Learning from failures, learning from mistakes

Another canceled flight.  This time ultimately because of my oversight.  Here's what happened and what I learned.

I was up at 5 this morning to get going and get to the airport by 6:45 for the 7 am flight lesson in 2MA with Mark.

PIC failure #1: I didn't inspect the "reservation change" email alerting that the lesson had been changed to 4AF.  When I scheduled, I hadn't been able to add Mark to the reservation in the system and so he added himself; when I saw the subject in my mail app on my phone, I assumed the change email was about him adding himself to the flight and never opened it.

I got the keys from the desk for 2MA and signed it out.  On the ramp, it was 24 degrees and there was a 10kt wind down the runway.  It was cold, but no clouds or humidity to warrant canceling.  There had been patches of ice on the sidewalk and ice on the plants out front.  The plane was frost-free.  

I did a very cold but thorough preflight.  Right off the bat some residue on the ground below the left brake caught my attention, but it didn't look fresh and visual inspection of the brake system didn't reveal any drips or breaks or accumulation.  There was a bit of old-looking grime on the rim of a plate below the brake, but the right side had the same grime (and no spots on the pavement).  I finished the preflight (did I mention how cold it was?) and when Mark arrived I asked him about the brake, and his assessment was similar to mine.  So we continued inside and filled in the Hobbs log.

PIC failure #2:  The entry above mine, the only one for yesterday, was struck through.  I did notice the note "No fly" on the line, but did not read the note scribbled off to the side.  Every note on the side I've seen has been about adding adding oil, and while it's inexcusable to not take the two seconds to read the note, I had checked the oil already and it was good to go.  This note will be important later in our story.  

Cold, right?  Prime a little extra, clear prop, crank attempt #1 fails.  Prime a little more, crank attempt #2 fails.  Open the throttle a little more, crank attempt #3 fails.  Consult the POH for any other cold-weather startup tips.  No big deal, just run-of-the-mill cold-weather engine challenges.  After resting the starter for a few minutes, another crank got it going.  It was a rough start, but it caught and took and despite my pressure on the brakes, we were moving slowly and drifting right!  At this time, there were enough obvious clues to warrant a brake check, which Mark did while I was getting my Halo headset on, and there was no action coming from the left brake.  Puzzle complete.

Shutdown, push back.  Wrap up the Hobbs log.  Ohhhhhhh...  That note from the crossed-out flight said the left brake was leaking and they were canceling their flight because of it.  Damn.  I looked at the brake again, just for giggles.  This big red drip of brake fluid (on the bolt at the right) was not there during preflight; we must have squeezed it out in holding and testing the brakes.  I looked at the right side again, too, and it wasn't quite as grimy, but still grimy.

Lessons from this lesson:

- Read the flight-school reservation emails.  All of them.  I've canceled flights before because of being switched to a plane I didn't like.  I should know this.  But I made an assumption about the content of the change email based on what I was expecting, and that assumption made an a.... made a something out of me this morning.

- Pay attention to the log.  What's stupidly funny about this is that I was questioning whether the previous (executed) flight had written down the Hobbs/tach correctly, and I spent extra time inspecting that entry, totally skipping over the canceled flight that would have saved a ton of time and effort.  (Turns out both measures had x924.y in their readings, and I was in the wrong column so it looked like the previous flight was off by .4 or so; easy mistake, caught and corrected upon inspection.)  Why oh why didn't I read that note?  I had even thought in my head about yesterday's weather, and figured they had likely canceled because of the strong and gusty winds, not considering any malfunction.

- Aside from those pre-preflight oversights, preflighting did its job: I found an unknown (to me) and unexpected condition that would prove to impact the safety of the flight, so we paid attention and eventually canceled for safety.  Fly another day.

There is one thing that irks me, though.  The keys to a disabled plane were at the desk for checkout.  Had the keys not been there, I would immediately have checked my reservation to verify the tail number I should be asking for.  That would have short-circuited the frigid waste of time and we would have gotten to do the lesson (provided 2AF checked out)!  More than that inconvenience, however, is liability.  We cranked up with a bad brake that straight away showed it was unsafe.  What if we hadn't been able to brake and had rolled right into the next row of planes?  What if we had enough control that we didn't abort the flight, but upon landing had critical brake failure?  I assume that the flight school's insurance would be dreadfully unhappy about the situation.  As PIC, the responsibility would ultimately have been mine, but I'm a student and obviously the communication process is not foolproof for ensuring a faulty plane was not flown; removing the keys would have guaranteed the plane was not flown.

Jepp I/C 5: maneuvers full/partial panel, compass and timed turns, plus ILS 35R

We had a very cold but pleasant start to the morning, with 34 degrees and a 12kt crosswind.  I proved pretty much right off the bat that 3.5 weeks between flights is enough time to build up some dust.  Notably, I failed to drain the nose sumps and didn't catch that my seatbelt was unbuckled until pre-takeoff check!  Good gravies!  Checklist checklist checklist!

17R/35L was closed today, so all the planes were on 35R.  We followed a Southwest jet and a Gulfstream down the taxiway, with a reminder from Mark to use proper crosswind inputs while taxiing -- dive away from a wind from behind, up and into a wind from ahead.  I did our runup, and we were cleared to depart.  It was a very brief time before being handed over to departure, and she almost immediately gave us the freedom of own navigation.  That's when the foggles went on...

Level at 3000' we began maneuvers.  Constant rate descents and ascents, using the VSI as primary for pitch and aiming for 500 fpm (and accounting for the +100 error on the needle) and any speed we wanted (so ASI was primary for power, keep it in the green).  Those are fine, just need more practice to get the right pitch/power settings more directly.

Turns by mag compass.  Mark failed the vacuum system, which takes out the attitude indicator and the DG.  This is why the mag compass is required equipment on all planes.  :)  It's really just fine as long as you remember COSUN -- compass overshoots south, undershoots north.  So when turning right to a heading of 180, you actually turn roughly to indicated 210 because of compass error; once you roll out, it swivels back.  Roughly speaking, it's a 30-degree overshoot for a desired heading of 180; 20 degrees for headings of 150 and 210; 10 degrees for headings of 120 and 240; and right on target for due east and west.   It's the same gradients for turning to the north except it's an undershoot situation; if you want a right turn to a heading of 360, you turn roughly to  330, and when you roll out it keeps swiveling a bit.  This varies by latitude and those numbers actually apply for 40N; we're at 30N so the error is a tad less.  But those easy-to-remember rules get you pretty close and then the minor correction needed to capture the desired heading is easy.

That's how the mag compass behaves in a turn.  The other thing to know about compass error is how it behaves during straight-and-level flight, meaning holding heading and altitude.  Unaccelerated, it's solid!  Accelerated, ANDS -- accelerate north, decelerate south.  When holding altitude and heading, adding throttle to accelerate will induce a temporary indication of a turn toward the north; pulling back on the throttle induces a temporary indication of a turn to the south.  NBD.

Next was timed turns, which I hadn't done before.  The idea here is that a standard rate turn, easily achievable using the turn coordinator (provided you don't have electrical failure), which means at the proscribed bank you'll complete a full 360-degree turn in two minutes.  That's 3 degrees per second.  If you need to turn 60 degrees, roll into the turn and time for 20 seconds.  When making smaller turns, say less than 15 degrees, you use a half-standard rate turn (1.5 degrees per second); a 15-degree turn would take 10 seconds.  That's all well and good, just requires a little mental nimbleness.  I also had two areas to improve that will help make the timing method result in rollout closer to desired heading:  roll in faster and keep the ball centered.  The first turn was the worst, and I was about 15 degrees short of my target because of lolligagging into the turn and not using enough rudder.  Subsequent timed turns were better.

All of the turns were fine, but I need to keep my scan going a little faster.  I wavered on my altitude, but kept it usually within 100'.  I find I have a tendency to climb during turns and need to work on that.

We did combinations of these maneuvers on partial panel.  It's fine, just needs practice!  

Recovery from unusual attitudes on partial panel was fine, too.  For this exercise, you look down, optionally with eyes closed, the idea being to become completely detached from the state of the plane while the instructor puts it into any type of configuration.  Then you look up, take the controls, and recover.  If the plane is descending, first you level the wings, then stop the descent, then return to assigned heading and altitude.  If the plane is climbing, first you level the nose (don't want to be near a stall), then level the wings and return to the desired state.

Lastly we decided to request the ILS back into KAUS.  We were still 33 nm out, so had lots of time to brief the approach and get set up.  We loaded the I-HCE localizer into NAV1, but were to far to ident.  We also loaded it into the GPS (whose database expired two days ago and so would not be legal for RNAV approaches but can still be used for DME, which this ILS has on the plate).  Next, Mark dialed in the final approach course of 353 on the NAV1 CDI, briefed the missed (DA ~700', climb to 1000', climbing right turn to 1500', head to CENTEX VOR), They vectored us to intercept and cleared us somehow....  my memory is fuzzy here.  My brain was definitely saturated and I was feeling the workload, and that was with Mark doing com and nav!  Maintaining proficiency will be so important.  

Anyway, we intercepted and had to chase the radial a little to get on it, but once established I'd say it went fairly well.  It wasn't close to the standard I'm aiming for, but it's early in the process and will get better.  That relatively straight blue line on the left is the approach.  The closer we got, and the squirrelier the needles got, the more I was getting anxious about the transition to visual and about configuring for landing.  They had asked us to keep up our speed since half the runways were closed and little ol' student flight with two souls might be holding up commercial flights with a hundred souls.  I was getting concerned about slowing for flaps and all that, and at one point put out the first notch without first checking the airspeed, which was still over 120, so I pulled them right back in.

Eventually that notch of flaps did get used, and we were quite fast over the numbers.  There was a touch of crosswind, and it was nice and steady, so for the first time ever I felt competent and successful in maintaining runway alignment, pretty close to centerline even!  We floated and flared forever.  Seriously, forever.  And when I let us down, it was too early and we were still too high and worse we were still too fast, so Mark asked for the controls and got us right back up into ground effect for more forever.  I'm going to have to look at the track log and see just was our speed was over the runway.

But that was it!  Other than that bounce, it was a very good flight!  I felt cautiously competent, understood what we were doing, executed pretty well (practice will fine-tune it), learned some things and solidified some other knowledge and feelings for flight.

We did not do full-panel steep turns, slow flight or stalls this time out since we got off to kind of a late start.  Next time we'll have to get those in, and it's on to Jepp I/C 6: partial-panel steep turns, slow flight and stalls with review of everything else we've done so far (mainly from today's flight).  After that, we're pretty much done with the aviating-by-instrument part and will start incorporating navigation, beginning with using VORs and talking about NDBs (since the flight school fleet doesn't have ADFs).

California flying, last flight

Le sigh.  I made these notes and have kept myself so busy I never got back to write it all up!  Now I've forgotten a lot of the details, but I do remember how interesting the approach into Salinas was!  You basically fly past the airport into a valley, pick up a DME arc that swings you around to the ILS, and when you intercept you had better be turning because there's a mountain straight ahead!
 
lunch
self-serve fuel

link to post about traffic on final

clearance, "if not off by ..."
mountainside fire
bad 107 tracking, questioned by ATC
DME arc into Salinas

Leader radial to intercept

Great needle alignment at first, then more squirrely as we got closer

Tower for approach

Low approach, cancel IFR with tower, then VFR back to KSQL

Through the saddle

Over Apple headquarters, saw Moffett(?) field, NASA and Google ops

relatively straight-in for final, slow down to give 1st-to-land cirrus space

bumpy final and ok landing