Goals:
- Phase check.
- Crosswind maneuvers, weather permitting.
Flight: Today Dan, another instructor with Colonial, braved the air with me for a phase check. The phase check is a chance for a different instructor, one who hasn't been involved in my training so far, to see how I'm progressing and verify that I'm learning what I need to know. It's also an implicit check-up on my instructor to see that he's teaching the right stuff.
The idea was pretty simple: Go up and demonstrate most everything I've learned. Takeoff, turns to headings, climb, descend, hold altitude and heading, clearing turns, steep turns, turns around a point, slow flight, turning during slow flight, power-off stalls, emergency procedures, patterns, landings. Radio work and taxiing are of course included in there, too. We talked about a power-on stall, but I truly don't remember doing it, so maybe we skipped it. We also skipped S turns since I've done only one with Chuck and obviously would need more practice.
We departed 13 and turned up river. I had a mental gaflurble when he asked for a steep turn, thinking "steep turn arount a point." After realizing my lapse into stupidity, I did it, once to the right and once to the left.
Next came the turn around a point. There was a little wind and my constant-radius turn was not quite so constant. It was decent, but not perfect and that irritates me.
We worked our way up the peninsula toward West Point doing slow flight maneuvers and a power-off stall. We talked about power-on stalls as we crossed the York River, but golly I still don't remember actually performing one. Oh, maybe it was around that time that we heard the other Cessna talking about doing a VOR hold nearby and we called it off? Well, no, I could make up a memory of doing it... I don't know. Geez, I'd be a terrible crime or accident witness.
Maybe we did do it, and climbed some then because next we did a simulated engine-out from 3000'. With Chuck I had always done them from much lower, usually 1500-2000', so this was different. It demanded a different assessment of potential landing spots since there was so much altitude (ha, like 3000' is so much!) to lose. I Vy'ed (more on this in the discussion) and picked a grouping of fields off my left. I then reached for my checklist as Dan asked what else I'd do. He said "ABC" -- Airspeed, Best landing site, Checklist. We quickly went through the checklist items and then resumed with the flying. We crossed midfield well over the 1100' I'm trained to shoot for, having started only moments ago at 3000', so I went long before turning back toward the field, reassessing the surroundings to see if a different field would be better. We were looking good for the field and still had more flaps that could be used, but Dan took the opportunity to demonstrate a forward slip at that time. I probably winced a little as we passed over a solitary farmhouse and patch of trees... We probably weren't as low as it seemed to me, but nonetheless, that was the closest to the target forced landing site I'd ever been!
We turned up to FYJ, tuned in the AWOS and decided that 27 would be the favored runway (winds out of 210). We found the guy doing the VOR hold and were well clear. We were fast and high when abeam the numbers, so went long and descended with flaps and killed off the power. As we got close to the runway, though, we saw two trucks, one on either side of the runway, about two-thirds down and decided to abort the landing. I called UNICOM for an advisory and they assured us that the trucks were off the shoulder, so we approached again and went in for the landing.
This first landing was mostly good. The value of the first go-around was to see that dropping the left wing to counter the crosswind was useful, and helped a lot on the second final approach. After rounding out, we started to drift to the right (crosswind) so I put in left rudder to stay toward the centerline. Dan said use right rudder to maintain centerline. This confused me quite a bit, since I felt we were already right of the centerline. But he's the instructor, so we right-ruddered it and landed. A long taxi back up the length of the field and we were off.
The second (third?) time around the pattern was good, too, and the landing was ok. We bounced a little, but it was ok. Another long taxi and we waited for Mr. VOR-hold as he did a touch-and-go, then we were off. We headed back down to my home airport and were being followed (ha) by a military helicopter. After a little chat we found them at our 4 o'clock at 500', out of our concern. 45 for right downwind for 13, good to go.
Except that we were high and fast. And the correction wasn't coming quickly enough. Dan was giving me instructions that I tried to follow, but his focus on RPMs was different from my focus on descent rate, so my brain wasn't working quite fast enough to convert the domains. Long story short, we were too high and went around.
Second time around was similar but not as high. We set up for a longer final and came in with more time to get down. We got down but were fast and so had a long float and had to rollout to the end of the runway. Dan actually took over the controls after I rounded out, which kind of annoyed me, but I didn't say anything since he's the instructor, he's the pilot in command, he couldn't have known one way or the other whether it would be ok for me, and I don't expect to fly with him very often.
Discussion:
- Swapping instructors: At first I was looking forward to flying with another instructor, getting another point of view, getting additional pointers. But it was too different. Chuck is a retired military pilot; Dan is a college student. Their experience levels both as pilots and as instructors is different. Their generations are different. I'm absolutely not trying to say one is better than the other, but they are notably different.
This was kinda bad for me. I do things a certain way, the way that I was taught. I have it in my head that there are "correct" ways to do things, and that's how I do it because that's what my instructor taught me. I know there are different ways for doing things. I've asked three different 300+-hour pilots recently what crabbing on final means to them and I got three different answers. There's room for art among the procedures.
But I found it frustrating. Maybe it's just the point of training that I'm at. I'm in a position of trying to be confident in what I know so I can go up and practice by myself. But here I go up with someone else who does things differently and gives different clues for dealing with little things. That naturally makes me wonder whether I know what I need to know to be safe in all situations! I can't know everything, but should I know more?!?! Is my "this is how it's done" mentality too rigid or limited? I believe I've shown a level of adaptability that's good, but can I do and do I know enough?
This also reminds me of Greybeard's warning against having too many instructors... - Vy v. Best glide: For the engine-out emergency procedures I go for Vy. That's what I was taught. Vy gives you the most run for your rise. (As compared to Vx which gives you the most time for your rise, when you're on the descent side of things.) Dan questioned that, and after we finished the emergency pseudo-landing and were cruising along he asked for the POH. In there he found a chart that gave best glide speed as 80 mph, compared to our Vy of 83. Your engine dies, it's turbulent, you're not going to stick a precise airpseed, so Vy is probably close enough (for my plane). But the point here is that they're different.
- Who's landing style? A good example of the aforementioned difference in instruction is the pattern for landing. Airspeed is my primary criteria, then descent rate. I change those items based on the situation using flaps and throttle. Dan's approach is first to throttle back to a specific RPM for the plane (1700 for 388) when abeam the numbers. Turns out that's also how Husband does it, too, and Husband's training is more similar, I'm sure, to Dan's. Abeam the numbers, I expect to already be at ~80-85 mph at pattern altitude and then put out one notch of flaps; I'll adjust power and pitch to ensure my descent rate is what it ought to be without losing airspeed. But the point is that the points of reference were different and the brief busy time of abeam-base-final is not a good time to try to adapt to something new.
I hear that people prefer to do flapless landings when possible, and in the case of last-minute go-arounds or possibly even for engine failure I could see why: on go-around it's one less configuration change to worry about when transitioning from landing to taking off and on engine failure it extends your glide possibilities to not have them increasing drag and descent rate.
Today we were going to use flaps regardless, but I'm trying to evaluate the focus on RPMs. Let's say you're trimmed for 85 on downwind. If you pull out power, you descend (without flaps). I can see that. You also want to be at idle on final, so paying attention to throttle early probably helps to ensure this. Depending on when/how you turn base and final, you then have flaps to use if you want them. Flaps increase your descent rate without increasing airspeed, and from the abeam point (in our plane) you want to drop 15-20 mph. If you're high on final and already at idle, flaps (or slipping) are the only options aside from going around.
You're also not supposed to slip with more than 20 degrees of flaps on our plane, so I suppose being more conservative with the use of flaps when you can leaves more options.
I like the way I do it now. I have a decent sight picture for how the runway should look at the corners of my pattern and I have a feeling for power, flaps and descent rates. This is based on one notch of flaps abeam, and another notch on base. When I do it correctly, when my speed and altitude are correct upon entering the pattern, this works great. If I'm fast or high, I know what I can do to correct it using throttle or extending downwind or going around. - How it works: I certainly take for granted that Chuck and I know how to work together and he knows my capabilities and limitations. That landing at JGG when Dan took the controls irked me. I think Chuck would have let me land it, but he has seen me through 40+ landings and would be able to judge that. I wonder also if it's harder for a newer CFI to let a student make mistakes or handle a non-optimal (but not dangerous) situation.
- Turning altitudes: I have a problem. I always gain altitude when turning. For whatever reason, I naturally pull back while turning. When landing, I correct that quickly since I have frequent checks of IAS. When doing turns around a point or steep turns, however, I don't manage it well. Today this was mainly demonstrated with the steep turn, only I lost altitude, and was steadily but slowly descending without correcting it effectively. I tried right rudder to turn the nose up to the right (during a left turn), but didn't feel that was the right thing since the slip coordinator ball said otherwise. Husband says back-pressure would have been right, and that makes since since half the lift would go up and half would go horizontally. I didn't want to pull back in the moment because I didn't want to tighten the turn.
Dan said my bank wasn't right. I thought, "Steep turn means 45 degrees" so the bank is kinda set, right?" Problems with altitude shouldn't have to do with the bank, from what I could tell. I'm not saying Dan was wrong -- he's the CFI so surely he was right -- and I wish I could remember what he said specifically so I could try to resolve it against my understanding, but I can't. I was descending during my steep turn, and I think he said I wasn't banked enough, but that must not have been it because it doesn't make sense! Grrr!
But he also said I could have added some power to stop the descent. Now that makes sense to me all around. In fact, during the next steep turn, that's what I did and it worked. It worked so well that on rollout when I didn't pull the power back, we continued to climb for another 200-300' before I got on top of it and leveled out. In light of that, I now wonder if (or really, assume that) he was telling me that my bank was just wrong period for a steep turn and that we needed to fix that before dealing with the other flaws in my steep turn. - Crosswind landings: I do actually feel like I got a little better feel for handling a crosswind today. Since it wasn't gusty, I got to feel the effectiveness of dipping the upwind wing. It kinda just felt right, so maybe the conditions finally cooperated to give me the landing experience I needed to just see it!
Self-Assessment: Not so positive after today, but still learning.
- Preflight: Good.
- Taxiing: Good.
- Take-off: Good.
- Maintaining airspeed: Good.
- Stalls: Power-off stall, good. Power-on stall, good. Landing stall, improved, needs more practice.
- Slow flight (VR and IR): Good.
- Maintain attitude, altitude, heading by instruments: Good.
- Change attitude, altitude, heading by instruments: Good.
- Recover attitude, altitude, heading by instruments: Acceptable.
- Forced landing: Good, still need to commit the entire set of emergency procedures to memory.
- Pattern: Overall, good, but needs more practice.
- Landing: Improved, more practice.
- Radio calls: Decent.
Next: ???
- More of the above!
- Forward slips to landing -- me doing it!
- Crosswind takeoffs and landings
- Cross-country preparations
Hours logged total: 17.4
Instrument hours logged this flight: 0.0
Hours logged total: 0.8
Take-offs and landings this flight: 3
Take-offs and landings total: 48
PIC hours: 1.6
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