500RPM, so what do you do?" He was purposefully testing my ability to function under pressure and in a less-than-perfect environment (he told me so later). It was a good experience, at least in the end.

We've also spent some more time in the classroom with Kelly quizzing me in a way similar to how it will be with the FAA examiner. It's helping me understand that I need to better memorize some key information about things like airspace rules and definitions, as well as a variety of other topics. So, I'm spending a good portion of my time now prepping for that oral examination, which precedes the checkride.

The only flight training requirement I still need to complete is about half an hour more time "under the hood" doing simulated instrument flight. Kelly and I plan to do a mock checkride in the next few days, weather allowing, and Kelly says he wants to get me to my checkride so I can be done with this phase of my training.

And I say "this phase" quite purposely. I'm already thinking an instrument rating is probably a smart idea, for two reasons. First, it will make me a safer and more complete pilot. Second, I live in the Pacific Northwest. It rains here and we have clouds. We're kind of famous for our weather.

So, I'm almost there! Just a little more work and studying to do.

It's All Coming Together: Maneuver practice and passed the knowledge test

2009-01-23T00:38:00.001-08:00

The past few days have been positive for me in "flying land." I took advantage of some great weather and approximately 8-knot winds aloft on Tuesday to fly for about an hour and practice all the maneuvers (except those requiring me to be under-the-hood, of course) required for my private pilot check ride. After flying in 25+ knot winds and attempting to do something close to accurate maneuvers the other day, flying them in 7 or so knots was relatively simple. I felt good about everything I flew: stalls and recoveries, slow flight, steep turns, slips, rectangular patterns, turns about a point and s-turns. I also practiced some engine-out checklist drills and did a go-around procedure from the final approach. All went fairly well.

On Thursday afternoon, after some work meetings, I drove over to the Troutdale airport, dropped $90 on the table, and took the computer-based FAA knowledge test, which I passed with a reasonably wide margin. I'm sure glad to get that out of the way, as I've been procrastinating on it for about a month. It's been hard to find the time needed to study for the exam, but I forced myself lately to make the time and knocked it out.

So, now I need to do at least 30 more minutes of night flight with my instructor, which I think we are going to do by flying from Twin Oaks to PDX and back (PDX is a Class-C airport, so that will be a good experience). After that I believe I will technically have more than the minimum number of hours of flight time in each of the required flight categories (like night, dual, solo, cross-country, etc). I think I'll need to do some more check-ride prep flying before being ready to fly with the FAA examiner, though. I want to be truly ready.

I'm getting close, it seems. I know I am feeling better with each flight about my progress and abilities. If all goes well, pretty soon I'll be able to fly with passengers. Wow, how's that for scary eh? :)

Some people have been asking me lately how much this training costs. It depends on the person, as everyone's development is a little different. For my own training, to date, I've listed the numbers below. Your expenditures could be more, or slightly less. I've flown solo quite a bit to practice, so my aircraft rental costs are higher than if I'd just flown the minimum hours - And I'm glad I've spent that valuable extra learning time. These figures are provided in the interest of educating anyone who might be interested in learning to fly (and if you're in Portland, you should call Twin Oaks and Kelly Wiprud to inquire about training, tell 'em I sent ya). There's a real financial commitment, to be sure, but it's not horrific by any stretch of the means. Find a good location and a good instructor, plus be sure to fly frequently, and you'll keep the costs down.

Greg's costs to-date:

Instructor time (flying): 34.9 hours @$35/hr = $1221.50
Additional Instructor time (ground): $400.00
Aircraft rental time: 53.4 hours @$75/hr = $4005.00
Books, plotter, E6B calculator and charts: $200.00
FAA knowledge exam: $90.00

Total expenditure so far is approximately $5915.00, give or take. Considering I'm close to finishing (I hope, heh), I'd say I'm on par to hit the lower end of the scale as far as how much money and time it typically takes to get a private pilot certification. I have a few more hours of airplane and instructor time still to add on before I finish, plus the costs associated with the check ride and a few other various things.

I also had to purchase renter's insurance during my training in case I ruined an airplane while flying solo, plus I bought a few other things that were not mandatory, like a noise-canceling airplane headset and a few additional study materials online. But those items are all above and beyond the basic stuff that's required.

Solo prep flight and nighttime cross-country to Astoria

2009-01-17T21:48:00.001-08:00

Today I flew solo for just over an hour and reviewed the skills Kelly and I worked on the previous day in preparation for finishing my training. All of these are skills I will need to be able to show I can do properly on my FAA check ride, which Kely says he wants to get scheduled soon. Seems like I just started, but I already have more than 45 hours of flight time in my logbook.

The winds were pretty strong aloft in two definite layers, which meant a strong turbulence layer at about 2000-2500 feet of bumpy, kind of crazy air in places. That plus the 30-knot east wind at 4,000 feet limited my ability to do some of the maneuvers I wanted to practice. I decided that trying to do power-off stalls was just not a good idea, even into the wind, so I focused my energy on a few landings and emergency procedures as well as steep turns and a couple power-on stalls. The gusty winds made all of the above challenging, but it was good experience.

I returned to the airport and met my instructor, as we were going to get set for a night cross-country flight to Astoria, on the coast. I'd flown there a couple days before on my solo daytime cross-country flight.

Flying at night is fun. I find it easy to focus, as there are really no distractions to speak of. You have to stay aware of what's happening inside and outside the aircraft, and what you can't see is probably the most potentially dangerous part of night flying. Altitude is your friend.

The winds aloft were still challenging and a couple places near Hillsboro had some quite turbulent layers, which we climbed through as we headed toward the coastal range, which we'd need to cross on out way to Astoria. I had planned the flight to be one that took us direct from the Newberg VOR (UBG), which is located a few miles south of Twin Oaks, to the Astoria VOR (AST), which is located at the Astoria airport. We took off and intercepted the VOR radial I had planned to fly along and headed northwest with the wind at our backs.

Almost immediately I could see a flashing red light on a tower that I had noted in my flight plan was along our route. It made it easy to fly toward the correct general heading. I could also see Astoria's lights off in the distance, which meant the visibility was pretty much unlimited. You could see Portland and well up in to Washington clearly, as well as south toward Salem and southwest toward Tillamook.

We climbed to our planned altitude of 5500 feet, which carried us well over the highest terrain in the area, and then started to descend into Astoria. The winds there picked up as we descended, and I entered a crab-angled path to the north, then crossed the airport mid-field before turning to the right to come back and enter the downwind leg for Runway 8. I raced downwind with the tailwind, then turned to base, and quickly to final. I landed the airplane on the runway with a bit of a bounce and a float, because I misjudged the flare in the dark. I retracted the flaps and applied power and took off, then told Kelly I wanted to do another one because, frankly, that landing pretty much sucked. We flew around the pattern and I did a somewhat better landing before taking back off and departing back toward Hillsboro.

The flight back was uneventful and I tracked the VORs while also using the my GPS. We eventually got back and found Twin Oaks, which is nearly impossible to see at night until you're a couple miles away. As I descended we crossed into the super bumpy turbulence again, and I made an bumpy turn to the downwind leg and kept fighting the bumps as I prepped the plane to land. Once I turned to base and descended a little more the wind calmed down quite a bit and I flew the plane to the runway, where I did the smoothest landing of the evening.

It was a fun flight. I had the video camera set up, but was so busy with winds and talking to Kelly that we forgot to turn it on. Oh well, maybe next time.

Some solo pattern practice and check-ride prep

2009-01-17T12:31:00.001-08:00

After my solo cross-country flight on Wednesday, I arrived at Twin Oaks Airpark Thursday afternoon to get in an hour or two of solo practice in the pattern and at a tower-controlled airport. I wanted to spend some time getting takeoff and landing routines a little more refined, and it had been a while since I'd flown the pattern at tower-controlled Portland-Hillsboro airport. The weather was amazing, so I wanted to take advantage of it.

I got back in the same airplane I'd used for my cross country flight the previous day. It had been checked out to confirm the little issue I had the evening before was in fact carb ice and that there we no other issues. I put the video camera in the luggage area and pointed it forward just like I had on the cross country, then turned it on and forgot about it. I wanted to be able to go back and look at my landings and takeoffs and review the little detail aspects of what I was doing. I find it's a tool that gives me better perspective on what I can do better. It also makes interesting video for posting here. I'll likely add it to this post after I get it processed on the computer. I also plan to add a little video from my cross-country flight the other day. I just don't have time right now to get that done.

Once I set up the camera and turn it on, I just let it run. It's completely out of my way and stationed solidly behind the seats. It either quits on its own (by running out of battery or hard drive space) or I turn it off when I finish flying. I don't worry or think about it when I'm in the air, except to talk through everything on the intercom, which record my voice in the camera's audio track. Come to think of it, I talk to myself on the intercom whether the camera is there or not. It helps me stay focused and organized.

I was happy with my take-offs and landings that day. I was pretty much on the money and things were smooth and properly executed. It was fun to fly to Hillsboro and fly the pattern with other airplanes and talk to the tower. That controller stays plenty busy, I can tell you. Someone told me it's the busiest airport in Oregon, even more so than Portland International in terms of the number of airplanes operating daily. That's crazy. They have a big flight school there, which makes up a lot of the traffic.

On Friday I joined my instructor Kelly again and we did what he termed a "check-ride prep" flight. We flew from Twin Oaks out to the east to a safe practice area and I did all sorts of maneuvers and configurations: Slow flight, power-on and power-off stalls and recoveries, steep turns, flying under the hood and doing turns and level flight, and a couple simulated engine failure drills, one of which I flew until I was 500 feet over an abandoned airport before applying power to go-around. We then returned to Twin Oaks and crossed over the airport at 3,000 feet, where he again "killed" the engine (meaning he put it at idle) and I had to perform a spiraling descent over the end of Runway 2 to an altitude and position that would allow me to enter a downwind leg for landing, and then I landed the plane with no power, right on the money.

Next we did a short field takeoff and landing, followed by a soft-field takeoff and landing before calling it quits for the day. Overall I felt good about my progress and performance, and can see I'm getting closer to being ready to fly with an examiner. There are a number of things I want to practice more to be more proficient, but all in all it's going well.

On Saturday I plan to do about 90 minutes of solo flying time to practice the same things Kelly and I did on our "checkride prep" flight, and then after a brief break he and I are scheduled Saturday evening to complete the night cross-country flight that we need to get out of the way. Unfortunately we won't be able to fly to Boeing Field in Seattle as we have wanted to do, since the weather up there is still not cooperating and shows no real signs of improving. We're planning to fly to Astoria and back, which more than satisfies the training requirements. I'm hoping to get to fly with Kelly to Boeing Field so I can get the Class B airspace experience before I finish training, maybe as part of prep for my checkride since that would provide plenty of time and opportunity to review and test my skills, as well.

My Long Solo Cross-Country - The Oregon Coast

2009-01-17T12:00:00.001-08:00

The weather turned from completely terrible to amazing here in northwest Oregon this past week, and I took advantage of it in a big way, getting in a bunch of flying while I can.

As I mentioned in the last post, I went with my instructor on Tuesday and was introduced to flying under the hood for instrument conditions simulation. It was the first time day people had been able to fly in weeks, and the weather just kept improving from there.

I also mentioned at the end of my last post that I'm glad for the training I've received, which has been excellent. A good part of training is focused on dealing with the unusual and unexpected. I put it to good use, as you'll read further on.

I'd been doing a bunch of flight planning in preparation for my long solo cross country flight that I needed to get done as I (hopefully) near the end of my private pilot training. I'd planed three different trips, all of them longer than necessary by a safe margin (and a couple of them probably just too long to be realistic for one day worth of flying in a slower plane like the C-150). On Wednesday, I filed a VFR flight plan with the FAA for a three-leg flight from Twin Oaks Airpark in Hillsboro to Newport, a town on the Oregon Coast to the southwest. From there my plan would take me to Astoria, a port town at the northwest corner of the state where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. I would then fly to Woodland State airport in Washington and from there almost due-south back to Twin Oaks.

I arrived at the airport mid-day Wednesday and saw the fog had cleared and the overcast cloud layer was quickly burning off and breaking up - A good sign. I'd planned my flight to leave at noon, but in reality I would not be able to get off the ground until closer to 1:30 p.m. Fortunately (planning-wise), I found out the Woodland State airport runway was closed according to an FAA notice, because it apparently had been under water and was not serviceable yet. It turned out that with my late departure I'd need to find a way to shave some time off the flight in order to make it back before civil twilight anyhow, so Woodland wasn't really an option anyhow.

I departed the airport at Twin Oaks (7S3) and flew to the Newberg VOR (UBG). When I climbed to about 2,000 feet and looked over the ridge to see what the conditions were to the south, beyond the ridge the VOR sits on top of, I was greeted by an overcast cloud deck that surprisingly covered the entire Willamette Valley floor almost as far as the eye could see. I would not be able to fly over that legally or safely as a student pilot, but I had discussed this potential circumstance with my instructor before I left. I observed that a few miles to my west the conditions were clear, and I let the Seattle Center (who had me on their radar and was aware of my flight plan) that I was going to fly a few miles west and then turn southwest over the VFR area to reach Newport. And that's what I did.

My path took me over the coastal range just for a few more miles than would have been the case if I'd done a straight shot from Newberg's VOR to the one at Newport. I climbed to 7500 feet , which was higher than I had originally planned in order to make sure I had plenty of gliding range should an emergency situation occur, and I steered to ensure I had prospective landing spots in view (which is what one should be doing at all times anyhow). I made my way down to Newport just west of my originally planned track and took a look at the city, it's lighthouse and it's distinct bridge from the air for the first time. The airport was east to find, just south of the bridge, and I checked the weather and winds on the automated radio channel and then prepared to land.

The Newport Municipal Airport (ONP) is a nice facility, with two big huge runways (compared to what I'm used to). I set up to enter on a 45-degree entry into the downwind leg for Runway 34. There was a stiff crosswind, partially a headwind, with a crosswind component of probably 7 knots with some light gusting. As I flew the final leg toward the runway the gusts became apparent and I had to really work to crab the airplane into the strong quartering headwind. I stayed on the centerline and straightened out just before touching down, and put it down one wheel at a time (in the correct order even). I had to make sure I was "steering" into the cross wind with the ailerons, just to make sure the winds wouldn't try to lift the right wing.

I fueled up the airplane and shot a goofy little video of myself at the airport in the afternoon sun (you can click on the video to see it larger and in HD-ish quality on YouTube). The temperature was spring-like, which is nice for January. As soon as I was fueled up I got back in the plane and prepared to depart on the next leg of the flight, which would take me to Astoria, about an hour or so north of Newport. My path of flight would take me straight up the shoreline of the northern Oregon Coast.

It was so nice out I flew with the window open for a couple minutes twice on the way up. I saw lot of smaller, interesting airports while enroute and had the chance to see this beautiful piece of our country from a whole new vantage point. I'll be going back there again in the future for some scenic flying, for sure.

When I finally reached Astoria and stated to descend, I was a little worried about the fact that one of the fuel gauges was now reading almost empty while the other one was showing almost full. Now, I know these gauges are notoriously inaccurate, which is one of several reasons why you don't rely on them. Instead we check the fuel level in the tanks manually with a measuring stick and determine how much fuel will be burned on the flight leg by leg. My concern was of the self-questioning type: Had I been a lunkhead and left the right tank cap off when I refueled? I thought back and was certain I had not since I double checked, but at the same time I wanted to visually confirm it was on there. So it was good I was arriving at an airport.

I took a look down below me at the Astoria Regional Airport (AST), which I understand was a military airfield in another life. I crossed midfield 1,000 feet above traffic pattern elevation and determined that the winds were favoring Runway 8. I continued to the north after crossing midfield and did a right turn until I was headed back to the airport and then entered a downwind leg for Runway 8. I made the approach and then an uneventful landing on Runway 8. I eventually found a taxiway, and after trying to figure out where I was I made my way to the ramp to park and look at the top of the wing to see if two gas caps were on there.

Once parked, I was relieved to find both caps properly in place and secured. So it turns out I'm just paranoid, not an idiot. I can live with that. I got out the fuel level stick and confirmed there was still 8+ gallons in each tank. Then I saddled back up and got ready to go. I departed from Runway 8 and climbed out, turning toward Hillsboro, since it was time to get back, and Woodland State was still underwater.

The sun was going down while I flew the last leg, so I got to see a coastal sunset as I made my way home. I was still surprised at how warm the air was as I flew at about 5,500 feet toward Hillsboro. I was getting dusky as I arrived and descended to the small Twin Oaks airstrip. It also got very cold very quickly, as I descended into the inverted cold layer. I'd been pulling the carb heat as I flew and descended, since it was prime conditions outside. I entered the pattern on a descending 45-degree entry leg into the downwind leg and started my downwind run.

As I came abeam the numbers, I pulled the carburetor heat knob out, reduced power to 1500 RPM, and dialed in 10 degrees of flaps to start the landing routine... and the engine quit. It was a little quieter than usual, I remember noticing that first. What the?!?! I pushed the carb heat back in, pulled it again, no go. Checked the mixture, it was okay. Primer knob locked in place, check. Key in the on position, check. Pushed in the throttle all the way, nothing. Got the nose properly positioned for glide and glanced to my left at the end of the runway. I had enough time to try to get the engine back online one more time before I'd have to turn to assure I could make the runway. Checked the fuel valve, it was on. Set the throttle in a few notches and turned the key, noticed the prop was spinning, so I pushed the throttle in again and the engine came back to full-power life. I fed it more fuel quickly and assured it was running and not stopping, confirmed the carb heat was still on, reduced power and tried to calm down a notch.

I was still at proper pattern altitude and in a good position to make my runway landing, engine or not. I reduced power a bit more and turned to my left base leg, then set my flaps, and made my turn to the final approach leg. I dialed in some extra flaps since I was a little high (the extra power surge on the restart/whatever-it-was had caused me to balloon a little altitude), then landed the airplane right where it belonged, about 100 feet past the numbers on the runway.

I have to admit, as irrational as it is, for a brief second there when the engine power was unexpectedly gone, I looked to my right and half expected to see my instructor Kelly sitting there telling me my engine had just died, as he's done so many times in the pattern when simulating an engine failure in almost exactly the same place. My mind just started doing what it does every time he does that. It was pretty much automatic. Not as organized as it could be, granted, but automatic nonetheless.

I taxied to the fuel pump, powered everything off and killed the engine, removed my headset and seat harness, and jumped out and onto the ground. Wow, that was an experience. I was a little jumpy with adrenaline from the experience.

In discussing it with the Starks (who own the airport and have been flying since forever ago) and my instructor there at the airport, we determined that I'd been descending into a prime-for-ice-condition cold, moist layer from a warm, dry layer with the engine running in the lower end of the green operation zone. I'd been applying carb heat periodically while descending to prevent icing, but when I entered the downwind leg and applied power to maintain altitude the carb heat was off. I flew the downwind leg in these prime conditions for carburetor ice and apparently built up quite a bit until I again applied the carb heat. When the ice suddenly melted, it likely entered the engine and cause it to bog down and stop producing power. I don't remember seeing the propeller sitting completely still - It was always spinning, I think. It's not like I was looking at the prop, I was focused on solving the problem and those things I needed to check to get the engine running normally again, and making decisions about when it would be necessary to forget the engine and just glide to the field. At any rate, most likely some melted ice (water) got aspirated into the engine and had to disperse before it would run properly. The airplane checked out okay, and it was basically a non-event, but without the proper good training, it could have been a lot scarier.

The next day I went back out, check on the plane and found out it was fine, then got back in it for a couple hours and flew a bunch of take-offs and landings at Twin Oaks and Hillsboro airports. It was a good day of flying, and I wasn't about to let the jumpy ending of my awesome cross-country flight get the best of me, so I went back out and got back on that horse and kept up with my training.

It was a great couple days of flying. The weather has remained excellent, and I was able to fly again on Friday with my instructor. More on that next time.

Unusual Attitudes and flying under the hood

2009-01-14T22:45:00.001-08:00

I wish I'd shot some video of this lesson, now that I think about it. Maybe next time. On Tuesday my instructor Kelly and I went for a flight to do some under-the-hood instrument flying in the plane. It was the real-world version of what I'd "flown" on the simulator the other day. We also planned to do some other maneuvers like stalls and steep turns as a review.

This was my first time "under the hood" in the airplane. For those who are not familiar, the "hood" is basically a set of human blinders, designed to restrict your vision to just the portion of the instrument panel right in front of you, which is where the critical flight instruments are located. It prevents you from looking out the windows, and requires you to fly the plane by instruments only. The whole idea, in private pilot training, is to give you enough experience so you can get out of the clouds if for some reason things should get royally screwed up and you fly into one. Private pilots don't fly into clouds or low visibility without an instrument rating, which involves a lot of training and requires special avionics and navigation equipment in the aircraft.

We flew out to a good practice area and made sure the area was clear. With the hood on he had me fly straight and level, then do a controlled climb, and then a descent. Then he had me do some standard-rate (one minute) turns, which are designed to let you enter a specific bank angle on he turn coordinator and count 60 seconds on the clock (in this plane, anyhow). When the time is up, if you made the turn at the proper bank angle, you'll be flying in the opposite direction. If you turned for two minutes, you'd have done a 360-degree turn and be back were you started. So, if you were flying due south and do it correctly for one minute, you'll end up flying due north when you're done with the turn. The obvious reason for being able to do this as a private pilot is that if you're either unfortunate or stupid enough (or both) to fly into the clouds, going back the way you came is a good idea, and with nothing but cloud outside the plane you have to be able to do it by the gauges. We did a few turns to the left and a couple to the right. I was able to maintain altitude and attitude pretty well, but it was a lot of work.

Your head really messes with you when you start doing turns and other maneuvers without being able to see the outside world and it's natural horizon. I found out quickly that there is no way I can trust what my body is telling me it feels in an instrument flying situation. If I relied on whether I feel like I'm in a turn, or a dive, or flying straight and level, I'll be dead. The human body doesn't accurately inform the brain once you've made a couple turns or other moves. Many pilots have been killed because they trusted what their body was saying. Death trap.

Next we did some turning climbs and descents - So Kelly was mixing things up a bit, having me control every dimension of basic IFR flying with just the instruments. It went pretty well.

Then Kelly showed me some "unusual attitude" recovery maneuvers, first without the hood on. He wanted me to see what they look like in the air before I went into the "dark." By "unusual attitudes" we mean a variety screwed up dangerous attitudes for the aircraft to be in, such as a diving turn or a steep climbing and rolling turn. You have to be able to recognize from looking at the airplane's attitude indicator when you're in a dangerous attitude and how to act immediately to correct it and get back to straight and level flight. We did several of these, including a bunch where he had me wearing the hood and closing my eyes while putting my head down. Kelly would fly the airplane in all sorts of different directions: Turns back and forth, diving, climbing, and any combination of those over and over. They he'd say "Okay, your airplane" and I would look up, determine what the situation called for, and take immediate action. It went well, and I felt like I understood what needed to be done and showed I can do it.

Luckily I didn't get sick (sometimes people do, but I'm not prone to motion sickness). But by the time we were done with the hood work my brain was stretched pretty far. But we had more to do, and I was okay. So, Kelly asked me to set the plane up for slow flight, which took me a little time to get set in my head after the hood maneuvers. I managed to get there, and Kelly told be to do a power-off stall. I got it about half right and almost spun the plane, and realized I was a little overwhelmed with new and old information. Kelly walked me though the steps a little (but not too much), and I was able to do a couple stalls, power-on and power-off, and recover properly. We then moved on to steep turns, which I had not done for a while (in fact I have hardly flown in the past month), and after a couple not-steep-enough tries I got in the groove and did some decent turns.

We then headed back and I set up for a landing on Runway 2. You'd think that by now I'd predict and expect engine failure drills in the pattern when flying with Kelly, but again this time he surprised me as I pulled the barb heat and he pulled the engine to idle and told me my engine had just died. I flew the plane at idle to the runway and put it down just fine.

As you'll find out in my next post (how's that for a clever little hook to keep you reading, eh?) there are some very real-world examples of why practicing for failures and emergencies is so critical. Let's just say I'm glad I know the drill. But hey, that's for next time.

Simulator flying, winds and another night delay

2009-01-10T15:38:00.001-08:00

Twin Oaks Airpark just acquired and put into service an Elite PI-135 BATD computer simulator, which one can "fly" for $35 an hour (that's a lot less than $70 for a C150 or $99 for a C172). It's cool, and has a yoke and pedals and a whole panel with working controls and switches, plus the computer screen for the live part and for looking outside. For people doing the instrument rating training some of the hours can be flown on the sim, and even for me and my private pilot training, a few hours can be logged on the simulator.

Since I need to do unusual attitudes and "under the hood" time as part of my private training, and since the weather has not been cooperating recently, my instructor Kelly set me up on the simulator this past Thursday. I did 30 minutes of instrument "flying" that way. This was my first actual instrument training, and we were able to cover the requirements for the private license in the 30 minutes. The idea of providing basic in-the-clouds training to a private pilot is to gave them enough skills and experience to make sure they can make a safe turn and fly back out the way they came.

I think it was good to see how the instrument flying works in the simulator first - which is very sensitive and accurate, by the way. I've heard pilots say if you can successfully fly the simulator you can fly the same maneuvers in a real airplane, and now I see what they mean. It's very exact and requires you to be precise in your control of the plane. Next week we'll be doing the same maneuvers in the air, with all the real-world airplane noise and the sneaky tricks your brain plays on you when you get a real aircraft into unusual attitudes.

We did get to fly for a little while on Thursday, as well. Since it was quite windy (12 knots) and the wind was highly variable in terms of direction (changing constantly from crosswind to a headwind for Runway 20), and since the active landing runway is not the typical one, Kelly wanted me to get some time in the air after a few weeks of almost no flying, and to get some valuable cross-wind landing practice.

Runway 20 at Twin Oaks is not the standard-use runway. It's only used when needed sue to wind direction. It requires you approach on the final leg over some taller trees and then drop in a bit to the threshold of the runway. When you add to that the stronger winds on Thursday and how much they were changing direction, it was a very challenging - but doable - environment. I would certainly not fly in those conditions on my own (it would be too much of a crosswind component for me for sure, and is beyond my established solo crosswind component limits right now anyhow), but when flying with Kelly it's a good learning opportunity.

And learn I did: From the first landing the winds were close to getting the best of me. On the first one Kelly helped me at the very end because I was not using my feet nearly enough to keep the airplane pointing straight down the runway. The fact that the runway slopes downhill landing in that direction adds to the complexity: You tend to "float" more, and combined with any gusting headwind you can imagine the process of landing the plane could be interesting. Not dangerous, just challenging.

Kelly flew the second pattern and landing and I followed along. That was good after being out of the seat for as long as I have been. He even had a little difficulty with the winds landing, although not nearly to the same extent as I did, so I didn't feel too bad. I then flew another pattern and did a go-around because the winds pushed me around and I wasn't feeling confident, then landed it a little better, but still not what I would consider good. We were thinking about calling it quits, but I said I thought I should to do one more and try to land it cleaner. Better to end on a positive note anyhow, I figured. Plus, I was improving little by little.

The last landing was far from perfect but given the conditions not too bad. I'd call it a relative success.

On Friday night we were hoping to fly that night cross-country flight to Seattle's Boeing Field that we've schedule a few times before, but once again we were prevented from doing so by the weather. It's just not burning off the way it needs to these days, so we seem to consistently end up with fog, haze and low cloud decks at night at least somewhere along the route, if not the whole way.

Next week looks pretty great weather-wise, though and I have scheduled quite a bit of flying: The night cross-country for Monday, my long solo cross-country on Wednesday, a daytime lesson for instrument work on Friday and unusual attitudes, and I'll probably another block on the weekend for good measure.

Right Seat in a Grumman AA-1

2009-01-04T22:59:00.001-08:00

I recently met a fellow pilot type named Chris via an online contact. He owns a Grumman AA-1 that he has hangared at Pearson Field across the river from Portland in Vancouver, Washington. Turns out he's also a tech-type (he's a software engineer). I had the opportunity to meet him in person for the first time on Saturday afternoon at his hangar at Pearson.

Chris is a cool guy. He's building a RV-6 at his home, and recently acquired a RV-4 as well, which he co-owns with a partner. So, he's certainly got the flying bug. His dad is an instructor and taught him to fly when he was younger.

He showed me the AA-1, which is a small airplane, with two seats side-by-side. It uses the same engine as a Cessna 152 (108 horsepower), and has a shorter wingspan. It burns fuel about the same as a Cessna 150 or 152 (meaning something like 6 gallons/hour). It has a castering nosewheel, meaning you don't steer with the nose gear (rather, you steer by differential braking of the main wheels).

Chris wanted to get in the air and fly a little and he wanted to get some fuel into the plane, so he asked if I wanted to make a quick flight over to Scappoose with him. I'm not one to miss an opportunity to fly, so I grabbed my headset from my truck and waled around the airplane with him, then jumped into the right seat. We flew to Scappoose, got the fuel in the wings, and then flew back. By the way, 100LL fuel is quite a bit cheaper at Twin Oaks (7S3) right now. :)

The AA-1 is a similar in terms of elbow room to a Cessna two-seater, but it's a low-wing airplane and has a slide-back canopy, so visibility is great and very different than the Cessnas. It flies a little faster, and you have to lift off and land at higher speeds. It was a fun aircraft to fly in. He offered me the chance to do a few turns and feel the airplane. It turns much quicker and tighter than a Cessna, for sure.

It was a fun flight. I had the chance to meet someone new, experience a new airplane type, and see a new airport (including the unusual relationship between the PDX tower and Pearson Field, since the approach and departure pattern routes for Pearson are technically located within the PDX Class-B airspace once you reach 1,000 feet).

One of the things I have been doing some analysis on is whether or not fractional ownership of an airplane might make sense for me, as compared to renting. Depending on how much one flies, it can be better to do one or the other. Aircraft ownership is not exactly a simple undertaking, and there are a number of very real recurring and non-recurring expenses involved in addition to the basic flying costs to consider in calculations. I've found the AOPA web site has a bunch of good resources for pilots and owners that help in the process.

Rusty wings and test prep

2009-01-04T12:36:00.001-08:00

I took advantage of some VFR weather on Friday to fly for an hour from Twin Oaks over to Aurora and back. I had the opportunity to fly a non-straight line (vertically and horizontally) in order to maintain proper cloud clearances, and while I only got a couple landings in, it was good to get in the air again after a few weeks of being grounded by weather.

One word describes how I felt in the air after my little flight sabbatical: Rusty. Not unsafe in any way, but a little awkward and squeaky, to be sure. I made the crosswind landings acceptably but found myself having to remember things that I've semi-automatically processed in my mind before. After this flight, I could see what instructors mean when they say flying often is conducive to learning more quickly (and some say better), in that building upon skills is easier if your 41-year-old brain hasn't been provided a chance to do what it does naturally: Forget.

It was an interesting flight since there were widely scattered clouds in the area at about 2,000 feet with a ceiling of broken clouds at around 4,500 feet. That provided the opportunity to fly and avoid the occasional cloud between airport, which was good from a practice and experience process.

I also spent a couple ground lesson hours on Saturday with my instructor Kelly, going over weather and a few other topics in preparation for my written and oral exams. I was glad that for the most part I was able to answer the questions he asked, and I made a few notes for areas I should focus more study time on (specific types of fog is one example, since we deal with all of them around here on a regular basis).

The Value of Flying on the Ground

2008-12-30T22:48:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking back on the critical phases of my flight training so far, and have to say that there was one thing the flight school and airport owners offered up the very first day that has been truly invaluable: Sitting in an airplane while it sits on the ground or in the hangar while the weather prevents actually flying the airplanes.

It's very true that traditional "hangar flying," a term that's used to describe sitting around and talking shop with others in the aviation and piloting community, is an valuable part of learning to fly and staying current. It's also an important part of joining a truly close-knit community. But the non-traditional "flying" I'm referring to is more often than not performed solo, on your own time.

If your slight school or FBO has planes sitting on the ground, ask if you can sit in the airplanes (without the keys, so they don't have to worry) and "dry fly" the airplane. Don't pump fuel into the engine with the primer or mess around with the throttle too much, and definitely don't run down the batteries by sitting there with the master switch on continuously. But do get in an airplane of the type you're training in (the same one if possible), close the doors, put on your headset, get out the checklist and your maneuvers handbook, and use this calm and quiet time to go step by step through everything you need to be learning, over and over. Muscle memory is helpful for procedures you need to perform repeatedly while flying, and muscle memory is built by repetition of the proper movements. Take breaks when you start to overwhelm yourself. Ten minutes walking around looking at airplanes or trees or whatever can do a lot to make you mentally ready to start ground flying again.

The little things in flying can have a substantial impact. When I first started flying the Cessna 150's, my brain was completely stuck when it came to the simple task of operating the accelerator control, which is a push/pull knob mounted in the lower center part of the instrument panel. For some reason, every time I was supposed to reduce power, I pushed the knob in, which actually accelerates the engine. I was consistently doing the opposite of what needed to be done, and was having a truly hard time changing my habit. It's not good to inadvertently apply more power when you're supposed to cut power just prior to landing. It took a few lessons, but mostly it was the repeated dry-flying of the airplane that got my mind to change gears so it knew to pull the knob to reduce power and push it in to increase power. I even used some analogous memory aids: For example, my boat has a similar throttle lever - you push it awat from you to go faster, pull it toward you to slow down. I believe strongly that letting my mind find its way though this little mental block on the ground, in the airplane but not under the divided-attention stresses of being in the air, made a huge difference. And there have been a variety of other similar procedures and tasks that improved substantially for me as a result of taking the time to "fly" the airplane on the deck.

Another thing I did a couple times was invite a friend along with me to the airport for the dry flying time. I was excited about flying and wanted to share it anyhow, and my friends were interesting in seeing what it's all about. I mean hey, who doesn't like airplanes? I explained everything I was learning to them, out loud and carefully. One of my friends patiently let me explain the pre-flight walk-around inspection and then sat in the small C-150 with me for almost an hour while I pretended to fly and tried to make it as verbally graphic as possible. It has to be tedious after the first ten minutes, but he was a saint. I'm grateful for good-sport friends, heh.

More than once the Twin Oaks Airpark owners commented that they wished more students would show up at the airport and sit in the airplanes to practice like I do. It's free, is a great use of bad-weather time or spare cycles between errands and meetings, and really does make a difference.

No news is... Well, no news!

2008-12-30T22:06:00.001-08:00

The weather has been particularly "challenging" in Oregon recently. As a result, I haven't been able to fly recently. The ice, snow, rain and fact that my instructor is out of town on a much deserved vacation combined to keep me on the ground. I've been snowed in a portion of the time, without any electrical power another part of the time (for three days), and VFR conditions have been few and far between (and not when I'm available).

So, I have been trying to spend some time studying for the written test and making a list of things I need to review in the air some more before I complete my flight training, in order to gain the comfort level necessary to believe I'm ready for a check ride. I know my instructor will tell me what he thinks of my skills and abilities and that he'll only release me for the examiner when he knows it's time, but I also want to feel confident myself. I'm getting there, but there are a few areas that need some more attention.

I promised I'd write about some technology stuff, and I have a lot to write. It's coming. Unfortunately, the power outages, technology failures and "snowboundedness" have conspired against for for the past couple weeks to keep me from getting almost anything done.

More to come soon. Anyone who knows how to do the VFR Weather Dance, please feel free to do so. :)

Tech and gadgets for the pilot

2008-12-16T12:43:00.001-08:00

I'm an uber-geeky software and gadget freak, as is plainly obvious to my instructor, Kelly pretty much any time we're doing training. I have my audio and video recording setup, which hooks directly into the intercom system for the airplane. I have my iPhone, which runs a whole bunch of great apps especially for the pilot (new or experienced). And more recently I've started using some great electronic log book software, which is integrated between my iPhone and Mac apps.

The fact is, just like modern GPS and glass panels in the cockpit, there are a whole slew of technologies out there to make planning and flying easier and (when used appropriately) safer.

Over the next several days I'll start posting descriptions of some of the different apps and technologies I'm leveraging, so people can see what I'm using and (if you like) suggest others.

Perfect flying conditions, but that runway's not flyable

2008-12-16T12:35:00.001-08:00

Ah, perfect air today: stable, cold and dense. And not a cloud in the sky. But unfortunately the airport's runway isn't usable due to an unusual snow and ice layer. That night cross-country will have to wait, once again. Meanwhile, I'll just study for the written and go out to dinner instead.

I found a great video-cast series on the EAA web site where a guy is chronicling his training from beginning to end as he works toward his Sport Pilot certificate. It's excellent, and does a great job of showing the training process. Highly recommended.

Check it out at: http://www.eaa.org/apps/blog/learntofly/

More solo practice in stronger winds

2008-12-12T22:07:00.001-08:00

On Thursday I flew for just over 2 hours in one of the Cessna 150's at Twin Oaks Airpark, which is where I am training. I was on a solo flight day again, and spent my time first at the Portland Mulino airport, where I did two takeoffs and landings into a strong quartering headwind. The crosswind component on approach was a little stronger than I had expected due to some gusts that came up, but I handled it pretty well. My crab angle to fly the right lines in the pattern was extreme due to the winds aloft. On the ground the wind was not as pronounced, but was still plenty strong enough to present a good challenge.

From there I few over to Aurora State Airport, which is not too far away. I got there quickly since the wind was at my back. I crossed over the runway at midfield about 2000 feet above the traffic pattern, flew west a little ways so I could lose some altitude, and then did battle against the wind while turning back toward the airport to enter the traffic pattern. I did three or four landings at Aurora, all touch-and-go's. The wind at Aurora was also a very strong headwind, coming slightly from the right side. On climb-out, once the aircraft reached about a hundred feet above the ground the airplane would climb like crazy thanks to the strong wind, and my indicated airspeed would quickly reach 90+ miles per hour while the GPS showed my groundspeed was only 68 miles per hour - quite a difference. I kept the nose a little low since it climbed on its own and I wanted to be sure to avoid propellor stall problems at a high angle of attack.

After playing in the winds at Aurora for a while, I headed back toward the hills between there and my home airport. I did a few ground reference maneuvers and then entered the traffic pattern at Twin Oaks. I spent the rest of my time doing several landings and takeoffs, practicing flying in the windy conditions on the smaller runway and working to clean up my landing routine a bit more. By the time I did my last few landings, I had improved things quite a bit, and the last landing of the day was as soft as they come.

The one thing I was not able to work on (due to the high winds aloft) was practicing stalls and recoveries. So, I will have to do that again sometime soon, since I have yet to practice them solo. It turns out I now have exactly ten hours of solo time, so I don't need a whole lot more before I complete my private pilot training, but regardless I need to practice those, either in another solo practice session or perhaps while on my long solo cross country. I have a night cross country left to do with my instructor, Kelly, as well as my solo trip and a small amount of additional dual instruction "under the hood," simulating instrument flying conditions.

I totaled up my pilot's logbook today, to see where I'm at in terms of accumulated flight and training hours. Here are the results:

Total Flight Time: 38.7 hours
Flight Training Received: 28.7 hours
Solo Flight: 10 hours
Cross-Country Flight: 4.4 hours
Night Flight: 0.6 hours
Day Landings: 148
Night Landings: 3

I've had a number of people requesting that I post more cockpit video. I have some new video from portions of my last couple flights, but I need to get it transferred to my computer, which takes some time due to the cheap-o software I have. I will post some edited video in the near future to show some more of my flying activity. What the heck, everyone loves watching cruddy landings on video, heh.

Working on the things that need working-on

2008-12-11T08:27:00.001-08:00

The afternoon weather on Wednesday allowed me to get into an airplane for an hour, and I used the time to fly around the pattern at Twin Oaks Airpark and practice and work on improving some flying skills, some that I feel a little weak on and others that are relatively new to me. In addition, I needed to practice some maneuvers on my own that I had only performed with my instructor up until now. I'm approaching the end of my private pilot flight training (or so I am told), and now is the time to refine some of these core flying skills.

I've only recently been introduced to short- and soft-field takeoffs and landings, so practicing those was one of my goals. I did a couple of each, and the short-field ops were pretty solid for me. The soft-field takeoffs were a little more challenging, getting into ground effect and staying there before climbing. The plane just wants to get of the ground and I really have to hold it down, and on the Twin Oaks runway, which slopes downhill slightly as you roll down the runway, it's a little extra challenging.

My landings on Wednesday were a lot less spectacular than I wanted. Some days I'm "on," and other days a little less so. On all but one landing I didn't quite get the timing of the flare worked out, and I really need to figure out what I'm doing wrong. I believe it's a combination of flaring slightly too soon and pulling back a little too much (and a lack of patience in letting the airplane run out of airspeed), but really what I need to do is get back out there and just fly a bunch of landings. I am hoping to get a chance to do that on Thursday afternoon.

Another thing I did Wednesday was fly some simulated engine-out landings. In the past I've only done that with my instructor in the airplane, but after my last flight with him, Kelly had directed me to practice those on my own. I did engine-out drills from the pattern as well as one from 2500 feet directly above the field, which required me to fly in a circle over the airport so I could reduce my altitude, then enter the pattern in the downwind leg and fly to an engine-out landing, which went well. All in all, I was happy with my engine failure drills.

A couple of things I didn't get to work on, because the cloud ceiling was a little to low throughout the region for me to get sufficient altitude, are stalls (and stall recovery) and steep turns. So, I hope to get to work some more on those if I'm able to fly on Thursday.

I've been studying for the written knowledge exam (which is actually computer-based), and I need to get that done sometime in the next week or so. I'm balancing that with some consulting-related work, so it's taking a little longer than I'd planned, but I'm getting there.

I shot video of Wednesday's flying but I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. If there's anything on there that I decide I want to post (most of the landings were not exactly sources of pride for me, heheh), I'll add it here at a later date.

Cross-Country Landing and Run-Up Check Video

2008-12-08T23:32:00.001-08:00

I've posted a video of my landing at Lebanon on my first solo cross-country. The second half of the YouTube video is my pre-departure run-up check when I left the airport to return home. In the audio track you can listen for me using the call sign 66589 (six-six-fiver-eight-niner). There are a few other pilots on the radio channel, too. They were at a different airport in the area. A larger version of the video can be viewed on the YouTube site.

By the way, if you're wondering why I'm talking to myself so much when I'm the only one in the cockpit, there are two reasons. First of all, speaking steps out loud works well for me and I stay organized and perform the required procedures accurately that way. The other reason is simply that the camera is running, so in some places I'm narrating. But mostly it's because reciting the steps as I do them helps me doing things well.

My First Solo Cross-Country

2008-12-06T22:37:00.001-08:00

Today was a pretty great day - and a long one, too. It started at about 6:00 this morning, when I woke up quite a bit earlier than normal for a Saturday so I could meet a friend for breakfast at the Experimental Aircraft Association's monthly pancake breakfast at Twin Oaks. The day started off pretty well, even at such an early hour. As I left my house, this was the view from my front porch:

We went to the breakfast, the first time for both me and my friend, then spent about an hour walking around in the cold air looking at the army of planes that had flown in for the event. The Van's Aircraft air force was on-hand, and it was true airplane geek's event. You see a whole lot of Van's RV's around these parts, since the factory is located over at the Aurora airport. We also got to see a bunch of other planes, from a couple Beavers to a World War II warbird and a whole slew of others.

After breakfast and airplane watching, it was time to get to work. I got a weather briefing on the phone from the flight service weather folks, and then I finished my flight planning for my first solo cross-country flight. There's a bit of math work that's required in order to complete the plan once you have the weather info.

I calculated I'd have a headwind that would require me to "crab" into the wind and would slow me down about 10 knots or so on the way down, and that if the winds stayed the same I'd have a bit of a tailwind on the way back. The weather forecast was pretty much perfect, a dry cool day with only thin clouds well above 12,000 feet. There was a ton of blue sky and sun, not bad at all for a Saturday in December in the State of Oregon.

As I already mentioned, this was my first ever solo cross-country flight. My route was to take me from Twin Oaks Airpark, my "home" airport, south to Lebanon, Oregon, which is located south of Salem and east of Corvallis. From there I'd depart and head to the Salem airport, which is a tower-controlled field, and make a landing there before taking off and flying back to Twin Oaks. I filed a flight plan with the FAA for the trip down, and made some last checks on my planning to make sure I had not made any errors.

My instructor, Kelly, met me at around noon and reviewed my flight plan. The Cessna 150 I had reserved - N66589 - was in use by some people who teach kids about aviation, and since I determined I had more than enough time available in the afternoon to make my trip I volunteered to let them have the plane for an additional half hour, so they could get all the kids' flights done. In the end, I got off the ground about an hour later than I'd planned, which meant I'd be back at Twin Oaks sometime around 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. - Perfect.

I activated my flight plan with the flight service station on the radio while still on the ground, and then lifted off. I flew over the Newberg VOR and called Portland Approach to ask for flight following on their radar. I was soon handed off to Seattle Center for radar tracking, and they kept me advised of other airplanes near me almost all the way down to Lebanon. I flew past Salem and a number of other landmarks on my magnetic heading, which worked exactly as planned with my wind corrections: I was flying almost exactly where I'd drawn the line on the map by using the calculated heading, so the winds were pretty much exactly as they'd been forecasted - a 20-knot or so headwind quartering from the left and knocking about 10 knots off my speed over the ground. Once closer to Lebanon I was handed off to Cascade Approach for the last bit of radar tracking.

Before too long I was flying past Albany and a sawmill I'd noted on the chart. As I approached the area of the Lebanon airport (I'd never seen it before today), I found the airfield just off to my left and noted that it was close to the base of a small mountain that sticks straight up out of the flat ground. I overflew the airport at 1,000 feet above the traffic pattern altitude, saw there was no wind on the ground, and decided to fly a loop around the mountain and descend in the process, which would put me in a perfect position to enter the traffic pattern on a 45-degree line for the downwind leg, to land on runway 34. There was only one other airplane in the area.

I flew the pattern and put the Cessna down nicely just past the numbers, remembering to look all the way down the runway as I flared (and not stare at the pavement right in front of me). It's amazing how much smoother my landings are when I remind myself to do that.

Here's my transportation on the ground in Lebanon:

After closing my first flight plan and filing a new one for the return flight, I departed Lebanon to the south, and again circled the mountain while climbing out to my target altitude of 4500 feet. That's a bit extreme for the rather short trip to Salem, but it would be good practice doing a controlled climb and descent from that altitude. I activated my new flight plan from the air and set up the compass heading to fly to the Salem air field. Next I dialed in the frequency for the recording of Salem's current airport information. When I reached about ten miles out, I called Salem Tower and let them know where I was and that I wished to land there. I was given instructions to proceed to a right downwind leg for runway 16, and descended from my flight level of 4500 feet to the pattern altitude. I then flew a right pattern down to the runway for another decent landing. I parked on the ramp and ran into the restroom briefly before hurrying back to the airplane to leave. I'd need to get off the ground soon so I could make extra sure I'd be back to Twin Oaks with plenty of daylight left. Here's the plane on the ramp at Salem, and you can (probably) see the tower in the background over the wing (as with all the images, you can click for a larger view):

I started the airplane, ran through the checks and called the ground controller for permission to taxi for a north departure. After my run-up checks, the tower controller cleared me to take off on Runway 34. I pulled onto the runway, applied full power and lifted off.

I climbed straight out from Salem and headed directly for a large ridge off in the distance that Twin Oaks sits behind. It's recognizable because over on the far left end of the ridge (as viewed from the south) is Bald Peak, which is prominent and easy to make out from the air. I noticed while returning on this leg that the tail wind that had been forecasted had disappeared. My air speed and ground speed were pretty much exactly the same.

As I flew to the ridge, the sun started to get low in the sky. Mt. Hood was off on my left and glowing in the evening sun. I crossed the ridge and entered the pattern on the upwind leg, flew around the airport, noted the amazing sunset that was starting to form in the high clouds, and put the plane down on the runway. This last shot is my plane back on the ground at Twin Oaks after I cleaned my stuff out of it, framed by mother nature:

I really couldn't have asked for a better day, and I'm very pleased with how my first cross-country on my own turned out. There's still quite a bit more to do, learning-wise. I hope to be able to knock it all out this month. That's a pretty aggressive goal, so we shall see if the weather and schedules allow that, but hey - it's good to have a target to aim at. Onward and upward from here!

Dual Cross-Country to Corvallis

2008-12-05T20:52:00.001-08:00

After a few cancellations over the past couple weeks due to weather, Kelly and I were finally able to fly my dual cross-country solo I'd planned to Corvallis Municipal Airport and back. I did all the flight planning, including the weather and winds (actually I did it for the third time since I'd also done it before on the occasions that got scrubbed). I also filed the VFR flight plan with the FAA flight service station this morning while I got the en-route weather forecast.

It was a fun and rather relaxed flight. Compared the super choppy winds during last night's night flying session, today was a breeze (pun intended). Actually, there was almost no breeze. We flew at around 3500 feet and our air speed and ground speed were pretty much identical, so there wasn't much wind going on most of the flight.

Probably the most complicated part of the flight was the first ten or so minutes, just because there was so much to do. We got into the air and flew over the Newberg VOR. Kelly took the controls for a couple minutes while I dialed in frequencies to activate the flight plan, listen to weather, and then change over to the Portland approach frequency to request VFR flight following (which puts us on the screen of air traffic control's radar, allowing them to keep an eye open and let us know about other airplanes or things we might need to know). Then I noted our time of departure and over the VOR, from which I needed to determine our approximate estimated time to the checkpoints along the way and to Corvallis, which is a lot more complicated in the air than I'd realized it would be. Basically I just needed to add 30 minutes to my pre-recorded ETAs since we departed a little late and crossed the VOR 30 minutes later than I'd originally planned.

Once I got all the logitics work done, it wasn't too hard. I activated the flight plan (which I think I'll do from the ground next time, just to keep the in-air work a little simpler), got on ATC's radar, and then used the VOR radio to track my flight path along a radial that would take us down to Corvallis. After a little experience seeing how easy it is to drift off course using VOR radials, I started to get a little better and to maintain a straighter track. We set up a track on the GPS unit's screen as well, so I got to compare how the two work side by side. Looking outside, I was able to visually find all my checkpoint landmarks that I had written into my flight plan, passing curves in the river, towers on hillsides, and airports on either side along the way. Before too long I was able to see the field at Corvallis off in the distance.

There was a slight haze covering the area, but by the time we were 15 or so miles away you could see the big runway pretty well. I set up for a straight-in approach since there did not appear to be much other traffic active in the area (just one other Cessna), and because I need to see and practice how that works - descending straight in from a longer distance. It's not the same as flying a standard pattern, which is pretty easy to do. On a long straight-in (or direct) approach, you have to figure out how much time you have left to fly, how much altitude you need to lose, and from that information at what rate you need to descend. I was at about 3000 feet before I started riding downhill and I needed to get to the field elevation of 250 feet. After setting up a descent rate of about 600 feet per minute I felt like I was doing pretty well. At the end of my trip to the pavement I needed to add a little extra flaps to get down a bit faster, and I put the airplane on the runway. I completely forgot that this landing was supposed to be a touch and go, and started to do a full stop to pull off onto the taxiway, but Kelly had me turn back to stay on the runway and depart directly from there. I'm sure it looked pretty funny, but it worked. I told him that was a touch and go practice for "I just landed, but then I realized the airport was under attack, so I changed my mind and decided to hurry up and leave."

Once in the air again, Kelly asked me what we needed to do next. I thought about it and said "Find Independence airport?" He said that was our next stop, but was there anything we needed to do at Corvallis? I thought again for a couple seconds and realized it was time now to close out our VFR flight plan, so the FAA and Civil Air Patrol would not be out looking for us. I called up McMinnville flight service on the radio and closed the flight plan, and we answered some questions the flight service controller had about the visibility and meteorological conditions at Corvallis. He had automated sensor readings showing the conditions were IFR (meaning Instrument Flight Rules, or unsafe for visual flight), and we were able to tell him it was definitely VFR conditions with greater than ten miles visibility and no clouds. I remember a couple weeks ago when I got my first weather briefing for this trip that there was a notice to airmen (NOTAM) that stated the automated weather reporting at Corvallis was unreliable. Apparently it still is. I wonder if it was the light haze that caused the automated sensors to be in such substantial error.

We departed the Corvallis area with the plan to fly under basic VFR, without filing a flight plan, back to Twin Oaks. We also planned to make a stop at Independence Airport, which is just about 10-15 minutes north of Corvallis. I flew another straight in approach, and my descent was pretty good but again I was a little high and had to drop some extra flaps there at the end before the airport lights told me I was on the glide path. It's a medium sized runway, and is situated next to a huge neighborhood of houses, of which most seem to have hangars for garages. Sure enough, when we parked on the ramp and walked around a bit, there was a man puling his airplane out of his garage/hangar attached to his home, which he taxied down the airplane version of a street and onto the taxiway. It looks like some of the "roads" are aircraft taxiways and others are for vehicles. Cool place. Looks like fun, and a lot of money.

Unfortunately the restaurant was closing as we walked up so our plans to eat lunch were foiled. With grumbling stomachs we looked at a few other airplanes parked there, then got back in the airplane and prepared to get back in the air and on our way home.

The remainder of the flight I flew with the Garmin 296 GPSMap for navigation, which is an amazing device. If I ever own an airplane it will have one of these, without a doubt. There's so much information in there it's just awesome, and it makes a lot of the work you have to do with folding charts and looking things up in books and reference sheets much simpler, so you can focus more of your attention on flying the plane and looking outside. You still need to be able to do everything by hand (what if your GPS breaks), but having the modern technology is pretty terrific. Hard to get lost with one of those.

We flew directly back over the Newberg VOR on the ridge south of our home airport, and a couple minutes later I entered the Twin Oaks pattern. As I was finishing my downwind leg and about to configure for landing, Kelly pulled the power on me and said I had an engine out. I turned short for the runway and dialed in some flaps, missed the push-to-talk button trying to call on the radio, fixed that problem, checked my speed and maintained it, and descended to the runway, where I touched down fairly well after a steep-ish approach.

All in all, it was a very good day. Great weather and flying conditions, especially for this time of the year. I had fun and learned some new things, and got to do some new stuff on the radio. I also got to apply all the navigation skills I've recently learned and see how things really work.

Next up for me is a "short" solo cross country (meaning to an airport more than 50 miles away), which I hope to be able to do on Saturday. the weather forecast has been changing a lot over the past 24 hours, and right now it looks like the weather might just cooperate, but tomorrow I'll know for sure. I'll be flying to Lebanon State Airport and back for that trip, but I plan to also write a plan for an airport somewhere to the north just in case the weather doesn't support flying down the Willamette Valley tomorrow - It's known for harboring some stubborn fog at times. Now that I'm done writing this, I need to go put those plans on paper. I'm excited and looking forward to it!

Also, I'm getting up early in the morning because every first Saturday of the month is when the Experimental Aircraft Association chapter based at Twin Oaks holds it's 8 a.m. Pancake Breakfast, and it sounds like a lot of fun. A friend is meeting me there. She's never been to the airport before, so I'll get to do the nickel tour, too - Fun!

Four hours of solo flight and first night landings

2008-12-04T23:41:00.001-08:00

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.

Simulating Altitude & Soft Field Takeoffs and Landings

2008-12-03T22:50:00.001-08:00

Today I flew with my instructor, Kelly Wiprud, over to the Aurora State Airport as well as a small strip nearby called Lenhardt. The plan was to learn soft field operations, as well as simulating takeoffs from high-altitude airports (or what they call high pressure altitude).

It was a little hazy today and we had to fly under a broken ceiling that was hanging at about 1700 feet above the ground along the flight path from Twin Oaks over to Aurora. The ceiling lifted as our session went on, and once over near I-5 and the Aurora airport, the ceiling was broken and the lower clouds were scattered.

Kelly had me do a short-field landing and takeoff, followed by another short field landing on Aurora's Runway 35 (which is actually a huge and long runway, but this is just practice). We then taxied back to 35 to take off a third time. For this departure he told me to set the throttle to only 2,000 RPM for the takeoff roll, which is well below the typical full-power setting of around 3,000 RPM. The purpose was to simulate taking off from an airport at a much higher elevation, say around 5,000 or more feet MSL.

I set the throttle as instructed and we slowly started rolling. It was a very soft and sluggish feeling, and it took a lot of runway, but sure enough the airplane eventually gained speed, left the ground and slowly climbed out. After climbing a while to experience what high altitude performance feels like, I applied full power and the little airplane took off like a rocket (well, not really - a Cessna 150 is a bit of a slug performance-wise - but you could definitely feel the performance increase in a big way, relatively speaking).

We departed the Aurora pattern and headed the four-or-so short miles over to the Lenhardt strip, a privately-owned-but-open-to-the-public airport. This small facility has a paved strip similar to the one at Twin Oaks (even the runways numbers are the same) as well as a grass strip alongside the asphalt one. Our target today was the grass.

Kelly took control of the airplane as we approached and showed me the approach and landing procedure for a soft field. The approach is similar to a short-field approach, except you don't come in as low on the final. The approach is conducted with full flaps on the final leg, but rather than "dragging it in with power" as you do in a short-field approach, you approach the end of the strip on a fairly normal path, start the flare and then apply a little power to float the airplane slowly to the surface with the nose high, and then once you touch down you hold the nose high until is lowers itself with the slowing speed. Then you keep the pressure off the nose by pulling back on the yoke and exit the strip.

While taxing on a soft field, it's important to get the carb heat shut off so as to avoid sucking anything being blown up from the ground into the carburetor, and you want to try to keep moving. Stopping, on some very fields, could mean getting stuck. That would be bad. Our field was very well maintained, but it was still a little bumpy.

The takeoff for a soft field is fun, and very different than other takeoffs. During the taxi you configure 10 degrees of flaps before you start your takeoff roll. The takeoff consists of pulling back on the yoke to get the nose high, applying full power, and holding the nose wheel off the ground while the airplane builds speed and starts to fly. As soon as you're in the air, the air speed isn't high enough to climb yet. So, you hold the nose down and fly just above the strip, in ground effect (which is a pillow of air that is generated between the wings and the ground when flying just above the surface). When in ground effect, the airplane floats along and accelerates pretty quickly. Once the airspeed is fast enough, you can climb at an angle that results in the maximum climb rate speed (Vx).

After Kelly showed me the procedures, He handed the plane back to me and I flew the patterns to and from the grass runway. It really is fun - and a bit of a mind stretcher - to fly in profiles that are so different than the standard takeoffs and landings.

After my successful soft-field practice, we headed back to Twin Oaks. We transitioned south of Aurora and Kelly pulled his signature move, turning off the GPS (which I really hadn't looked at more than twice the whole session anyhow) and having me eyeball my way back to Twin Oaks. It's not the easiest airport to find if you don't know where it is, but I'm getting pretty familiar with the area, and am starting to get better and knowing where to look when referencing the paper chart (map).

Looking ahead, I have a lot of flying over the next few days. Thursday will be a big day for me. The weather is forecast to be good, with some winds, so I have a plane scheduled to fly solo for a couple hours either side of lunch. My pan is to fly to some assigned airports within 25 miles of Twin Oaks in the morning and to go to a couple others after lunch, plus practice some ground reference maneuvers. After that I'll take a break and then meet Kelly back at the airport at about 5:00 for a lesson covering night flight operations. It will be a busy day!

Field Trip: Tower Visit at Salem Airport

2008-12-03T10:04:00.001-08:00

I was driving to Salem yesterday for a work engagement, and since I was going to be near the Salem airport I decided to give the tower staff a call on my way down, to see if it would be possible to drop in and see how a tower operates. The tower manager, Cindy, took my name and said I could drop by.

When I arrived, she "buzzed" me in the door and I hiked up the stairs to the big angled glass room. Actually, it's not really that big, but it's roomy enough for the three or four people working up there. When the tower is open (it closes at 9 p.m. each day) there are at least two people generally working - One person focused on ground traffic and the other dealing with traffic in the air to and from the airport. A special phone system lets the controllers speak quickly with Seattle Center or anyone else in the system they might need to work with receive or hand off traffic. The ground controller also records the weather and airport information that pilots listen to on the radio (ATIS).

Hanging from the ceiling on some springy lines are the light guns that controllers can use to shine colored light codes to aircraft that they can't contact via radio. The air controller has a power pair on binoculars and is looking out for aircraft to in the area that he may or may not be talking to on the radio.

I asked what information they thought pilots need to know, the things that make their jobs easier and the skies and airport safer. Cindy said that letting them know where you are and where you're intending to go as early as possible is important, and that the accuracy of your position information (distance out and especially direction from the airport) is quite important. There's a big difference between saying you're north of the airport vs. northwest of the airport, for example, when the runways are at 160 and 130 magnetic headings.

It was an interesting quick visit. I think visualizing what air traffic controllers are doing and getting a brief view into their world is helpful in terms of understanding what that faceless person on the other end of the radio is doing, and why. I'd recommend a tower visit to anyone flying who's never done the field trip before. I appreciate being allowed the opportunity in Salem.

My next tower visit will need to be to the one at the Portland-Hillsboro airport. The Hillsboro tower is very busy and is the closest one to my home airport (just a few miles to the north), plus they have radar service there (which they don't have in Salem), so to see some additional and different aspects of ATC.

Coordinated FlightCast: Short-field audio episode added

2008-12-02T08:57:00.000-08:00

I've published a link (and RSS enclosure) to the MP3 file for my second "flight-cast" episode. It covers the lesson I wrote about in the Short-Field Takeoffs and Landings post a couple days ago. You can visit the previous post to download the MP3 file and listen in. Monday's scheduled solo flight session was scrubbed by yours truly due to the weather conditions. For a few hours it was almost good enough -- but almost is never good enough. In order for me to fly solo, the conditions need to be higher than 3,000-feet cloud ceiling, five or more miles visibility, and no more than a 7-knot crosswind component on landings. Everything was good except the cloud deck, which was at about 2,700 feet. I'd rather have quite a bit more than 3,000 for a good safety margin at this point. But hey, that's the way it goes. I'll just fly sometime later, whenever the weather allows.

Trying some flight video - Flying the Twin Oaks pattern

2008-12-01T15:15:00.001-08:00

This is just a quick test with some mounted-camera video. It's pretty obvious when you watch that there are some serious issues with the camera's shutter and how it interacts with the propeller. But, I decided to publish this particular lap around the pattern at Twin Oaks Airpark because it was the last circuit I flew with my instructor before he jumped out and told me to fly three take-off's and landings on my own for my first solo back on November 16th. I didn't have the camera running for the solo landings because the batteries died right after this one. At the very end of the video you can hear Kelly telling me what I'm about to do.

The camera is a Kodak Zi6 compact camera set at 60fps/720p, and mounted with a homemade bracket on the top of the dash with parts sourced from my local Home Depot (Velcro tape and straps and a couple metal angle brackets). I need to do some experimentation and try the camera at 30fps to see if the prop weirdness is still there, as well as at a lower resolution maybe. I also plan to test a more advanced camera when I fly next time, one I have that will let me record the audio from the intercom on the video's audio track, similar to the audio-only recording I did the other day.

Cross-Country Scrubbed - Short and Soft Field Landings Instead

2008-11-30T23:01:00.001-08:00

Audio from this lesson is available in Episode Two of my flight-cast, click here to download the MP3 file.

My dual cross-country trip to Corvallis that was scheduled today was scrubbed due to a late heavy fog that reached from around Olympia, Washington all the way down the Willamette Valley to the northern border of California. By the time things started to clear up in the afternoon, it was too late to start the trip. Besides, I watched the weather and I don't think it ever really cleared up down in Corvallis.

So, while the fog and clouds were obscuring everything more than a mile away from and about 500 feet over the airport, Kelly and I went over a bunch of ground schooling on the topics of short and soft field takeoffs and landings. There are a bunch of additional and changed steps when you're on a shorter runway or a soft strip of grass or something similar. After we went over the procedures and discussed them, the skies started to clear so I get the paperwork and book for the airplane I had reserved and after Kelly extricated it from the hangar I pre-flighted the airplane, hooked up my audio recorder and got ready to go.

We flew our practice at Twin Oaks. Kelly showed me a couple short field take-off's and landings and then the plane was mine. The sun was right in my eyes on departure so I asked Kelly to help me "see" the indicated speed (meaning read it to me). My landings with full 40 degrees of flaps were a little sloppy in terms of flaring (I was a bit early on the flares), but overall went well. You can really make that airplane get down and stop if you have to, it's quite cool.

He showed me one short field take-off, but the sun in our eyes was getting so bad we decided to turn it into a standard landing, which I flew. But he covered the wind speed indicator, told me it was "dead," and a short time later he covered up the altitude indicator, too. So, I had to fly the pattern and approach based on look and feel: Look outside and get a good sight picture, reference speed over the ground and fly to the runway. I made it there just fine and floated it a bit before landing.

After the lesson, Kelly signed me off to be able to make solo flights to a group of other airports in the general vicinity (within 25 miles). So, on Monday I have some time scheduled and if the weather allows I'll be flying on my own, which will be fun. Not much to record on those flights I imagine, but I'll probably record the audio anyhow - You never know, maybe it will be interesting to listen to.

Short Cross-Country Practice to Salem

2008-11-29T18:02:00.001-08:00

The audio for this blog entry is available as a MP3 file, linked here.

I woke up this morning to thick fog and wet weather at my house, which is actually about 45 minutes north of the Portland area, in the middle of the little hump at the northwest corner of Oregon. It was cold, wet and nasty. I couldn't see half way down my driveway. But the weather report I got via the 'net said things were improving south of Portland and that the nice weather down that way was already blowing its way to the north. With my firm faith placed in the National Weather Service and a variety of others who put together the forecasts, I headed out the door for my noontime lesson.

Sure enough, the farther south I drove the more the cloud ceiling lifted. The cloud layer became thinner and higher, and the world a little brighter. I got to Twin Oaks Airpark and the proverbial Murphy (who, they say, was an optimist) stepped back into my life once again, in the form of another flight without the Cherokee 180 we'd reserved. Optimism, yeah right heh. I really want to fly in that airplane, but it just doesn't seem to be in the cards quite yet. It's stuck up somewhere near Seattle in the fog. Apparently the people who rented it have been waiting for safe flying weather for the past couple days. By tomorrow it should be better, it looks like. But for now, they're doing the right thing and waiting to come back until they're confident it's safe to do so.

So we scheduled an available C-150, tail number N16058 (the same one I flew on my last flight). It has a fancy Garmin moving map color GPS that does all sorts of fancy things. But my main goal today was to learn to better use the VOR navigation instruments and navigate visually using ground-based landmarks.

By the way, I was able to hook up an audio recorder to the cockpit intercom before we departed today, so I recorded the entire flight. The MP3 file is located here and is also listed as an enclosure if you're subscribed to the RSS feed. I've edited it down to include some of the more interesting moments (and to cut out some of the less-flattering and dead-air, heh). Even after editing it's still 30+ minutes of audio. You'd be quite bored listening to the whole thing without the edits, although for me it's useful to hear all the questions I asked and to think about the what's and why's, and to refresh a few key points in my mind. Let me know if you like that kind of thing. If people want to hear it, I'll do more. I'll also shoot some video sometime soon - I need to work out a couple technical camera kinks first. Turns out video camera and propellers don't always play well together.

We departed Twin Oaks after a couple helicopters crossed the field on their way to the Portland-Hillsboro airport. There were a zillion geese in the departure area, so we waited an extra 30 seconds or so, then got into the air after opening our VFR flight plan with the flight service station. As we flew east, it got a little darker so we stayed well out of that area and flew at 1200 feet, well under the cloud deck, around the hills and into a much more open area weather-wise. The forecasted weather was about what we saw, and the ceiling was too low to allow us to safely fly directly over most of the ridges.

As Kelly told me, he was acting primarily as my passenger today. He was there to help but I was flying, navigating, figuring things out and doing the work. The GPS was turned off for the flight to Salem, so I had the compass and radio navigation equipment to use, as well as the chart and visual reference to the ground. He wanted me to show him I could plan the flight, find my way to an airport I'd never seen before, land there, and then come home. Safely, of course. He helped me with some radio stuff and kept me honest on a few things as I did the visual pilotage navigation and followed my plan. I discovered there's a lot to pay attention to, and that I had way too many checkpoints in my plan - If I was to keep track of them all and the time between them, I'd have almost no time for anything else. But better to have them and skip a couple here and there than to not have enough. No one wants to get lost.

I used the VOR for the first time formally in flight after making sure I was hearing the correct transmitter via the morse code it transmits. Once I had the correct station, I was able to line up on the correct radial and fly my way to Salem. I discovered the river topography was easy to follow on the chart compared to most other landmarks, since I was over the river here and there along the way. As I flew over the big curves in the river it was easy to find them on the chart and from that determine my location.

In a small airplane like the 150, there's not much room to store stuff if two people are occupying the seats. You have to stuff things between the seat cushions and other creative places. I need to remember to keep a pen handy, since it seems that every time I need to write something down I don't have one. I just picked up a kneeboard I can strap onto my leg and keep stuff easily available, and I'll get that set up better before my next flight. Once I get it figured out I will make a list of how to be all set up with the kneeboard. That should help me have what I need right when I need it.

At any rate, after listening to the terminal info recording for Salem on the radio, we dialed in the Salem tower frequency and let them know we were about 10 miles to the north and inbound to land. We were cleared for a straight-in approach, which I actually have never done, so that was cool. That means I didn't have to fly a pattern, I was already heading toward the runway so all I had to do was slide to the left a little bit and descend.

I was told to contact the tower and report when I was at about 2 miles out. That's hard to determine when you're just learning to judge distance. I actually told him I was two miles out when I was probably closer to three miles or so away, and there was another airplane closer wanting to land, so Kelly jumped in and updated the controller. I flew the direct approach behind the faster airplane and floated it in to a pretty darned nice landing (if I do say so myself).

Kelly and I had lunch at the restaurant located right there at the airport (great place to eat, by the way) and went over my flight plan for the next trip, which will be to Corvallis. We also talked about airplanes and other stuff. Then it was back out to the airplane on the ramp, we checked the plane and got back inside. Once we got started and contacted the ground controller, we started taxiing to the departure runway. Most of my flying time has been at uncontrolled airports, so it was different to have someone directing my taxi path. We did the run-up check, got into the air and made a couple left turns to head back toward Twin Oaks.

On the way back Kelly tried to get the Garmin 296 GPS to work but it was having a hard time getting itself all figured out, like it had not been used in a long time. Part way though the return trip it gathered enough info to work properly and started updating properly. We had a few minutes, so Kelly briefly showed me all the cool things it can do. In short, it's amazingly useful technology. Of course it will let you know where you are and where to fly to get somewhere else, but it does much more. It has complete airport information including runways and frequencies, will show you about how close you are to terrain as you fly over it, displays detailed airspace info, and a lot more. It's very cool.

Also on the return trip, Kelly pulled a couple brief emergency drills on me. The first one was in a rural area, and he pulled the throttle to idle. I set the glide speed and then found the wind direction, and from there a whole bunch of fields that would be good to land in.

After returning to normal flight we flew a little while longer, and then while near a small airport called Sportsman, he again pulled power on the engine to idle and got on the radio and declared to the area traffic that we were simulating an engine out landing at that airport. Looks like a real drill, I thought. So, I immediately turned to the airport and got the airplane's speed under control, dialed in some flaps since we were pretty darned high, and flew toward the runway. After dumping in some more flaps after the runway was assured, we headed toward the surface. I started to get prepped to touch down, and about 30 feet off the ground Kelly directed me to go-around. I pushed in the throttle and carb heat, then leveled out and got airspeed up while starting a climb. I had to reduce flaps to be able to climb much at all, and I got out of there just fine.

I climbed back up to our low cruising altitude at about 1400 feet and Kelly turned off the GPS again, and told me to find Twin Oaks by ground reference and land. I flew over a valley and around a ridge I am familiar with and then spotted the airport in the distance. The trees have lost all their leaves and everything looks different, but as I got closer I became more and more confident I was looking at the airport and not a nursery or some other location.

I flew the left traffic pattern for Runway 02 and landed the airplane as smoothly as I have ever landed it, maybe even more so. I barely felt it touch down. Wow, my landings are so much better now, it's really amazing.

And that was it. My next flight is tomorrow, and we're flying a longer dual cross-country flight to Corvallis that I planned before. I'll just get a fresh weather briefing in the morning and update my flight plan.

After that, Kelly tells me I'll be flying some solo flights to airports around the area that I'm familiar with (such as Aurora, Mulino, McMinnville, Hillsboro, and several others nearby), and that now is the time for me to pick where I want to fly to for my solo cross country and start planning that. I'm thinking maybe someplace on the coast, that would be fun. Or somewhere in Washington maybe. Kelly says he figures I will probably be done with this before the Christmas break. Wow, really? That would be a great Christmas present to myself, heh.

I'll post some of the audio from today's flight once I have it edited.

Weather: Mother Nature rules our world

2008-11-22T19:36:00.001-08:00

Well, today's planned flight to Salem was scrubbed due to the weather conditions, plus the fact that my instructor got a bad head cold. He flew yesterday with another student, and it sounds like it wasn't very pleasant since his cold formed during the day. He sounded pretty bad on the phone today. So, between that and the thick fog stretching for a few hundred miles down the valley we were to follow, no flight today. I'll have to experience the Cherokee 180 some other time. Weather and illness - two reasons that frequently contribute to accidents when people make bad decisions in those areas.

I did, however, get to experience my first two pilot weather briefings on the phone with the flight service station. You call them and let them know who you are, what you're flying and where you're going (and when), and they provide you with a truckload of weather forecasts, winds, alerts, airport notices, and lots of other stuff. It was pretty cool and the people on the other end of the phone were very helpful (and patient).

Needless to say, it was obvious even from last night's briefing that this morning's flight was questionable at best, and this morning's briefing reconfirmed that. It's great that this service is available ad so easy to access. Lockheed-Martin runs the system that handles the calls and feeds the info. Very cool.

So, no flying until probably Tuesday, and even then only if the weather allows. Meanwhile, I study for the knowledge test!

Cross country, new airports and wow what a wind!

2008-11-20T00:41:00.001-08:00

One of the "benefits" of living in the Portland, Oregon area is the wide variety and unpredictability of the weather around here. In addition, there are a variety of airports of varying classes and sizes, from small grass strips to Portland International and at least a few examples of everything in-between. Plus we have terrain and land features that quite literally make their own weather: The Pacific Ocean to the west as well as the Columbia river to the north and the Columbia River Gorge to the east (with its notorious winds). Mt. Hood is to the east and then there's the Willamette Valley to the south with its winter mist and haze as well as spectacularly beautiful summer days. Fog, rain, mist, rain, haze, winds, rain, more winds, some sun, snow above 1,000 feet in the winter, the occasional ice storm, and lots of clouds... Name your weather, it probably exists somewhere around Portland on any given day.

On Wednesday morning I met my instructor Kelly at the air park for some ground learning and my next dual flight lesson. The conditions were IFR (instrument flight rules) when I arrived, but it appeared the sun was just starting to burn though, so it looked like we'd be able to fly.

I had, per instructions after my solo flight on Sunday, planned a three-leg flight from Twin Oaks east to Valley View airport, and from there north to Troutdale Airport (which is just east of PDX). From there we would cross over the Portland International Airport at mid-field (with permission) and return to Twin Oaks via a flight over downtown Portland.

For the ground lesson portion of things, we discussed the different classifications of airspace and the operating requirements of each type. After a while the mass of information about the different classes of airspace gets to be a little like oatmeal on the brain. There's just a lot of stuff to remember, and it seems to me that experiencing each will be the best way to cement it in my mind. We also discussed tower-controlled airports again and the differences in communication at those airports. Twin Oaks is an uncontrolled airport, as are the majority of the airports across the country.

The weather improved substantially during the ground lesson, and I pre-flighted the airplane. We got underway and taxied to the run-up area, then got into the air. I'd put together the route plan for the day's flight, so I was able to start my climb and line up on the bearing I needed to fly to get to the Valley View Airport in Estacada.

While en-route, we had time to do some extra stuff, such as checking out how to use the fancy color moving-map Garmin 296 aviation GPS in the airplane. It's a pretty amazing device, with great resolution and lots of cool capabilities to make it much easier and safer when flying distances or to places you don't know well. Then I asked Kelly about the airplane's ability to self-correct for disturbed elevator movement when trimmed for level flight. Essentially, if you have the control trim set up for your speed and attitude to keep you flying straight and level and you then push or pull on the yoke to go up or down with the nose, the plane will "porpoise" or oscillate, nose up (climbing) to nose down (faster and descending) and then back nose-up, over and over, until it returns to straight and level flight. Pretty cool stuff.

I learned a lot today, including the fact that sometimes you just can't see an airport until you're practically on top of it. Valley view is a skinny airstrip tucked between the trees. The runway is really long, but it's also very narrow. It's almost impossible to see from a distance, so it was good that the GPS helped me fly right to it. There was no traffic there, but that was more than made up for by the fast, gusting and direction-changing winds. Coming out of the Columbia River Gorge, the winds shifted in the surface a lot, and gusted substantially 1,000 feet above the ground. In fact, I looked at the windsock and decided to land to the north based on the direction of the sock, but once I got down and started my approach, it became apparent very quickly that I was heading for the wrong runway. Sure enough, I looked at the windsock again and it was pointing the exact opposite direction thank it had been a couple minutes earlier.

So, I switched gears and entered a downwind for the opposite runway. I had to fly with my nose turned about 45 or 50 degrees to the right, into the crosswind, in order to track over the ground in a straight line. The base leg was really fast, since it was with the wind, and then I turned to the final approach and adjusted my crab angle to make sure I would stay on the centerline. I got it down low, had to fight shifting and gusting crosswinds, and put it on the runway after a little swinging around. Not a bad landing - I'm getting better at this.

We taxied back and took off, fighting a headwind and some crazy gusts on the way uphill. After another circuit and landing, we took off and got out of there and headed north to Troutdale.

If I thought the winds were heavy at Valley View, I was about to be shown what real winds are like at Troutdale. This airport is right alongside the Columbia RIver, and at the opening to the Columbia RIver Gorge. Winds scream up and down the Gorge all the time, making for some of the best windsurfing in the world and some of the most interesting wind flying of my short career in the air. The runway we were using had us pointing straight up the gorge and into the wind, which was running about 20 knots and gusting to 29 knots. The result was a turbulent approach and a very slow ground speed.

I caught myself today proclaiming that landing in the winds was fun. Yeah, I said it: FUN. Something must be wrong with me, right? Just a few weeks ago the winds were scaring the bejeezus out of me, and today I'm actually enjoying the challenge of maneuvering even bigger winds and gusts. When departing the runway at Troutdale, the wind speed indicator showed we were moving though the wind at 50 knots almost immediately after rolling, and the headwind allowed me to take off after traveling down only about 300 feet of runway. Of course my ground speed was very slow, and in fact I was able to climb to traffic pattern altitude and barely made it past the end of the runway. Another 15 or 20 knots of wind aloft and I could have been hovering!

After playing in the wind at Troutdale, the tower controller there set us up for a departure along the north shore of the Columbia River toward PDX airport, and handed us off the the PDX tower so we could transition right over the big airport at an altitude where we'd be out of the way. It was really cool to fly over PDX and see what it looks like to a pilot. Seeing it out the side of an airliner isn't a very good view at all, but from the seat in the little airplane it was pretty huge and awesome looking.

Once out of the PDX area, we flew over the city and crossed the Willamette River approaching the West Hills alongside downtown Portland. Out my window I saw all the Portland downtown bridges in a row, quite a cool site. I flew us over the West Hills ridge, between two sets of TV and radio towers, and then over Beaverton and toward Twin Oaks.

I entered the downwind leg for Twin Oaks, where it almost calm winds. After a quick run of the pattern, I made what I must say was a pretty nice, soft and silent landing on the runway. A great end to the day. We parked, debriefed, and planned my homework, which consists of reading in the FAR/AIM about classes of airspace, as well as planning two cross-country flights: one to Salem, which we will fly on Saturday during my next lesson, and one to Corvallis, which is for practice and we'll review over lunch in Salem this weekend.

After that, we'll be planning a longer trip and I'll be flying solo in the general Twin Oaks vicinity, practicing my skills and doing some landings at neighboring airports. I also need to pick up my studying for the written FAA ground school exam, which I committed to taking before mid-December. I have my work cut out for me!

Saturday's lesson will be in a Piper Cherokee 180, which I'm looking forward to. It's another of the Stark's rental planes and this will be my first flight in a non-Cessna aircraft. Betty Stark suggested I ask Kelly to take me up in it for a lesson, and he agreed. It has a lot more power and flies like a bigger plane, so it should be fun to experience.

Some days you feel like a failure - Dealing with frustration

2008-11-18T13:29:00.001-08:00

I had a conversation with someone I know who described the absolute frustration he felt when his student pilot learning process got a little too overwhelming recently. He wanted to quit. I completely understand. I was there myself a couple times recently, questioning myself and wondering if I could ever "get it."

For me it was all about landings, especially in strong crosswinds. My instructor pushed me a little, and although at the time it felt like it nearly broke my metaphorical back (and like I'd been hit by a truck by the time I left the airport), those were the best lessons in terms of progress and growth. Kelly would tell me I'd really made progress that day, and I just felt like I'd never pull everything together. But looking back I can see how much I learned while flying in difficult crosswinds and in other challenging conditions that pushed me just outside my comfort zone. There's an instructor in the plane for a reason, after all.

I thought I'd post these thoughts since one person already reached out in frustration, and since there are probably others out there who will at some point question whether they want to keep flying. You can do it, and on the days when you feel like it's a lost cause, just go to the next lessons and keep at it. I know in my limited time learning so far, those toughest lessons are the ones that I look back to now as great experiences. You will, too.

If all else fails, reach out to someone you know who's a pilot, or anyone you know who's had to fight through tough times in life. There are lots of good and important reasons to stick to it - You just need to find yours.

First Solo! (and some other stuff)

2008-11-16T23:24:00.000-08:00

I'll get to today's rather fun and exciting lesson shortly, it's a milestone day. But first a quick description of yesterday's lesson for posterity's sake.

The goal of Saturday's lesson was to fly to someplace not too far away, but where I had never flown before. I chose Scappoose, since the weather report was good and it was a new destination. I drive through that town almost every day and I flew there with my friend Dave once, but have never had to navigate there myself and have never landed and airplane there.

We took off from our home airport, Twin Oaks Airpark, and headed north. I eventually managed to get a word in edgewise with the busy Hillsboro control tower and received permission to cross their airspace. Then I flew over the Cornelius Pass ridge and turned left to find Scappoose. Of course it was right where it belonged, and I quickly located the airport on the far side of the town. We did several landings and a bunch of emergency and equipment failure drills, such as engine-outs, flap motor failures, and aborted landings. I made a couple little mistakes, and one big one: starting a touch and go with 30 degrees of flaps still down and failing to retract them while trying to climb out (which is a no-no). I could still climb the airplane, barely, but very slowly and not over tall obstacles like, say, trees. Bad idea, not safe. Kelly taught me the lesson by killing the engine while I was about 20 feet over the runway (with lots of pavement left), which required me to reflare the airplane, get it on the surface, start it back up and exit the runway. Honestly it wasn't until I got onto the taxiway, stopped and looked over at the wings (at Kelly's direction) that I realized my mistake. A good lesson, and well taught. Nothing like having your instructor cut the engine on you over the runway to make you really think. I don't think I'll miss that one again.

After a bunch more landings and drills, Kelly told me he'd have jumped out and let me fly solo if I had the insurance. I told him if he did that today I'd be ordering him back in the airplane, hah. My mistakes, especially the flaps one, had me a little worried, I guess. What else might I forget? He said I was ready, and learning from mistakes is what it's all about.

More insurance... How much insurance does one person need, really? Kelly had asked me to get the airplane renter's insurance set up last week but I spaced it out while traveling. So, before we went flying to Scappoose I went online and made the purchase. There's a wait of one day before it becomes valid. I guess they don't want to start insurance on the same day (makes sense, someone could crash and buy insurance the same day to try to cover it), so the effective date for the policy was one minute after midnight on Sunday.

We departed from Scappoose, and I had to dog-leg to the left on departure to fly around a suddenly-appeared flock of geese that thought they owned the airspace. We headed back to Twin Oaks and climbed to 3,000 feet, where we flew a simulated an engine failure directly over the airport at high altitude. Kelly showed me the first one, then I flew it again. Essentially you locate the runway and fly a spiral over the runway to lose altitude but stay close to the runway until you're ready to enter a downwind and land with no power. Another good lesson. I felt good about the session by the time we were done. Except for the forgotten flaps on the one landing, I'd flown pretty well.

Anyhow, on to today's lesson...

Today our original plans were to fly from Twin Oaks to Aurora State Airport to do some landings. Kelly had told me he wanted me to solo at a large airport, and Aurora's runways are huge (5,004 long x 100 ft wide) compared to Twin Oaks (2465 long x 48 ft wide). Soloing at Twin Oaks for the first time is just a real challenge due to its size. He's had lots of students and only one of them did their first solo at Twin Oaks.

We got in the air and I travelled on the compass heading I'd derived over to Aurora, but once past the ridge between the airports discovered that the low-lying haze over there was simply a little too thick to be safe. You could see down through it, but if you were to fly down into it and try to look horizontally through it, the visibility would be insufficient and dangerous. So, as often happens when flying, we had to change our plans. Kelly pointed out that this was good practice for the FAA check-ride, since I'll certainly get diverted from my planned route. He killed the GPS display and said I was to divert back to Twin Oaks on my own and enter the traffic pattern to land there. We could still do some landing practice, he said. So, feeling a little disappointed but completely understanding and agreeing, I turned back and found the course to Twin Oaks.

I located the airport visually on my flight line and flew the traffic pattern to land. We flew the pattern five times and did one flaps-dead drill as well as one go-around. On the last landing he pulled off his headset, unplugged it and told me I was on my own for this one, no prompts and he would not be able to hear me. Of course, he was sitting right there but you get the idea. I landed it just fine. After completing five landings Kelly called it good and told me to taxi to the lawn next to the ramp and park the airplane.

As I was pulling it up to the parking spot, Kelly told me he was going to jump out, and I was going to fly the airplane alone as soon as he endorsed my logbook. I was caught completely off-guard, since we were at Twin Oaks. I think I said something like "I am?" and he told me I was definitely ready, and that I would do great. I felt surprisingly calm and he told me to rely on my checklists and to take my time and have fun.

He signed my logbook and endorsed it, allowing me to fly solo in the Cessna 150, and said "Okay man, you're ready!" He shut the door and there I was alone in the airplane. Rather the letting panic set in, I picked up the checklist, took one quick deep breath, and found myself totally focused and clear-headed, working through the checklist and starting up the airplane, making the radio calls and taxiing to Runway 20. I did the engine run-up and checked the sky for airplanes, then made the call on the radio: "Twin Oaks traffic, Cessna six-six-five-eight-niner, departing runway two-zero, Twin Oaks." I pushed in the throttle, checked the instruments, rolled down the runway and lifted into the air.

I made the left turn upon departure that's required at this airport so the neighbors don't get blasted with airplane noise, and noticed that the little Cessna 150 climbs much, much faster with one less person in it. Now I see why people call it underpowered! I leveled out and trimmed the airplane and continued to climb. It was about this time that I has my "holy sh*t" moment, suddenly realizing what I was doing all by myself. Every now and then I look out the airplane window during a lesson and have a little moment of clarity in which I get a little flabbergasted about the fact that I'm leveraging a number of the laws of physics in a metal can burning gasoline to spin a propeller really fast, just so I can overcome the conflicting laws of what mother nature intended. That and I realize the fact that there's a thousand-plus feet of thin air between me and the ground. "There but by the grace of God go I." That's pretty much what I think. Then I usually say something out loud like, "Woah man, this is fun!"

Anyhow, as I was saying... Lots of extra climbing power available without anyone in the right seat. I was able to climb almost all the way to traffic the pattern altitude of 1200 feet before turning to the upwind leg. I made my radio calls as I transitioned around the pattern, and eventually set up to land. Carburetor heat on, throttle to 1500 RPM, 10 degrees of flaps, check speed, trim for the proper speed. I flew downhill a bit, looking back at the runway on my left. When it was time I made my left base leg turn, added some more flaps, and then turned to line up with the runway on final approach. I was a little high, so I added a little more flaps and checked my speed to make sure I was not getting too slow. Then I floated toward the end of the runway, cut the power to idle, crossed the end of the runway and landed just past the numbers after floating a little. That sound of tires hitting pavement... A successful landing!! The insurance company should be so proud, heh.

I exited the runway to the taxiway, "cleaned up" the airplane (retracted flaps and turned carb heat off - the term has nothing to do with bodily functions, heh) and headed back to the departure end of the runway. On my next take-off, I had to sit at the end of the runway for a few minutes and wait for a couple huge flocks of geese to leave the departure area. Geese are very bad for airplanes, and airplanes are also bad for geese, so it's a good idea to wait. On departure, a rogue flock of geese appeared from who-knows-where and I turned left a little early to steer clear of them. Other than that minor issue, all went well. The plane flew great and my landings were good (especially the second one). After my third landing, as directed, I parked the airplane on the ramp, shut it off, and got out.

My whole body started to shake a little as I put my feet on the ground and the rest of the world caught up to me. Kelly walked over, congratulated me and took my picture next to the airplane. I took care of the aircraft paperwork, and then we sat down to fill out my log book. I got to make my own log book entry for the first time: .4 hours of solo time. Nice!

I have to say again, Kelly is a great teacher. He knows how to take advantage of those "teachable" moments to make truly valid, important and memorable points, and he reads me well. He knows when to push me and when to hold back. I'm lucky to have him as my instructor.

A student pilot's first solo only happens once. After that, it's still solo flying, but first only happens one time. I did mine today around and onto a 48-foot-wide runway at an nice little airport owned and run by the some of the nicest people in the world. Not a bad deal. It was a pretty freakin' awesome day.

Breaking on through

2008-11-11T07:36:00.001-08:00

After more than a week off from flying (I was overseas for a work conference), I got back home and caught up on sleep over 48 hours, then headed to the airport for a Monday flight lesson. I showed up early and did a little dry flying in the hangar, just to get my mind back in gear.

Sidebar: While I was out of town, my student pilot and aviation medical certificate arrived in the mail. It was in a review state for a month or so, while the FAA requested medical documentation and it sat on a desk. The people on the phone at the FAA office were very helpful, and I'm relieved it's here since you have to have it in place before you can solo (and obviously before you can be certificated as a pilot).

The airplane I'd scheduled for today turned out to have a flat front gear strut (it happens, maybe a hard landing or it just went low), so we parked it on the ramp and got a different airplane so the crew could do the gear maintenance (and so I could land safely). Once in the new airplane (I've flown all the Cessna 150s at the school, so I am familiar with them all), we got the checklists out of the way and taxied to the active runway, two-zero.

It had been a little while since I'd actually flown, and prior to that I was flying two to four times a week. So after getting off the ground I started to get the feel of the airplane and headed out to the east.

I'd done reference maneuvers before on a couple different flights, but never on a windy day. Reference maneuvers include making turns around a point on the ground (you maintain the same distance all the way around and steer to account for the winds that will blow you away) and S-turns (where you choose a straight line such as a road and make turns to fly half-circles on each side of the road - right turn, left turn, wind ahead, wind at your back, etc). After failing to compensate properly on the turns around a point (and getting too close to the target as a result), I finally figured it out and made a couple decent turns. That made the S-turns a lot easier, and I had a lot of fun making some steeper turns on the downwind side of the turns and did a good job getting straight and wings-level each time I crossed the road I was using as my reference.

Next we crossed to the west and headed to the practice area that's defined over Forest Grove. That area had a nice big hole in the clouds with blue sky overhead, and I started my climb to 3500 feet. About half way there, Kelly pulled the engine to idle and simulated an engine out failure. I got the airplane to proper glide speed and checked the fuel and controls, checked the wind (which was coming from my left - or from the south), and pointed into the wind and said I was going to land in that direction. Kelly said good and we reconfigured the airplane to climb the rest of the way to the west practice area.

Next came some power-off and power-on stalls. A stall is simply when the plane's speed through the air is slow enough that the wings stop generating lift, so they "stall" out and the plane starts to fall out of the air. Of course, when it starts to fall the opportunity is there to sly again (as long as you're not too close to the ground). I found I had a tendency to try to pull back on the yoke a little too hard and to rush the stalls as a result, rather than taking it easier and letting the speed bleed off slowly and evenly. You can stall the airplane quickly and steeply, especially with full power applied, but when you do it that way the tail is pointed toward the ground, so when it starts to fall you don't get any elevator control for a few seconds when you start to recover. Once I started to do a better job of taking my time on the controls, the stalls smoothed out and were noticeably easier to control. I think toward the end of the stalling practice I said I wanted to do one more, then one more, then one more. It was good to fine tune the stalls and get them down.

After stall practice, we headed back toward Twin Oaks to practice some landings on the small runway there. Before my travel break I'd had a good experience at McMinnville airport making a bunch of landings, but that airport is pretty huge compared to Twin Oaks (5420 ft. long and 150 ft. wide), so there's a lot of room to "screw up" in any direction in a small plane and still have usable pavement under you. There's plenty enough pavement at Twin Oaks, but the runway is a much smaller target, at 2465 ft. long and only 48 ft. wide. So, the challenges continue to present new opportunities to improve.

We'd gotten an early start (since I was early arriving and so was Kelly) and had lots of time scheduled, plus I was feeling good still, so we got quite a few landings in. My first one was - predictably - a mess. I was too fast, too high (out of trim) and had to try to slip into a crosswind landing the opposite direction from what I'm used to. But I got it on the runway. Betty, the owner of the air park and the airplanes I fly, told me later she saw that landing. I think she cringed as she watched. Luckily the rest of my landings were much better.

My take-offs are really coming together. I can keep it straight and fly it off the runway without unacceptable drift in the winds, I seem to have a feel for setting a crab angle, and I've found if I speak out loud and talk my way through the steps of departure and landing, I'm focused and tend to be on task. So, that's what I do.

The winds on the ground were not too bad, maybe five knots or so initially and they died off quite a bit later, and also shifted from a crosswind to a headwind. As a result, my first landing was on Runway 2, and the rest were on Runway 20 (the opposite direction) as the winds changed. After that first landing I already described, I started to do quite a bit better and with each one I was able to apply the little things I learned on each landing to the next one. I had a high approach and one low approach but was able to correct for them and get to the runway safely.

At some point during the landings we did, the whole process shifted from stressful to fun for me. I think I even said it out loud: "Wow, this is really fun!" Heh. Kelly laughed and said he was just glad to be back in the air, since the rainy weather was pretty terrible the previous week.

We landed at one point, and were coming close to the end of the already-long session. Kelly asked me how I was doing and if I wanted to do one more pattern circuit, and since I had plenty left in me and was making progress, I decided to do another one.

By the time I completed the landing of the day and almost 1.9 hours of flying, I was feeling pretty good about my progress. Kelly said he really thought I'd had some breakthroughs in this lesson. I have another lesson scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, so we'll have to see if the weather will cooperate again. I'm looking forward to it. Kelly tells me he thinks I'm about ready to do my first solo (which consists of flying a few take-off and landing patterns on your own). I told him that with the past couple lessons I've starting to feel substantially more confident about my still-growing abilities. So, now that I have my medical certificate in hand and pretty much everything else required for the first solo, it sounds like it might be coming up sometime soon. Hard not to be nervous - and a little excited - about that.

Here comes that Oregon weather

2008-10-31T12:40:00.001-07:00

I won't able to go flying again for a week and a half because I'm flying commercially to Barcelona, Spain for work. As it is, the gray skies of Oregon in November have settled in during the late part of this week, as always seems to happen around Halloween.

So, when I get back I'll be hoping for some flyable skies on two days I'll be in town, and then I'll be back on the road and hoping for more reasonable weather in mid-November. Yeah, right. :)

Meanwhile, I'm going to be spending a lot more time reading ad studying for the written tests, as well as the next phase of flight lessons, which involve navigation and flying cross-country and more complex airspace. It'll be fun.

First flight with Dave

2008-10-29T00:37:00.001-07:00

Since my friend Dave just finished his private pilot certificate, the first order of business was - you guessed it - flying!

Monday evening we met at the Hillsboro airport and got his aircraft, a Cessna 150 rental from the flight school he's enrolled at. Then we departed to fly around the area. It was fun to be a passenger, and I was impressed and very comfortable with Dave's flying technique and his attention to detail.

We flew over Beaverton and Aloha a bit, then headed south to the Aurora airport. It was dark, and the airport was easy to find. Dave's done quite a bit of night flying, but this was the first time in many years I'd flown at night in a small plane. It was pretty fun, and made me remember flying as a teenager at night. Dave let me do some of the radio calls, and I practiced the process of reading the chart (map) and notifying other airport traffic (of which there was basically none, but it was good practice) when were were flying over and approaching, as well as the pattern "calls."

In many ways it's easier to find your way around at night, at least for the lit areas. We made a couple landings at Aurora, including a full stop and plane exit so we could walk around a little bit. Okay, I'll be honest - We did your classic "fire drill" like the kids do at red lights on the street: Jump put, run all the way around the vehicle and jump back in. In reality, though, we ran around the plane and then hung out on the ramp there for a few minutes. We swapped headsets so Dave could try mine out with the noise reduction turned on for the rest of the flight.

Then we got back off the ground and headed over to McMinnville. The runway lights for McMinnville are pretty darned cool (and really bright at their highest setting). There's lots of colored, bright flashy lights on the approach for Runway 20. Like many airports, you can turn the lights on and off and change brightness by keying the microphone a set number of times on the right frequency. It's fun if there are a few airports around, and at night it's one good way to figure out where things are visually. One thing's for sure - you can't miss it unless you're blind, and in that case I hope you're not at the controls.

Next we flew back to Hillsboro over the Newberg VOR at plenty of altitude (it's on a high ridge) and found our way back to Hillsboro. It was surprising to me how hard it was to find the Hillsboro airport at night visually. It's easy to lose in the huge amount of business, street and residential lights. But once there, it's a huge and well-lit runway to land on (at least compared to the small runway at Twin Oaks). The radio work there is a little different, too, since it's a tower-controlled airport.

We have a fun flight, and we're both looking forward to the next one.

Thirteen landings in one lesson - and some real success

2008-10-29T00:01:00.001-07:00

On Monday after seeing my friend Dave arrive and get his Private Pilot certificate, I sped over to Twin Oaks Airpark to meet up with my instructor Kelly for a few hours of lesson time. I was a bit late, but once I arrived we discussed the lesson for the day (all flight time, with some new navigation stuff that we reviewed). This was basically to be a review flight and a bunch of landing work. Then we got the airplane and headed out.

It was - in a nutshell - a fun day of flying. And the weather was great. There was a wind from the west once aloft, but on the ground things were pretty calm, with only a 3- to 5-knot crosswind tops. A lot of the time it was calm. After completing the run-up and pre-departure checklist, Kelly crossed his feet a little on the floor, said he trusted me (he made a bit of a show of it - good confidence builder) and told me to take off.

We departed Twin Oaks, turned left and made our way to McMinnville. I used the VOR with Kelly's help for the first time. We entered the traffic pattern and headed in for landing number one, a touch and go that was so-so. Then we got back in the air and flew the pattern again, and did an aborted takeoff drill. One more trip around and we decided to stop at the FBO at the airport to grab a cup of coffee and stretch our legs. That was a good idea. Once back in the air we were flying patterns so many times I lost count (but Kelly keeps track of them, so it's all good). Helicopters were flying along the right side of the runway doing training in the grass, which was kind of cool to watch. Other than that there wasn't a whole lot of other air traffic to contend with.

After a couple of simulated engine failures in the pattern and a bunch of "normal approaches" with progressively better landings (and better tracking of the centerline), Kelly flew a slip approach to a landing in order to show it to me, then we flew the pattern again and I stayed high on purpose, then did the slip myself all the way to the runway. Wow, that was crazy. When the plane is slipping, you are pushing the rudder in all the way to the foot with one foot while simultaneously applying aileron pressure in the opposite direction (for example, full right foot, which points the nose to the right, plus left steering, which moves the plane to the left).

The net effect is that the plane flies somewhat sideways and is "slipping" through the air. Your nose is pointed off toward one side of the runway and you're dropping much faster than usual because turning the plane so one side is running into the wind creates quite a bit of drag. So, it's a very effective way to get on the ground quickly if you're high on your approach. It also feels really weird, at the least the first few times.

We made a total of 13 landings, which is a lot, and flew a total of 1.8 hours, which is my longest lesson time yet. I finished the lesson a whole lot more comfortable landing the airplane. I can say I feel confident that I could land the plane on the runway alone if I needed to. And when we got back I was still feeling good. I could have flown quite a bit more time, actually.

Best of all, I felt like I made real, substantial progress. Kelly gave me great feedback, and there were even a couple moments that deserved quick high-fives while flying. When we got back to Twin Oaks, Kelly told me I'm about ready to solo. That will have to wait until I get back from two weeks of travel, though since the rest of my week is tied up and then I head to Spain and Vegas for work. Plus I need to hear back from the FAA on some paperwork, and those two weeks should be just about the right amount of time.

Anyhow, I'm now at 15.8 hours and 72 landings and starting to feel pretty good. Unfortunately since this weekend is Halloween and I live in Oregon, the rainy season will officially be upon us when I get back (Halloween is that calendar event around these parts that marks the start of the wet season). But there will be good days, and I'll be taking full advantage of those whenever I can I hope to keep flying a couple times a week as much as possible to stay proficient and so I can finish the private pilot certification up soon.

My friend Dave's a private pilot now

2008-10-28T23:06:00.001-07:00

Right before my lesson on Monday I drove over to the Hillsboro Airport because my friend Dave was already in the air and about to finish his practical exam flight with the FAA examiner. He was originally supposed to fly on Sunday, but the winds were too high, so they got the oral portion of the exam out of the way and rescheduled the flight portion for Monday.

I got there and found Dave's dad, Will, was also waiting. He and I hung out on the ramp for a few minutes and caught up on things, and then Dave returned with the airplane.

I'm really proud of him. He's a good guy and has worked hard for this. It's been his dream forever. Now he can go on to the professional pilot phases of the training. Congrats Dave!

Cross-wind landings and a dash of success

2008-10-25T20:16:00.001-07:00

I flew again today after my lesson earlier this week was cancelled due to fog (at 3 p.m. even). It was a nice day, with a moderate breeze when I arrived at Twin Oaks. The winds were coming from 300 degrees (northwest), which meant dealing with a slight crosswind from the right on takeoff and from the left when landing (we take off from Runway 20, to the south and a little west (a compass heading of 200 degrees), and land in the opposite direction on the same strip, Runway 02 (or 020 degrees heading).

The winds were probably blowing at about three or four knots when we started, which was pretty cool since it required a little wind correction, but not so much as to make it a lot of work or scary. Certainly not like the last lesson. By the time we finished our 1.2 hours of flying today, the winds had kicked up to around 10 knots and were quite variable in their direction. During any given circuit around the traffic pattern the winds would sometime shift a few times. Some smoke from a couple piles of brush burning near the departure and landing end of the runway would be blowing away from the runway one minute, parallel to then runway a minute later, and across it the next. So, I got to exercise my brain a little bit when it came to judging surface winds. The smoke made it easier, that's for sure.

The winds aloft were a little stronger than the surface winds, and considerably stronger by the time we finished. On my second to last takeoff a good gust shoved up under the right wing of the plane and tipped it to the left pretty quickly (from which I recovered quite well, thank you very much). Those little Cessna 150's are light and it doesn't take a lot of wind to push them around in the sky, but they also fly great.

For our last departure and landing we decided to take off on Runway 20 since the winds favored it slightly by that time, and since it's a rare occasion to be able to take off that way. The runway runs slightly uphill in that direction, and there are some tall trees in the departure path, so that's not the standard departure direction for sure, unless the winds truly favor that heading.

My previous lesson was pretty discouraging for me in terms of believing that I could do what was needed to land the plane in the wind. The day after that lesson I was honestly pretty discouraged and questioning my abilities in the overall sense. But after discussing it with my instructor and my friend Dave, I got my attitude back where it needed to be, took a few days off, and came back ready for today. And I'm glad I did.

We did eight landings today, and it took a couple of rough ones before I got some confidence back, but after that things shaped up quite a bit. My instructor, Kelly, helped out a little on the first landing and then flew one for me to observe at my request, and after that it was pretty much me. I'm still a beginner, but even with crosswinds and having to crab into the wind in the pattern and compensate on approach for the windy conditions, I did pretty okay overall. Even though my landings were far from stellar, they were getting better as I went, which boosted my confidence quite a bit. At one point, Kelly mentioned I looked like I was getting a bit frustrated, and not to worry as I was doing just fine. I said I was really more flustered than anything and that I just needed to clear my head and refocus. So much information to process at once, and as Kelly pointed out you have to do a lot of flying to get 15 seconds of landing practice.

From that point things continued to improve a little bit at a time. I've found that if I recite the steps involved in the my procedures out loud and talk about what's happening with the airplane as I go, I fly better and tend to get the various configuration tasks done more accurately and reliably. So I tried to stick with that method today.

A side note: My good friend Dave is flying this evening with his instructor over at Hillsboro airport, and tomorrow morning he will be meeting his FAA examiner, who will be running him through his oral and practical exams for his private pilot rating starting at 9am. Assuming he passes (hah, and I am quite sure he'll do just great) he'll be a private pilot by tomorrow afternoon. He's a natural. I'm really excited for him and very proud of him, too. He's worked quite hard to get to this point, and it's his dream. He plans to become a professional pilot, and I'm confident he'll do just that. For my part, I just want to fly for fun and recreation - That's my motivation. After Dave gets his private pilot ticket, we're hoping to do a quick afternoon flight to celebrate. I can't wait. Pray for us, heh.

I also met with my instructor and discussed the possibility of taking a mid-course flight with another instructor, and whether he thought that was a good idea at this point or not. He said he thought it was a good idea and that it would allow someone who has not been watching me to provide fresh feedback. Between that and getting a second perspective on how to do things, I think it would be good. I'll probably try to fly once with Dave's instructor, Justin. Sometime after that, I think Kelly will also want me to fly with one of the other Twin Oaks instructors for a progress check. I should say right here that flying with Kelly is great, and my request to fly with another instructor isn't a reflection on his teaching at all - In fact, I look forward to flying with Kelly every day, and I recommend him wholeheartedly. The fact that he's supportive of the idea of me flying with someone else for a flight shows once again that he's a good teacher. He and I agreed mixing it up for a flight would be a good thing right about now.

My next lesson is on Monday, and we'll be getting into what Kelly says is the really fun part of flying: going places and planning it out. Cool, sounds great to me!

A good aviation headset makes a big difference

2008-10-25T00:23:00.001-07:00

One of the cool things about flying out of Twin Oaks Airpark is the fact that Betty Stark, who owns the place with her husband, has loaned me a variety of the different headphones they sell in the small pilot shop they have set up in the business office.

One of the brands of aviation headsets they carry is Lightspeed Aviation, which happens to be a local company (they're based in Lake Oswego, Oregon - which is in the Portland metro area). After wearing a couple of the less-expensive headsets from a few makers, all of which were pretty darned good, I tried a couple of the automatic noise reduction (ANR) models, at the strong encouragement of Betty (she's a very effective and patient salesperson, heh).

In a Cessna 150, which is a fairly noisy little airplane, not wearing a headset would be pretty miserable. The planes we fly require you wear a headset to be able to use the radios at all, and the built in intercom allows both occupants to talk to each other easily. What I found was that the headsets I tried were all good, but he ANR ones were noticeably better.

For me, the decision of which headset to purchase came down to two primary differences I noted in the model I chose. First, the microphone picked up my not-quite-loud-enough voice very well, even over the cabin noise. That's a big deal if you want to be understood clearly by others. It also has an adjustable microphone gain setting (which I didn't even have to change).

The second feature was important to me from a safety standpoint. One thing (among many) that you want to avoid doing in an airplane is stalling the aircraft. The plan has a stall warning horn that gets louder and louder as you get closer to a stall. Unfortunately, what I found - especially in a power-on stall situation - was that the ambient noise and headset made it difficult to hear the stall horn except at its loudest. But with the ANR headset I chose, I was able to hear the horn in stall practices from its initial warning stages.

Being able to hear the warning horn was a very big deal to me. Add to the features I already mentioned a couple more cool ones, such as the ability to plug in an MP3 player or a cell phone (which sounds great), and the Lightspeed Thirty 3G headset was all I needed (and then some). When listening to music from the MP3 player (which I don't do now, I need to stay focused on flying as a student), if the radio kicks in the headset automatically reduces the volume of the music player so you can hear the radio clearly. The Thirty 3G is not Lightspeed's most expensive headset (that honor goes to their lighter-weight and Bluetooth-enabled Zulu model), but it's right up there among the best.

The folks at Twin Oaks sell the Thirty 3G for a full $100 less than I was able to find it at any of the other local pilot shops, so if anyone's interested in this model, call Betty at Twin Oaks or get hold of me via email or phone. I'm certain Betty would be glad to sell you one. I doubt you'll find it for less online, even. The online store I checked out at sells it for $50 more than Twin Oaks' price.

Since I have an iPhone 3G, I also needed a small adapter cord so the phone headset plug would fit properly. Here's a link to the adapter on Amazon.com in case anyone else wants to use their iPhone with the Thirty 3G headset. It only cost about $7 and arrived today. I tested it out tonight by hooking up my flight headset and iPhone and calling a friend (to plan a flight for this Sunday - quite appropriate!). I won't be using it for quite some time (and it's not exactly legal with the FCC to make calls from the air, anyhow), but I'll have it all set up when it's appropriate and time for it.

Sometimes it's best just to call it a day

2008-10-20T21:15:00.001-07:00

The weather this morning was blustery and wet, but flyable - at least technically. After a ground school session about weather and reviewing my pre-solo written test, we headed for the aircraft. The rain had been coming down off and on, and there was a pretty strong wind from the south.

Long story short, I just wasn't in a mindset to fly. We decided to fly patterns around the airport and do landings, but the winds and my general disposition were not compatible with each other. After three approaches and some messy landings, I told my instructor I just wasn't dialed in and wasn't going to get anything out of the lesson. So, we stopped after 30 minutes and called it good for the day. I was frustrated and more than a bit discouraged. I needed to stop at that point.

Looking back at this morning before the lesson, several other things I had scheduled got turned upside down, and I had a lot of unresolved things on my mind that had nothing to do with flying. Add to that the fact that I was not comfortable with the weather (I wouldn't fly in it for fun, that's for sure heh), and the inevitable situation was that Greg was not going to perform.

Anyhow, that's over now and I have another lesson tomorrow afternoon. It looks like the weather will be better, and hopefully I can get some experience landing the plane with quite a bit less stress.

On the positive side, the takeoffs I did were a new and useful experience, because the strong headwind tried hard to pitch the nose way up high, so I had to hold the nose down with a lot of control pressure to avoid a dangerous stall attitude. Also, I got to experience for the first time in a substantial way how a strong wind aloft really pushes the plane around in the pattern and how you need to compensate by turning into the wind on legs where you're flying perpendicular to the wind direction.

Anyhow, back at it tomorrow afternoon. It's another day.

Slow but sure improvements

2008-10-19T09:32:00.001-07:00

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.

Ground reference maneuvers, slips, more landings and engine-failure drills

2008-10-13T23:22:00.001-07:00

Ah, Mondays. The start of another week. I had some time to fly today (I won't have as much time the rest of this week due to work-related things), so I took advantage of it and got to the airport at 10 a.m. Today was a busy lesson with lots of things to cover in less than two hours. When I arrived at Twin Oaks Airpark this morning it was overcast and the ceiling was just high enough to fly. I preflighted the airplane and joined Kelly for a quick ground instruction session, in which we discussed all the things I'd be seeing and doing during the flight, which ended up being an hour and a half long.

I'm getting much more comfortable taxiing the airplane now. In fact, I need to make sure I don't get moving too fast now that I have the hang of steering with just my feet. Proper taxiing speed is about the same as a fast walk. I'm also getting more comfortable with the checklists and all the procedures in general.

One of the several things my instructor, Kelly Wiprud, added into my list of tasks today was handling the whole talk-on-the-radio thing. He helped by telling me what I needed to communicate throughout the flight, but I was the guy on the radio the whole time, with just one or two exceptions. Even with years of police work in my past, thinking about what to say on the radio while flying is a bit complicated - But I think my police days might help a bit, since radio operation while driving a police car is also a bit of a divided attention thing.

Anyhow, it was kind of fun to talk on the radio.

We departed to the south and turned, as we always do for noise-abatement reasons, to the east. Soon we turned southeast again in search of higher clouds and clearer skies. We found that over by the Aurora airport, which is located east of I-5 and south of the Willamette river and Wilsonville, the conditions were pretty good - much better than McMinneville and other areas further south and west.

We started with slips - a maneuver I was not familiar with except in theory. A slip is a "cross-controlled" maneuver, meaning you apply for example right rudder and left aileron, which causes the plane to fly somewhat sideways through the air. That's a condition that creates a lot of drag and as a result the plane drops altitude very quickly. It's useful in situations where - you guessed it - you need to drop quickly to get somewhere - especially if you need to do a short approach to a runway, for example. It's a bit awkward feeling, yet it's fun to do and it certainly works.

I picked a radio tower out on a farm field in the rural area we were flying over and slipped toward it with the plane slipping both left and right. It takes some very heavy force on the pedals and controls to make the plane really slip.

Next we headed back up to altitude and did some work on three different "ground reference" maneuvers: Turns around a point, S-turns and a rectangular pattern. The idea is that you should be able to fly perfect circles around a single reference point on the ground (like a tree or barn or something) and adjust for winds to keep your circle clean and even-distanced from the point.

In an S-turn drill you pick a straight line like a road and do half-circles down the length of the road, so that each time you cross the road you start your next turn. From above it looks like you're drawing an S (or a few of them) with the road as the center. Again, you have to account for winds and adjust your turns each direction to ensure your half-circles are equal.

The rectangular/box ground reference maneuver is what it sounds like: Fly around the box, keeping the proper reference to the sides of the box distance-wise, and fly the straight lines and turns with wind adjustments.

All of these maneuvers are conducted at 800-1000 feet above the ground and to successfully complete the maneuvers you have to maintain proper speed, hold your altitude and consistent distances all at the same time. It was pretty fun. As a general rule, I'm very comfortable in the air. Flying the airplane in different configurations and in different maneuvers feels good and I generally feel confident.

Next came landings. More landings. Good, I really need them, heh. Landings are my weak point. Today my first landing was probably my best. First Kelly showed me three things all in one approach: an engine-out landing procedure, which included a slip approach and a go-around. He then gave me control of the airplane and I flew the pattern to do a touch and go. I landed a little flat but not too bad, and got back in the air. As I flew more landings I discovered I was getting a better awareness and feel for the airplane, little by little. I could look outside and tell better if I was too high, too low or too fast, etc. Scanning outside and glancing inside the plan is easier now, in part because I don't have to think as much about where instruments are, and in part because I am just relaxing a little bit more.

On the third landing pattern, I started to get configured for a landing just prior to turning and Kelly pushed the throttle to idle and told me my engine had just died. I was a little off on the configuration and flew too fast, and as a result didn't quite make it to the runway, but it was a good experience. Lots of "good experiences" these days, heh. I'm sure there will be plenty more opportunities for unexpected situations to be thrown at me in the future.

I was far from perfect today, but I felt a stronger awareness of what was happening each step of the way. I'm starting to "feel the airplane" now. As Kelly told me, an instructor can't teach a student to land. They can tell you how, but when it comes right down to it, they're just helping you learn it for yourself. Makes sense.

So, I bounced a landing or two, flared too late on another, landed a bit too sideways on yet another, and did a pretty good job on one, too. My take-offs were substantially better (well, most of them anyhow). I'm going to have to get better at staying on the center line on these big runways, though - The runway at Twin Oaks is probably one-fourth the width of the one at Aurora. You have to land straight on the small runways, or else you find yourself in the grass (which is Very Bad).

On the way back to Twin Oaks, we flew over a farmer's crop-art formation. Either that or aliens from outer space are carving crop circles in order to convince us to do our duty as citizens. I can't imagine many people get a chance to see this from the air, though - so I made a video and am sharing it here with you.

I captured it with my new Kodak Zi6 pocket HD video camera, which I picked up at a local Radio Shack store. The embedded version below isn't too bad, but you can also see the higher-quality version of the video here.

I'll be doing a review of the Zi6 camera on my main weblog sometime soon. My plan is to mount it in the plan the next time we fly (we tried briefly today but didn't want to waste time when we could be flying). I figure a video record of maneuvers filmed out the front of the plane would be a good learning tool. Plus it might make for an occasional interesting video to post here.

More maneuvers, improved landings and almost killed by a helicopter

2008-10-11T22:36:00.001-07:00

It's been a fun and interesting week of flying. I flew both Wednesday and Saturday, and am feeling overall quite a bit more comfortable and better as I fly more.

Wednesday consisted of a set of new maneuvers, including power-on stalls (which were a lot of fun) and some other maneuvers Kelly showed me in order to demonstrate how the aircraft can be recovered from unusual situations. I also practiced emergency landings due to an engine out situation and got to fly a router around a bunch of clouds that were broken up and dotting the area, which was a nice view. It was a good day.

Saturday was yet another lesson designed specifically to practice flying traffic patterns and landings at an airport (Hillsboro again) in the form of touch-and-goes. I did eight landings (or maybe it was nine, I'd have to look back), and with each one I found I was starting to feel better and better. My landings still need a lot of work but I flew a number of them with Kelly's feet and hands not helping, and I was better able to get and maintain flight over the runway centerline each time. I'm getting a better feel for the airplane and realizing the value of getting lined up early and letting the airplane fly without having to steer it the whole way down, if at all possible. My landings were a little too flat - I need to keep that nose wheel in the air even after the main gear is on the runway.

But all in all, it was a successful day of landings that built my confidence a bit, which I think is good for me right about now.

Then came the excitement.

We departed from the traffic pattern at Hillsboro to the left and set up to extend a bit to the south. Once clear of Hillsboro we turned left to head back to Twin Oaks, the airport where I am training out of. We made out way to win Oaks and I entered the traffic pattern at the proper altitude (1000 ft. AGL) and angle. I then turned to the downwind leg of the approach pattern and flew to the point in the pattern where I was to reduce power and configure the airplane's flaps at 10 degrees.

You need to understand that all airports have a traffic pattern that aircraft are supposed to follow. They're established and published and are part of the standard information available to all pilots. At many airports, including Twin Oaks, there is a common radio frequency that all pilots use to communicate while flying around the airport, called a Unicom frequency. We announced what we were doing (entering the pattern on a left downwind for runway two-zero) as we entered the pattern. Generally, the pattern around a smaller airport is flown at about 1000 feet above the ground and is either a "right" or "left" pattern - referring to the direction of the turns a pilot makes when flying the box around the airport on approach and departure.

Twin Oaks is a left pattern, and I was heading "downwind" in the pattern parallel to runway 02, about to make a left 90-degree turn that would put me perpendicular to the runway. The step after that would be another left turn 90 degrees to the final approach leg, at which point I'd be headed straight at the end of the runway and about to land.

As I was saying, I'd just configured 10 degrees of flaps and reduced power. I was flying slower and was about to make my left turn to the base leg when all of a sudden a dark Robinson R-22 helicopter appeared at exactly our flight level, headed literally straight at us head-on - and closing fast. Kelly grabbed the controls and pulled a fast right turn and steered the airplane toward the ground a bit. The helicopter, which was no more than 200 feet from us (at best), also did a hard right turn (thank goodness) and we missed each other.

It doesn't really get much closer than that. That helicopter, flying through the area on its way back to Hillsboro, was doing the equivalent of flying the wrong way on a one-way street, right at the traffic pattern altitude, on a Saturday at a busy recreational airport. Honestly I have no idea why anyone would do that. What I do know is that some rather terse phone calls were made once we landed (Kelly kept control of the plane after the helicopter incident and got us safely down onto the runway).

I'm just glad Kelly's a great pilot and got us out of the way on time. And yes, I'm still looking forward to flying again on Monday. Today was a great experience with some level of improvement in my landings, and I also got to experience first hand why it's so important to know where you are, what your surroundings are, and how to get out of a dangerous situation the right way.

Windy landings and the oatmeal-brain effect

2008-10-06T21:46:00.001-07:00

Today I flew for almost an hour with my instructor, Kelly. When I got to the air park, the winds were calm and the clouds were starting to clear. It was looking much better than over the weekend, when the weather had been pretty bad. But as I pre-flighted the aircraft, the winds started to pick up. By the time I was done with the inspection, there was wind of about 10-12 miles per hour.

We'd scheduled landing practice - Nothing but patterns and landings. Winds were within the safety limits, and I imagine Kelly was thinking I'd have to learn to do this sooner or later, and so now's as good a time as any. We got the aircraft ready, taxied and got in the air. I'm feeling more and more comfortable with the whole process each time, and "ground flying" the airplane helps. Taxiing and turning the plane on the ground is a lot easier now than it was the first day, for sure.

Once in the air I could tell right away it was going to be a different flying experience. It was bumpy and a little gusty. Holding turns at the right bank angle was noticeably more challenging than on previous flights and our speed over the ground with the wind behind us was pretty quick. Gusts tossed the plane around a bit and I had to level the wings pretty much constantly for the first part of the flight. Before departing, we'd checked the weather for the local area. Aurora, our original destination, had winds sustained at 16 miles per hour and gusts up to around 25, so we clearly weren't going there. We checked McMinneville (which was the same story as Aurora), and then Hillsboro, which was calmer with winds at 11 miles per hour and gusting a bit higher.

Hillsboro is a tower-controlled airport, and this was my first time flying into one. I didn't have to worry about radio communication, Kelly was handling that. Granted, I only have five hours under my belt and I should not expect much of myself, but I'm allowed to be nervous. Fortunately for us, this normally busy airport has only a few student pilots flying at the flight school there right now, so it was not as busy today as it often is.

Compared to Twin Oaks, which has one 50-foot-wide runway, Hillsboro (HIO) is freakin' huge. Two ultra-long runways as wide as a large freeway can be spotted easily from only 1,000 feet above the ground from several miles away. I had no problem locating it, that's for sure. I was able to look around and recognize a bunch of buildings, roads and locations I recognized, which was good. The places we've been flying over up until now have been relatively unfamiliar to me.

As I said, today was all about landings. It was clear as we flew that the winds were pretty quick aloft, since our ground track in a crosswind required me to "crab" into the wind in order to maintain a good line over the ground while in the landing pattern. Think of it as pointing off to the side, into the wind a bit so you don't get blown away and off track. From the outside it looks like you're sliding a bit sideways down your flight path. I think I got the hang of that pretty well, and after being caught off-guard in a couple turns and figuring out I needed to adjust more for the crosswinds while turning, I felt a bit more comfortable.

Landings were another story. The winds at HIO were coming toward us and somewhat from the left on runway 20, and seemed (at least to me) to shift direction quite a bit closer to the surface. The strong headwind on approach meant applying more power to maintain our altitude into the wind at a distance. I got the hang of that pretty well and found myself adjusting power on my own several times while flying today without being prompted. But getting down onto the runway was still pretty uncomfortable and as we got closer to the surface the shifting winds threw me off. Now, keep in mind this whole "landing" thing is pretty much greek to me so far, so these added wind components are a real mind-meld.

We ended up doing four landings before heading back, plus one go-around per the tower when we didn't execute a short approach fast enough for the controller. I guess that Lear jet coming in behind us was more important or something, heh.

I became slightly more comfortable with each landing attempt. Slightly is an operative word in that sentence, by the way. Kelly was on the controls with me for all of them and helped keep the plane straight as we touched down - I was just not getting it too well myself. After just those few landings my brain had pretty much turned to oatmeal - I was past my ability to go any further at the time, as far as landings were concerned. So we climbed out from HIO and headed back south, and I located the hangars at Twin Oaks, where the windsock was standing straight out and shifting between a headwind and a left crosswind for runway 20. After a slightly bumpy approach and a little extra power to compensate for the wind, Kelly helped me put the airplane on the ground and we got it parked.

It was a humbling hour. Not that I have a shortage of humility or anything, but I think it was very useful, even though it was complicated and right on the edge of overwhelming. I got to see what it's like in a good wind, which is important. I spent a little time while we completed our log books chatting with Kelly, and he told me I am doing fine and that I'll be okay, it takes time and everyone has to figure out how it feels. No one's an accomplished pilot at five hours, heh.

I need to eat a better meal before I fly. By the time I was done, I was pretty wiped out. I plan to take a PowerBar or something with me, too from now on.

I have a busy week on the calendar. Our next lesson and flight is set for Wednesday, with another on Friday, followed by one more on Saturday. Looking forward to it.

Great student pilot podcast and pretending to fly on the ground

2008-10-04T17:37:00.001-07:00

When I told some people in my "network" I was beginning flying lessons recently, Tim Heuer (@timheuer on twitter) pointed out a great podcast by Bill Williams (@billwil on Twitter) called The Student Pilot Podcast. He started it almost a year ago and has used the audio format (and some video) to record his learning experiences from beginning to end. I've spent some time listening in, and it's been especially useful. I like the way he throws in the occasional comment about being too low or too high on approaches, those little details that make a difference and let people like me know it's truly a learning and growing experience. It's a good informal learning tool, and for someone like me who's just getting started, it's especially nice to be able to hear complicated stuff like radio traffic procedures and to vicariously share in Bill's training milestones. A couple times last weekend as I was flying (on an airliner) to Philadelphia and listening on my iPod and laughed out loud at situations happening in the podcast, which drew a couple funny looks from the passengers around me. In his latest episode, Bill highly recommends another site and podcast called Uncontrolled Airspace. So, I'm checking that out this evening. It looks quite good, too.

I was supposed to fly this morning for a couple hours and do a bunch of landings and approaches with my instructor, but we had to cancel due to high winds and cruddy weather. Yesterday the weather was poor, too. But I dropped by the airport anyhow since I was in the area and asked if it was permissible to sit in the aircraft while they're on the ground and "pretend" to fly. I've recognized early on that running through the procedures and drills in a calm, quiet, non-distracted environment might just help when it comes time to actually fly, especially after reading my newly-acquired copy of the C-150's Pilot Operating Handbook (or POH) and realizing there were a couple things I'd missed in the cabin.

I was pleased to find out from the kind and friendly people at Twin Oaks Air Park that not only would they allow me to sit and practice in unreserved aircraft, they encouraged me to do so as much as possible. Just turn out the lights if everyone's gone - Nice! One of the people there said, "I really wish more people would do that," and my instructor Kelly said, "Yeah, that's a good idea, you'll save yourself some money" (by potentially reducing the number of flying hours needed to become proficient).

So, I headed for an unoccupied Cessna 150 with my trusty visual flight procedures book, the POH and a few other odds and ends, and started practicing the in-cabin procedures for things like startup, taxi, run-up, take-off, departure, airport traffic patterns, approach and landings. I also did a pre-flight inspection on a couple different airplanes. After about an hour of practice time my good friend Dave, who's about to complete his own private pilot license as part of his pro-pilot schooling, dropped by the air park, so we geeked out on all the aircraft there for a while. Dave was pretty impressed with the trainer/rental fleet there as well as a big, old, very-cool airplane on pontoon floats that's parked there (I think maybe it's an old Beaver, but I'm not really sure - I'll have to ask).

Dave and I left the air park, and I went and grabbed some food. I realized I still wanted to practice some more, so I selfishly decided to call another friend (who's also named Greg, which makes for a bit of confusion in a group but we do okay when it's just the two of us) to see if he'd want to go check out the airplanes and help me learn. He didn't hesitate to say yes, so we headed back over and spent a good hour and a half, with me explaining everything I'm learning out loud to Greg while I practiced it and checked myself with the checklists and maneuver instructions. I also found myself teaching him a lot of what I have recently learned in my ground lessons and study, which is a great way to reinforce it for myself. Ultimately, I'm learning more and better by sharing it with others.

It's amazing to me how much information I've picked up and learned in the past week and a half. This middle-aged brain still works, heh. I'm also realizing that one of the things I like the most about doing this pilot training is that there is so much information I have absolutely no clue about. Much of what I have been involved in over the past several years has been quite fun and rewarding, but this is all those things plus it's really, really challenging. I guess that's what I need right now: a good challenge tied to a fun undertaking. It's invigorating.

Sounds like we're focusing on landings next time around. After spending some time getting more familiar with the controls and practicing procedures on the ground, I'm looking forward to it. That should happen Monday, if the weather cooperates.

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

2008-10-01T15:56:00.001-07:00

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!

A note about Twin Oaks Airpark's rentals

2008-09-26T11:12:00.001-07:00

I think this is worth mentioning. Twin Oaks Airpark, where I'm training, has very reasonable rentals on their aircraft fleet. All the aircraft are GPS-equipped, and the rates are "wet" (which means they include 100LL fuel), which is quite a bit less than most other FBOs in the area. Good for keeping training costs down a bit.

They have seven Cessnas for rent. The four C-150's rent for $75/hour and the three C-172's (all IFR-equipped) go for $99/hour).

For the Piper fleet, they have a cool restored 1948 Cub (VFR), a Cherokee 180 (VFR), and a Comanche 250 (IFR).

You can see the rental schedule for each plane and then reserve the aircraft you want to fly online.

First flights and lessons - I'm flying!

2008-09-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

The past couple days I've spent a little time down at Twin Oaks Airpark, a small private airport located on the far west side of Portland, Oregon. Yesterday I spent an hour there, and today I went for about two hours. Both days I learned and flew with my new flight instructor, Kelly. I've always wanted to learn to fly and over the years I've spent quite a bit of time in small aircraft. But now I'm going to put the time and effort (and expense) into learning and practicing everything one needs to know to safely fly a small aircraft.

Yesterday was what they call an introductory ride. Kelly met me and we went to the airpark office, where we chatted with Betty Stark. The Stark family owns the airpark which is on an old dairy farm and has a single runway, several hangars, classrooms and a fuel station. Then we went to our aircraft for the day, a Cessna 150. Kelly showed me the aircraft and together we went though the walk-around checklist. The Cessna 150 is a two-seater and is a smallish aircraft, but is a very common trainer. After checking out the aircraft we climbed in and started the checklist for starting the aircraft. I turned the key and the prop started spinning. Kelly explained some more necessary details about the controls and told me what was going to happen. And then we were off. We taxied from the ramp to the end of the runway and did the engine run-up and final checks on the list. Kelly radioed the local traffic to let anyone flying in the area know we were departing, and he told me to put my hands and feet on the controls so I could feel the aircraft as we departed. He explained each task he was doing as he performed them, from the time we walked up to the aircraft until we were in the air. I think I've found a great instructor. He clearly knows his stuff and is confident. That gave me a feeling of confidence, too.

Once we were in the air, he told me he was going to hand the controls over to me. The next thing I knew I was flying the airplane. Of course, Kelly was still there, light on the controls in case I screwed something up. He didn't overwhelm me with information, but instead balanced the doing, the explaining and the having fun and looking out the window. We spent about 30 minutes in the air (and a little rain from the clouds that were well above us) and then returned to the air park. I learned about the traffic pattern for Twin Oaks (it's a left pattern with a 45-degree entrance). It was a lot of fun, and probably just the right mix of time, information and experience for a first flight.

Kelly gave me a quick-read intro book with some basic information to learn: Controls, attitude, parts of an airplane, climbs and descents, turns. He assigned it as homework and we arranged to meet again the next day at 3pm for two hours - starting with a quick ground lesson followed by some time in the air.

When I arrived today, we went into the small classroom and Kelly explained some of the performance numbers I need to start getting familiar with. It clear to me that there are a lot of pieces of information that will need to become second nature. Today's classroom lesson focused on common airspeeds and engine RPMs for different basic flight maneuvers, plus an introduction to flying the traffic pattern and the proper aircraft configuration for landings. I had a chance to ask questions and took some notes and we headed out for the aircraft (another C-150, but not the same one). Today our time at the aircraft was a bit different than yesterday. Kelly handed me the checklist and rather than having me following him as we did the first time, he followed me as I did the walk-around inspection, checking the aircraft from nose to tail, top to bottom. He told me that the next time we meet, he may have me do the pre-flight walk-around on my own (I'm sure he'll check my work, too). After the outside inspection, he then moved the plane to a safe spot on the ramp and we climbed in. Once properly buckled up, we returned to the checklist and started the process of making sure everything was working, properly configured and ready for flight. I turned the key and Kelly showed me how the ground controls work. It's pretty counterintuitive to get out of a car and climb into an airplane: To steer in the ground you use the two foot pedals (and toe brakes when needed). If you put your hands on the control yoke (wheel), nothing happens on the ground. I'm sure looked pretty funny when my brain automatically told me hands to turn the wheel left or right. I had to force myself to use my feet. Once I took my hands completely off the yoke, however, it got a little easier.

I was taught how to do turns on the ramp, with and without brakes. After that, Kelly had me taxi the plane down the taxiway to the end of the runway, where we then entered the runway and taxied all the way to the end, did a couple turns, and then did the same thing all over again. It was a good opportunity to try to get my brain around driving the aircraft on the ground with my feet. I think some future practice will be helpful in overcoming some of the counterintuitiveness.

Kelly then had me stop on the ramp at the end of the runway, where we did our engine run-up and other checklist items. Then he made the radio call and told me to taxi onto the runway and line up on the center line for take-off. I managed to line it up and then let it point left a bit. After correcting for that (I bet it looked pretty dumb from outside the plane, heh), Kelly walked me through applying full throttle and he controlled the plane with his feet as we sped down the runway. "Okay, you feel that? We're doing a wheelie now," he said as the nose started to lift. A little pull back on the yoke and we were in the air, climbing out. When you depart to the south out of twin oaks, you have to start a turn soon after departure due to a noise abatement area (you'd think if you buy or build a house next to an airport you'd know what you're getting into, but oh well). So after a gradual left turn we straightened out and continued climbing. The airport is at about 270 feet above sea level, and we climbed to about 2200 feet.

The main in-air lesson consisted of progressively moving through various maneuvers and maintaining proper attitude of the aircraft: Climbs, gradual turns, medium turns, descents, trimming the aircraft for hands-off flight, and then combination maneuvers: climbing turns and descending turns combined with ending each of the turns on specific compass headings and returning to straight and level flight. It was really fun.

We were almost right on top of the airport before I even recognized it. That whole awareness-of-where-you-are thing comes with time, they say. For now, it;s enough to pay attention and apply what my instructor tells me. By the time we were ready to enter the landing pattern, my brain was on the edge of overload. 45 minutes of information and sensory load was enough for my feeble brain I guess, so it was good that Kelly was handling all of the landing. I just kept feet on the pedals and fingers on the yoke to feel the controls move. Kelly explained what he was doing as we followed the landing pattern (upon passing the end of the runway on the downwind leg turn carb heat on, throttle to 1500 RPM, flaps to 10 degrees (three seconds pressing the switch), add nose-up trim... then on turn to base leg, dial in 10 degrees more more flaps, engine speed will increase as work load decreases so a little less throttle to maintain RPMs, maintain 70mph, look for the end of the runway on your left and prepare to turn to final... then your final turn, check airspeed and ensure you're moving straight for the numbers on the end of the runway (that they're not rising or sinking), add or subtract throttle as needed and line up... after that, work some voodoo magic, flare the aircraft a bit and put the wheels on the ground without breaking anything - I figure the details will become more clear as I get more experience, heh... then keep the aircraft moving straight down the runway with your feet (back to those feet again) and when all the tricycle wheels are on the ground and it's safe apply a little gradual brake as needed to slow the airplane and taxi off the runway...)

Now I have my first textbook in hand, which is the basis of the ground school lessons (which I am looking forward to). I took a ground school class several years ago at Portland Community College when I was thinking about learning to fly helicopters (I then did the financial math and decided maybe I should wait), and I am hoping some of that will come back and help me this time around. I'm flying to Philadelphia this weekend for a family get-together, so I'll have plenty of time for reading the first couple chapters and answering the questions for each - while on the plane.

I borrowed all the pics here from the Twin Oaks web site. Sometime I hope I'll get comfortable enough to be able to take some quick pics of my own (but for now all I can really think about are the tasks at hand in flying that chunk of metal through the air).

Starting my training

2008-09-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

I've started this blog as a separate place to journal my experience learning to fly as a new private pilot student. Assuming I finish, this should be interesting. :) I decided to start a whole new weblog so people who read my main blog at http://www.greghughes.net/rant/ for tech purposes won't be forced to read long, rambling and probably inaccurate flying posts.