First two flights with passengers as a private pilot

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!

Rusty wings and test prep

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).

More solo practice in stronger winds

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.

Four hours of solo flight and first night landings

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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