Oh my word. I'm sitting in the hotel at 7:17 pm trying to scrape together the energy to continue sitting in this chair, typing.
After lunch, we departed VFR from 30, this time turning left to go toward Half Moon Bay, being wary to stay clear of the SFO Class B surface ring. Climb over the mountains.
Another enlightening exercise on our way to the coast was to use a dry-erase marker and mark the horizon on the side of the windshield, with an X for a reference point. The point here was that the sight picture doesn't have to be over the nose, and for me I frequently can't see over the nose, and for all of us there are times when our pitch doesn't allow it, so having a good idea of what to expect from a diagonal view is useful, too. After flying a bit straight-and-level using just that reference, we changed it up with some slow flight using that reference. I hate the stall horn. Or rather, I hate the precipice the stall horn is warning about. Does anyone like it? Does anyone like hanging out in a near stall? (For those of you that don't know, this is what it sounds like.) Changing sight picture, but you zero in on it and maintain. Then we pressed the exercise one step further by attempting to maintain altitude and heading using just that reference while going full-power to recover. If the X stays in the same place, the rudder pressure is correct.
Hello down there!
Jason did a steep turn so I could snap a few pictures of the coast, then we headed to Half Moon Bay for some landings and to play with slips since I have 80+ hours and only three crosswind landings (all on my solo!). First approach was straight-in and was way high so we just did a go around (right traffic). The number and order of patterns is a little vague to me right now, but he demonstrated the crosswind technique as well as options during a power-off landing to change the geometry of the approach and use a forward slip if necessary. At the key point in the pattern, turning base, in the 172, he likes to be at 20 degrees of flaps and 75 kts, which allows time and space to make choices, like turning in early when you're low or making a late turn to final if too high.
Half Moon Bay airport is just across that half-moon-shaped bay.
We did not have a crosswind, but practiced the required cross-control by lining up on one side of the runway during a low approach and using aileron to cross the runway while using rudder to keep the nose aligned down the runway. Jason demonstrated. Back and forth, weaving across the runway. This is a small move, smaller than what I was doing when I tried it on the next approach. I understand it, I know why you use the controls you use, but I don't like it. (Thanks, solo.) We did it a few more times and I felt like I was kinda starting to feel it. but really need practice.
Next it was DME arcs! I need to blog this in detail when I'm better rested, but let's just say that I was finally nailing it by the time we finished. The constant tweaking of the OBS, the checking of distance on the GPS, the heading coordination, the altitude monitoring, the heading changes to move to an arc of a different distance. It's a high workload operation. With no wind. At the end of the exercise, still arcing, Jason had me descend 1000' and use my checklist. Boom, fell apart. That was too much workload. I did not do the checklist and descended through the altitude (but stayed on the arc).
We pretty much came back after that. I think. I'm getting fuzzy brained. :)
