Yesterday morning Mark and I had an early flight. In the interest of getting caught up with the posts and sleep a bit (I still need to write up the last of the California flying), I'm going to keep this one a little shorter.
My preflight was more efficient. I think I'm getting more fluid and less hypersensitive to every little ding these "well used" old trainer planes have. :)
Getting set up inside was fine, comfortable. Clearance was fine, and luckily the controller monitoring ground was also handling clearance (oops). VFR clearance is easy; tower just cares about keeping you safe and separated while getting you out of their airspace.
We were departing 35R, which was a first for me. Every single other flight has been from 17L. No big deal, especially with ForeFlight and a georeferenced airport diagram. We taxied down alpha to mike for CIGARS and the run-up. At this time, everything was normal, and that's an important note.
There was a slight crosswind from the right, so while taxiing and during takeoff I was using some aileron and rudder correction. I don't have a great feel for it yet, so we ended up drifting into the wind and not maintaining alignment over the runway. We weren't off by much and it was corrected quickly enough, and not long after they had us turning eastward (into the wind) to head over to 84R (Smithville).
We cruised along for a few minutes, and upon leveling at 3000' I ran the flow/check. Mag/DG, engine instruments, flight instruments, breakers/switches, throttle, mixture, fuel. But at engine instruments I noted the ammeter discharging. Mark asked me if that was okay, and I STUPIDLY rationalized it with some hurried thought about sure it's discharging, it's supporting a big electrical load. He didn't say anything at the moment, so I went about my business. Moments later I did another flow check and found the ALT FLD breaker popped.
Hmm. Ammeter discharging and an alternator breaker tripped. I handed the controls over to Mark so I could look it up. The checklist didn't have any troubleshooting tips for an abnormal electrical situation (just electrical fire). Next I wanted to look through the POH -- still not sure why the searchable POH wasn't in my documents in ForeFlight -- but flipping pages in the paper POH was taking too long and requiring too much inattention to the airplane. What if I had been flying alone? What would a good pilot do? Should I reduce the load? Was the fog in the (electric) turn coordinator related? Would it be safe to land? What all would be affected?
So my homework (another post) is to research what conditions cause these two symptoms and what is an appropriate way to deal with it. For that time, Mark had me reset the breaker and keep an eye on it. Short story, no more symptoms.
We got to Smithville and had a more difficult than expected time at finding the runway. Thank you, again, ForeFlight, for the situational awareness. We basically entered the pattern on an extended base, watched to be clear of the water towers and power lines, and went in for my first crosswind landing in ten years.
After practicing the exercise at KHAF with Jason on Monday where we lined up on one side of the runway and cross-controlled to drift across the runway while keeping the nose aligned, it was fresh in my mind of *what* to do. Doing it well will obviously take more practice. I think I did ok as far as staying near the middle of the runway, but at touchdown I had a bit of a crab in so there was side-loading and a sensation of skidding to the left as the airplane straightened out. I kept right aileron in into the wind as we rolled out to the taxiway, but I still had this incredibly unsettling feeling that we were tipping to the left. Mark assured me we were fully on the ground, but (I think?) he said I could use more aileron correction.
Discussion, recheck of checklists and materials concerning the electrical situation, then back to it. The windsock was showing winds inconsistent in both direction and strength, and my heart sank a little. I had been excited to get solid crosswind practice, but this was going to require way more change of inputs in response to constantly changing winds, which all in all is a good thing to be able to do but I'm already weak on crosswinds and wanted something nice and stable to work on! We kept our eyes and ears open while back-taxiing down the runway to depart. After takeoff, I started a turn off to the right to make the pattern and do it again, when Mark asked where I was going. Oh, dagnabit! Left traffic! Thank goodness we were alone in that airspace. Left turn. Self-briefing failure.
The wind variability was very noticeable on final. Constant control changes. I landed well left of center and didn't straighten out as quickly as I should have, but still got back to center, lifted the flaps and throttled up for a touch-and-go. C'est la vie.
On the way back to KAUS, Mark gave me some unusual attitudes and I did power-on and power-off stalls under the foggles. These were fine. It takes a fair bit of effort to get to the stall point, and that's not where I like to be so Mark had to keep telling me to pull back, pull back, pull back. Lol. I just hope that in reality I stay on top of my pitch and airspeed well enough to only have these recoveries in practice. Part of the unusual attitude bit was interesting. While hand-flying, he had me look completely down at my lap, as though reading or checking the map or something, all the while trying to maintain altitude and heading. After a minute, he asked how I thought I was doing (I felt like I had probably climbed but stayed relatively straight) and then told me to recover. I was banking left and (I think?) descending at a very slow rate. Ha! Point made that you can't trust your sensations.
Getting back into KAUS was fine, although with the haze it was very hard to find until we were fairly close. The KLN89B (in-panel GPS) and ForeFlight were helpful. Another landing with variable light winds, not well done and hard with the stall horn squealing (on landing that's ok, but I was a foot or two high). Live and learn.
Oh, my other homework is to go over takeoff emergency checklists. Mark was unimpressed with my pre-takeoff briefing about emergency procedures should we need to abort or if we experienced a failure before or after rotation.
Except for &$*%# still saying "for 2MA" in response to some ATC comms, my radio work was ok. Improving. More room to improve.
