Pilot in training

Eh?

2008-02-07T15:31:00.000-05:00

What are they thinking? Our cats would be flippin' annoying in a plane. I mean, it's hard to even drive a car with them loose, but during landing? I guess this kitty is an old pro... And it leaves me wondering if there's any rule about pets being strapped in during taxi, takeoff and landing.

Long time, no post!

2007-12-14T11:09:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone! We're still alive over here in Virginia's historic triangle, having survived nearly four months with the new baby!

It's been a topsy-turvy ride, but we may finally be leveling off! Husband has made a few posts documenting our son's first few flights since leaving the womb. I've been back-seating it for all of our flights, but hope to get time in the not-too-distant future to do some refresher flights with Husband and maybe an instructor, too. Trouble is, we've "only" got Cirruses (Cirri?) at our disposal now, and I don't really want to put these more expensive planes through my re-learning! Plus I'm not ready for a glass cockpit or having to manage a turbo...

Anyway, just a quick note to wish you all well! I hope you have a fantastic holiday!

And in parting, here's my adaptation of "Rock-a-bye baby" for our Little Big Man:
Fly away, Evan
in your airplane.
Ride on the wind
from sea to mountain.
Soar with the birds
and dance with the clouds,
then come home, land safely
back on the ground!

Rededication

2007-09-04T11:11:00.001-04:00

[Update: changed the address of the family blog.]

I've rededicated my other blog to the new baby and family, so I'll stop posting about him here unless it's aviation-related!

New baby :)

2007-08-25T13:07:00.000-04:00

[Updated: added a picture of Evan and his daddy.]

Baby Evan arrived at 5:32 pm on Thursday, August 23. We got home from the hospital a little bit ago.

He's super, a great big healthy heap of softness! 9 lbs, 12 oz, 22 inches.

TOMORROW!

2007-08-22T20:48:00.000-04:00

6:30 am tomorrow we'll be at the hospital, having labor induced.... Wish us luck!

Not such a big day...

2007-08-19T15:39:00.001-04:00

Today is our due date. No sign that he'll make his appearance today. Hopefully soon, though!

We went out to the airport today so Husband could show me the new turbo SR22 GTS we're almost part owners of... it's not so easy to get in and out of for a person of my condition ;) but it is a gorgeous machine!

Busting out...

2007-08-10T20:57:00.000-04:00

Sorry it's been a while since I've posted. I'm in the skies vicariously now only through Husband and the blogging pilot community! The baby is due in 9 days, and he's certainly ready! This video will remove any doubt...

Dorks

2007-07-21T16:42:00.000-04:00

So, how sad is it that this morning on our tour of the hospital and maternity unit that we both kinda perked up when they said there's wifi?

Tragedy and risk management

2007-07-16T22:18:00.000-04:00

[Update: Husband had his morning trip with John and got more details. No cartwheel, the right main snapped on touchdown and they skidded through the backyard. He tried to radio a mayday in to PHF (the nearest airport) but was too low at that point, but a nearby twin-engine guardian angel heard and circled overhead, communicating with PHF. Within 2 minutes of landing, rescue vehicles showed up at the scene. John's wife had to have a pin put in her foot, but otherwise it was just bruises and scratches. An FAA inspector confirmed that there was water in the fuel filter and that led to the engine failure; the trike runs on premium auto gas, and in VA auto fuel contains (up to) 10% ethanol which allows water to be held in suspension, so the preflight sump tests can't necessarily clear water from the fuel. John was up in the Cirrus today, and he and his wife still intend to take their post-Osh Kosh trip in the plane. Kudos for not being scared off!]

I have a strange bit of perspective to share: Today we spent ~6 hours on I-85 returning home from visiting family down south. On this trip, we heard that our good friend and flying buddy and (former) co-owner of 388, John, had an emergency landing over the weekend in his ultralight with his wife on board; the engine died over a river and though the nearest land was a populated area, he performed the oft-practiced emergency procedures, got down to someone's backyard (the trike luckily doesn't need much room!), and landed. Unfortunately, the landing gear snapped, and the trike cartwheeled. They're banged up, but ok. John thinks there was water in the fuel filter that cause the engine to die (Husband will get more info tomorrow morning when they fly together in the Cirrus). The ultralight is the motorcycle of airplanes, as far as structure and personal protection go (and boy is it a thrill to hang out there in one!)...

~8:30 am, maybe, we passed an automobile wreck (luckily it was in the southbound lanes and we were heading north) where really all we could make out was the charred remains of what looked like a tractor trailer and a car. I don't know what happened, but it was obviously bad and at least one person died.

Then tonight after our childbirth class, we got home to find our street blocked off with a variety of emergency vehicles. A house a few doors down burned, most likely the result of a lightning strike from the thunderstorms we had all afternoon. I was working from home earlier and ~5 pm was IM'ing with husband when an exceptionally loud and close thunderclap nearly scared me out of my seat, and completely freaked the dog out. I am willing to put money down that that was actually that house being struck, that that was what started the fire, though the afternoon's rain must have kept it in a smoldering state until after we left for class ~6:45.

In driving, we rely on our instincts and reflexes to avoid trouble. It mostly comes down to how alert we are and what our immediate options are, but driving is so commonplace that most drivers out there (me included!) are pretty complacent on the road. Heaven help us if something goes wrong or some other person impacts our situation. That wreck could just as easily have happened to US.

In our homes, we expect to be safe. We don't expect to be struck by lightning and have the house burn around us. When that fire starts, though, it's pretty much out of our hands. That could just as easily have been OUR house that got scorched.

In flying, we're taught to be in control at all times, taught how to scan the air and the instruments to maintain alertness and stay ahead of the aircraft. We're taught how the systems work and how to troubleshoot them. If all else fails, the emergency procedures are second nature and from most emergencies, they say, the plane's occupants walk away. Accidents, collisions, failures and so forth still happen, but I like these odds a lot better.

Kind of a lot to take in in such a short period of time. We'll see what other lessons the prego brain extracts during tonight's sleep...

[Off-topic] Parental controls

2007-07-10T12:58:00.000-04:00

Do your parents decide before you are born when you will die?

(from Quirkology): "In 1999, Nicholas Christenfeld and his colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, uncovered evidence suggesting that a person's initials might affect perhaps the most important aspect of their life - the moment of their death. Using a large, computerised database of death certificates, they identified people whose initials formed a positive-sounding word (such as A.C.E., H.U.G. and J.O.Y.), and those that had very negative connotations, like P.I.G., B.U.M. and D.I.E. Using factors such as race, year of death and socio-economic status as controls, the researchers discovered that men with positive initials lived approximately four and a half years longer than average, whereas those with negative initials died about three years early.

Women with positive initials lived an extra three years, although there was no detrimental effect for those with negative initials. Further analysis suggested that those with negative initials were especially likely to die from psychological causes, such as suicides and self-inflicted accidents."

First of all, "statistics" is such a fantastic tool that it's useless. I prefer to look at the world in terms of binary probabilities, especially for predictive scenarios (but then again, what else is the ultimate use of gathering statistics?): There's a 50% probability that I'll die earlier than people who would be in my peer group in that study (that is, I will or I won't). There's a 50% chance that I'll get a good night's rest tonight (I will or I won't). There's a 50% likelihood that that tree in the backyard will fall over this summer (it will or it won't). Life gets a little simpler, eh? :)

I'm not sure what to make of the death-by-initials correlation for me and for Husband -- my initials are nonsense, and his could go either way (but we'll focus on the positive possibility)!

How about you all?

Other perspectives on the wind damage...

2007-07-06T10:03:00.000-04:00

More pictures here and here from visitors to JGG around that time.

Short newspaper article here.

The storm also took out the neighboring winery.

A few entertaining minutes...

2007-07-04T21:05:00.000-04:00

Take a read here.

[Off topic - stretching future soccer guy]

2007-07-04T09:12:00.000-04:00

Three minutes of recent dancing belly footage, but mostly slow dancing on this one evening...

Boo hoo :(

2007-07-03T13:35:00.001-04:00

It's official: 388 is totaled. Husband just got off the phone with the adjustor.

You know, we had prepared ourselves for this, and in many ways it's kinda the best thing for the situation because of certain life changes going on for us (some of which you know, some that are still private); it eliminates the hassle of trying to sell off a quarter share of an old (but fantastically reliable) plane.

But I still have tears in my eyes as I write this. The first plane we could call our own. The plane I trained in. The ONLY plane I've ever flown. The plane that overlapped with our pregnancy with our first child. I will miss its loyalty, its beautiful outdatedness. Most of all, I will miss its smell. It smelled mechanic, old, grimy and musty. But that smell is tied to so many strong and mostly good memories, most of which are documented here and here. Maybe they'll let me keep a floormat or something, and in 60 years when I'm completely off my rocker, I'll pull it out of its space-baggie, take an enriching deep breath, absorb the smell, and recall through the haze of a failing brain in intricate detail to the (great-?) grandchildren about learning to fly, about traveling with Husband (who will also be there, equally nuts), about the opportunities and geographies that open up to a pilot.

Several of you have noted that this doesn't have to be the end of the line for 388, and you're right. We'll see how things unfold. It does have a feeling of finality to it, though.

Thanks

2007-07-01T11:20:00.000-04:00

Thanks, everyone, for the support/commiseration/advice...

We stopped by the airport again yesterday ~5 pm and 388 was still shiny-side down. The insurance guy is supposed to come out tomorrow (Monday), I think, and has given approval to flip the plane right-side up whenever the airport personnel want to do so. We're blocking at least one hangar and one taxi aisle for parking (there are alternate routes, just not as convenient), so I was surprised to see it still in place yesterday.

On top of being 33 weeks pregnant and sad about our first plane, I have pink eye for the first time ever and awoke this morning to ants in the kitchen! Such diversity in life's little challenges... When it rains, it pours, eh?

At least I have the love of a good man... :)

There's got to be a morning after...

2007-06-30T10:17:00.000-04:00

Updated: Added pictures.

We scoped things out this morning, and it is just so sad to see 388 helpless on its back.

The wings are a little rumpled, the empennage is not quite straight or solid, ...

Kevin, the mechanic, was out this morning and he figures the insurance adjustor will total it, saying the wings will have to be wholly replaced and that fixing the empennage is a labor-intensive (read: expensive) job. Who knows about water and other damage to the avionics or interior in general. And we just did the annual a week ago! It's a 1968 172 with a current estimated value of $30-34k, so it probably won't take a whole lot of estimated repairs to get to that amount.

John, an instructor who lives to fly and just a super guy, had his tail-dragger parked down a few spaces. His was upside-down also. Kevin explained to us that it didn't flip tail-over-head like ours did, but flipped wing-over-wing, over a neighboring plane, taking out one plane's tail and damaging another to come to its resting point. After snapping the tie-downs. Rumpled wings, shattered windscreen, twisted empennage, ...

(John's plane is the white and blue one on the far right. It had been parked on the other side of the orange 172. The orange plane and the gray-and-yellow one facing the hangars had their tails clipped by it. The plane on the left has some holes in its skin. The plane in the foreground is in much the same condition as ours; this guy restored the interior himself a few years ago, replacing seats, doing the leather upholstery and interior panel coverings himself. So sad.)

Charlie, one of the linemen, said that non-owners were being turned away from the airport today, and that at one point there were ~75 cars stacked up of people coming to gawk. Kevin said there was one resident plane out on the ramp not damaged (out of probably 20); it just so happens to be the one plane that has never, ever moved the entire time we've been associated with the airport. Perhaps it's fused to the pavement.

All of the flight school's single-engine planes were damaged; luckily their twin so far appears to be ok. The handful of planes in the transient parking on the other side of the terminal also seem to have survived.

No words

2007-06-29T22:41:00.000-04:00

There's just nothing to be said.

We'd had some storms tonight, and we got a call a little before 10 pm saying our plane had taken some damage. Yeah, I'll say. We'll go back in the morning to see what's to be seen or done. What we could tell in the dark is that the we have a destroyed tail tip, bent propeller, bent wing strut, damaged leading edge of one wing, fuel leaking (around fuel cap, so probably just coming out the vent), various antennae damaged or broken off, left-side door hinge ripped off... Oh, and the interior is soaking wet with 1/2 inch of water pooling at the "top" of the windscreen. And also the tie-downs were still connected to the plane.

As we drove off, the rain began to fall harder, thicker, and with hail.

AWOS appears to have stopped reporting a few hours ago. I guess it took some damage, too. They say four planes are upside-down (we saw two others near us, all high-wings), and several came loose and collided with neighboring planes.

A sad day at JGG.

New solo pilot

2007-06-21T14:55:00.000-04:00

If you have a sec today, stop on by flyaway's training blog to congratulate him on his first solo flight early this morning! He's back on track after having lost his instructor to the airlines, and he's training in the ADIZ, which to a country flier like me sounds like a nightmare! :)

Good job!

Gut feelings and random thoughts

2007-06-05T15:30:00.000-04:00

My feelings on flying are changing as my gut changes, I'm sorry to say...

I'm ~3/4 of the way through the pregnancy, and certain activities are becoming uncomfortable. Like bending to pick something up from the floor. Like sleeping. Like sitting.

Like spending hours upon hours in airport seats or airline seats.

Our 9-day trip to the Canadian Rockies was really a good trip. We hit Calgary, Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper, Edmonton, and points in-between. I'd have to say that Banff was my favorite; a gorgeous little mountain town in a valley on a river surrounded by lush green mountains capped with snow, a town that's big enough to have interesting eating options but small enough to not be overrun with tourist-y shops. (It does have its share...) I'd really like to go back there when I get my body back so's to take advantage of the vast scope of outdoor opportunities -- hiking, rafting, biking, horseback riding, etc.

But spending 8+ hours in planes plus another 3+ hours in airports (thank you, weather delays) -- one way -- had my back screaming for mercy, and resulted in this policy: no travel longer than ~2 hours after the second trimester!

Beyond that, however, are the physiology management concerns, and this applied also to our flight in the 172 down to Asheville a few weekends ago. Amniotic fluid is pretty important for the developing baby (understatement), and it's cumulative; the recommendation is to drink at least 8 glasses of water per day (in addition to whatever other fluids like coffee or juice might be part of the daily regimen), plus another glass for each 15 minutes of exercise, plus 4 additional glasses on hot days with outdoor activity. That's a lot of intake, and it creates a lot of output, and with a shrinking bladder capacity, frequent breaks are necessary.

I'm not typically a germophobe, but airliner bathrooms really gross me out, as they do most everyone I know. The 6-year-old boy in 15b surely doesn't have the best aim to begin with, so throw in a little turbulence and you've got a situation that's less than ideal for any subsequent passenger. Ick and shudder.

And in a 172, that's an expensive potty break.

So you see where I'm going here. Just bitching about the growing discomforts of flying whilst preggers. I'd guess that it's just as bad for driving nowadays, too, but haven't tested it. Discomforts of traveling.

On another note, United gets mixed reviews from this trip. Our layover was at Chicago O'Hare, and the landings there both on the trip out and coming back were really soft and smooth, so pats on the back for those pilots. On the ORD-YYC leg, they announced that ATC would be tuned in on channel 9 in the armrest audio. That was fun, listening to the busy stuff going on at ORD and the calls in transit. (Note to self: what is "metering?" Some kind of departure load-balancing service?) Sometime at cruise altitude, the captain came on and advised us that he'd be "giving a dissertation" if anyone wanted to listen in on channel 9. He was amusing and talked for probably 20 minutes or so about the FO's experience, his experience, the history of the Boeing 737 (such as we were on), fuel ferrying and consumption/performance trade-offs in a time of high prices, etc. He was pretty cool and sounded very friendly.

Other United issues, though, were unusual and unpolished to me. For instance, during the pre-taxi safety instructions, it appears to be United policy to turn the cabin speakers down way low and to select the crew member with the worst diction and recitation skills to do the announcement. The phrasing of the announcements was bad, too; they seem to have accepted the first draft. The one that seemed very odd to me was the prepare-for-landing announcement: stow carry-ons, tray tables and seat backs in their full upright and locked position, seat belts fastened, and "in the case of an emergency after landing, leave all carry-ons behind"... They had already emphasized that in the case of any emergency all carry-ons should be left behind, so why repeat it for landings? Do they have a history of landing problems? Are they just trying to give the aviophobes a little nudge in the last-minute freak-out direction?

Ok, enough blathering for now, back to work! I'll post a few pics from the trip soon, and promise to be more positive! End communication.

Word!

2007-06-04T12:19:00.001-04:00

Indeed!

Sleek, but suspicious

2007-05-11T10:40:00.000-04:00

I found one of these in the garage this morning. At least, I think it's one of these.

I was pulling out of the garage and saw it peeking its head out. I put the Jeep in park and bounded out to get a closer look -- snakes don't bother me in the least, and this guy looked pretty big and cool. But as I got closer, this new risk-minimizing reflex kicked in: Being preggers, how close is safe to a snake if I don't know whether its venomous? That was kind of a strange wall to hit.

Well, shoot, at least I had the camera in the car. I'll post one of my pictures later, but here's what the guy looks like. I'd estimate that it was between three and four feet long, but it's pretty hard to tell when you can't grab him and stretch him out! Husband thought from the pic I showed him on the camera that he was at least four feet. (Image from the Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries.)

We have lots of lizards around the house, and occasionally they'll hang out in the garage. We've had the good fortune to find nests of baby snakes in the backyard when mulching, and just transplant them farther back in the woods off the back of the property. This is the first time I've seen a snake in the garage. And with a snake this big, I worry about the bunnies living under the porch, adjacent to the garage!

Ah ha ha ha

2007-05-10T14:07:00.000-04:00

One of the non-aviation blogs I really enjoy is Scott Adams' Dilbert Blog. His daily posts are always entertaining, even the political ones or the ones that fundamentally are just stupid.

I'd guess that by using today's post as a metric, we're uncool and all awesomeness must be questioned.

It's crummy anyway...

2007-05-03T11:14:00.000-04:00

We've been cursed/blessed with some stunningly gorgeous days here recently, and yet Husband and I haven't gotten up to fly. Now, we can't even get off the ground if we wanted to!

Her Royal Majesty and the President of the United States are gracing our lil' ol' town for the 400th anniversary celebration at Jamestown this weekend and next weekend. That gray circle around JGG -- our homebase -- is a TFR that lasts through tomorrow sometime and that covers pretty much all of Williamsburg (Colonial and contemporary), and the one just southwest of the airport is right over Jamestown Island. Overflying the island is standard procedure for entering right traffic for 13 down here, and frequently for left 31 traffic as well.

Luckily the weather is really crummy today (even if it does still qualify as VFR), so it's easy to not be mad about not being allowed to fly.

The Good, The Bad, and The (Plane) Weird

2007-04-28T14:16:00.000-04:00

The Good
In my brief time as a pilot, student and otherwise, I've had one flight that really comes to mind as "ideal." It could also be that whole temporal relevance thing -- It was one week ago today! [Read about it in more detail and see pictures here.]

It was a really great flight. The air was mostly smooth, the visibility was good, I had a good landing at a new airport, and everything went right. An easy, fun, peaceful VFR day flight.

The reason for the flight was ideal, too. To celebrate Husband's birthday, we were taking a day trip to a new destination for our first real $100 hamburger run. Good food, good flight conditions, good company, .... Could it get any better?

The Bad
So what's the opposite of that good day? Oh, dear, hands down -- the solo. I don't even want to rehash it to summarize.

The (Plane) Weird
I don't have much first-hand experience with weird things yet, so here are a few flying-related oddball items out there in internetland:
Old airplane designs
Strange aircraft designs, I'm especially confused by the Blohm und Voss BV 141.
Brave helicopter pilot
Airplane coffin

Well, that explains it...

2007-04-26T10:27:00.000-04:00

The Leesburg FSS had some problems last weekend.

When we went up the DelMarVa peninsula for Husband's birthday trip on Saturday, I had used the AOPA RTFP to file a VFR flight plan. At 10:14 am ET I called Leesburg Radio from ~2000' 2 nm north of JGG and opened the flight plan. When we got to GED, I called 1-800-WX-BRIEF to close it, and was on hold for 8 1/2 minutes.

It was the first time I had ever waited more than 2 rings for an answer. When that answer came, it was an automated (Lockheed) system instead of a person, also a first. Then the long hold time as I was assured that my call was important to them and that they were experiencing higher than usual call volume.

And I just figured the skies were crowded on such a gorgeous day!

Birthday Jaunt

2007-04-21T17:02:00.000-04:00

We just got back from Husband's birthday day trip (his birthday is later in the week, but today was irresistible) up to KGED (Georgetown, DE). It was a really nice trip! He did 3 hours of sight-seeing, and I got 3 hours of flight time.

We left JGG by 31 around 10 am, turned west for the noise abatement. I called Leesburg Radio and opened our VFR flight plan, then headed northeast for Mobjack Bay and the narrowest passage across the lower Chesapeake Bay. We got to our target bay-crossing altitude of 7500' a few minutes before running out of land, and up there it was a little chilly even though on the ground it was already in the upper 60s. The air was nice and smooth, and the bay was already thoroughly dotted with boats.

It was a gorgeous, nearly cloudless day with good but not "severe clear" visibility. Once we crossed the bay, I took us down to our cruise altitude of 5500' and pointed us NNE. We'd be overflying Accomack County (MFV, I think), traffic for which is frequently heard all the way down at JGG. We flew along the eastern seashore, Chincoteague and Assateague. We flew just west of Wallops Island, a military field (maybe AF?), and could see the buildings of Ocean City, MD, off at the very edge of the Atlantic Ocean.

It was a super trip, the kind of really good and easy trip that perfectly exemplifies why I learned to fly. Husband is putting up some video he took en route and also of my landing at GED (below). When we landed and were directed to transient parking, three ground crew members came out to help us push back and with chocks, and within moments the fuel truck was there to top us off; great service here.

Landing here for me was pretty neat. It's the first time since finishing training that I've gone to an unfamiliar airport, or gone on an unfamiliar cross-country flight (as PIC). I did the usual preflight prep, checking weather, using RTFP for course plotting and filing the flight plan, checking for TFRs, etc. I had picked out several airports along the way and printed out their kneeboard pages from the AOPA database, including GED's, of course. But actually going to that airport with so little research was neat. The only other time I've really gone to "new" airports was during training, and as a student I was anal (who, me?!?!?!!!) about knowing every available detail about the airport and surrounding area so there would be no surprises. I knew I had everything I needed for the destination, we'd have two GPSs and the sectional, so we were good to go without having to spend two hours planning and analyzing the trip! Approaching the airport, Husband helped me plan our descent from 5500' to pattern altitude of 1050', I executed that and got into the traffic flow with ease. Training apparently worked as it was supposed to have worked, because there were none of the comfortable visual cues of homebase, just the runway to use as a guide for the pattern and everything went just right.

Sussex County Airport (GED) has a nice little restaurant called the Flight Deck. They've got a good-looking menu, and we were both delightfully satisfied with our meals; a ($100) cheeseburger and onion rings for Husband, and broiled flounder with coleslaw and sweet potato casserole for me.

After a nice lunch, we paid for our fuel and headed out to the Delaware Aviation Museum, which is right there on the grounds. Out in the grass between the taxiway and the runway they have a collection of deteriorating Migs. I thought the noses had a neat design.

We then went through the museum, guided by a nice lady name Charlie. It's not a big place, but there are lots of neat artifacts. Apparently, all of the stuff there was collected by Larry, a B-24 (or 25?) pilot who lives in the area. Here are two of the exhibits in there. On the right, those are recon cameras; thank goodness for the tiny digital technologies we have nowadays!

Just before finishing up with the tour, the medevac helicopter pilot who was on waiting duty came in and said a Corsair was in the pattern. We went out to see it land, and it was followed by a P-40. Those things are huge! The wing design of the Corsair is really neat, too.

Departing the airport was easy. We had come in on 22 and departed 4. We turned out to the west, dodged some restricted airspace, stayed well east and south of the DC ADIZ, and picked our way back home. The air was a lot choppier as we came home, and I abandoned our 4500' first choice for cruise and went up to 6500' where it was generally much smoother. I had some of that weird unsettling feeling in the turbulence, which was nothing as far as turbulence goes, but stuck it out (I just annoyed husband with some of the whining...); luckily most of the return trip was smooth! Just some thermals as we move into warm weather...

We landed back at JGG, safe and sound, on 31 around 4 pm. We swapped places so Husband could get a trip around the pattern in before we shut down for the day.

What a nice day! :)

I'm up to 67.1 total hours now. And both takeoffs and both landings were one-handed.

Day trip

2007-04-20T17:48:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow we're planning a trip up to KGED for two $100 hamburgers and a visit to the Delaware Aviation Museum, and maybe a nice walk into town. Looks like it should be a beautiful east-coast day for a flight up the DelMarVa peninsula!

In the completely unrelated category of fun with babies in utero, here's a baby-kick indicator on my burgeoning belly.... No fat jokes, please -- I can still see my toes.

Refresher flight

2007-04-10T21:43:00.000-04:00

Goals:

Brief, fun local flight.
Takeoff and landing practice.

Flight:
Husband sauntered into my office this afternoon around quarter after five, sat down, looked out the window and said, "Man, looks like a nice day for flying." I've been married to him long enough to know what that means! Ten minutes later we were on our way home to pick up the flight bag and camera.

The plan for the evening would be for me to knock the dust off. It had been a little over three weeks since I flew, and the last flight wasn't good. We were coming back from down South for a family visit, and I had taken off and was going to fly for the first leg. We weren't 500' AGL when some turbulence started kicking us around, and while I've flown in enough chop for it to not be unsettling (hello, checkride?), I was borderline panic-stricken! I could not explain it, but almost immediately I had to pass control over to Husband. It was a terrible feeling then, and really shook my confidence that I would react so strongly, so quickly to conditions that really weren't that bad. I've thought about it so much, and honestly can't come up with anything better than "hormones" as an explanation. Had I been alone, I would have stayed in the pattern, landed and deplaned. (And no, I didn't blog about it; I haven't been able to make sense of it.)

I'll just tell you the ending for this evening's flight first -- it was a good, easy flight with no strange feelings and mostly decent work.

As we rode to the airport, I couldn't help but be apprehensive. The memory of the terrible and inexplicable feelings from a few weeks prior mixed with the knowledge that I haven't had any real practice in about a month left me feeling, well, just apprehensive. I didn't say anything to Husband because my intention was for it to be a good flight and I knew he'd be able to take over at any time should we have a repeat.

Blah, blah, blah... My feelings this, my feelings that. Rant on myself. Ok, stream of consciousness over.

Preflight was good. Husband snapped a few pics of the shiny new 4-hour-old tach. We decided to go to PHF (towered) for two stop-and-go landings. Husband showed me his new leaning technique (throttle to 1500, lean until it starts to drop, enrichen to stabilize it -- this left the mixture rod out about the length of my pointer finger up to the second knuckle). We taxied out to 13 and departed with a nice normal takeoff and a climb just to the west of the power station.

Once we were clear of the power station and at 2600' MSL (clear of Fort Eustis' airspace), we pointed toward PHF. I called them when we were over the dead fleet to let them know where we were and that we had info Quebec. He told me to report a 2-mile left base for 7. I had a bit of confusion making out the airport. I know PHF, but I've never used 7-25, had never approached from this angle, and it was hazy enough that I couldn't quite pick out the V-shaped runways from where we were, so I was a little off-kilter not being able to immediately visualize the approach plan.

Once we passed Fort Eustis and officially entered PHF's airspace, I began my descent, pulling power out for a fairly aggressive sink rate (5 nm from the airport (center) with 2600' to lose). As I turned onto base I called the tower, who cleared me for #2 behind a Cessna on final doing a touch-and-go, then instructed me to make right traffic for the second landing and report midfield downwind. I repeated the clearance, kept the descent, and grinned a teensy bit as a regional jet announced he was ready at 7 to depart. (Typically at PHF, 7-25 is the big plane and commercial traffic runway and 2-20 is the GA runway.) The tower told him to hold for me. The grin wasn't because we were making him wait, but rather that I felt like I was really part of the system, not just some student gumming up the works.

Anyway, feelings again, eh?

I turned final and Husband supplied the requested 20 degrees of flaps. My airspeed was good, holding just under 70 mph and it was a pretty decent landing, despite the wacko visual cues of such an enormous runway. So's to minimize the time on the ground, Husband pulled in the flaps while I brought us to a stop and put the carb heat cold; the rest of the post-landing checklist didn't apply since we were going right back up.

With gradual full throttle, we were on our way again. Shortly we reached 1000' and were at midfield before I knew it. Another call to the tower and we were again cleared #2 for 7 (this time for the option) behind the same Cessna who was doing another touch-and-go. I repeated and stated "cleared for a stop-and-go." This time around I got to do a more standard approach, starting my descent with flaps abeam the numbers and so forth. It should have been a good landing, but alas... I got slow really high and the stall warning came on. I mean, probably 50' up still. Runway 7 is enormous, so missing the numbers by half a mile would still leave plenty of room for lil' 388 to land just fine. I put in a little power and relaxed some back pressure. The horn stuttered off-and-on for the rest of the descent, and we landed quite firmly. It wasn't pretty, but it also wasn't a bouncer. I suppose I'd sum it up as a clumsy landing. Husband instinctively grabbed the yoke, and I told him I had it... actually, my memory could totally be wrong but I think he grabbed it after we touched down. I'll have to ask him about that.

We cleaned up expeditiously and again departed. Straight-out, after listening to an incoming aircraft's call from somewhere out ahead of us, I told PHF I'd like to depart straight-out then return to JGG. He, bored, okayed that. We turned off to go up the peninsula, keeping an eye out for the incoming traffic. After a few minutes, PHF alerted us that the plane should be no factor at 2000' off our right wing. We were at 2600 by then, and Husband picked out the other plane with ease.

He wanted to try a simulated engine loss on takeoff to see what the sight-picture would be for attaining the recommended 80-mph glide for that emergency in that configuration. As we neared a field, I set the trim for takeoff, pitched us up and went full throttle. As we slowed to Vy, we stabilized and then pulled the throttle (and carb heat) out. The nose quickly pitched itself over -- no leaning forward on the yoke from either of us -- and before long we were nearing 100 mph. The training mag articles all emphasize how (1) imperative the response and (2) extreme the nose-down are for an engine failure on takeoff. Perhaps it depends on when during takeoff the failure occurs, because our Vy is 83 mph, and best glide is 80, and it did not require an extreme input from us at all. Had we been climbing at Vx (65), well, I still am not sure since the plane pointed itself down so rapidly.

With that exercise behind us, we returned to 2500' and continued the scan for traffic into the setting sun through the haze (super for perceived visibility) as we approached JGG. Winds were reported to be calm, and an airport advisory indicated to land 31. We overflew Busch Gardens and Husband called out the rides he saw and what they were doing; some folks were down there having a nice (albeit chilly) evening!

At home base we crossed midfield to enter left downwind for 31. I felt way wide, so I brought my downwind in a little tighter, but then my base ended up way short and I overshot final. It wasn't awful, and I'm comfortable maneuvering back to centerline, so I chose not to scrap the landing. I was lined up and doing ~80, whereas 70ish would have been more appropriate for that stage. I pulled the power, and just then the swamp monster gave us a little jab. I put a touch of power back in to get us through it with a little more force and accepted that we'd land long; it was all still well within limits. I was not keeping centerline very well, and part of my effort was diverted to recovering that. As we got down into the runway environment, we were still way fast so I went to idle and tried to fly just over the pavement while bleeding off airspeed. I didn't want to pull back much for fear of ballooning, so I tried to ride it out. Unfortunately, my height judgment is, aside from being rusty and aside from being quintessentially feminine, not spectacular and we flew onto the runway. Not the good kind of "greased it" "flew onto the runway," but rather planted it with resolve onto the runway. The angle was shallow enough that no bounce or ouchy resulted... well, actually, we did have a flicker of a nosewheel shimmy, but nothing like the jaw-rattling shimmies we experienced before the dampener and wheel were replaced.

We rolled out, cleaned up, called for fuel, shut down and went home. As we left the airport, we stopped to snap a few pics of the beautiful sunset.

Despite having two firmer-than-satisfactory landings, all-in-all it was a really good flight. I got more airtime. Husband got to be my passenger and we got to go together. Well, the whole family got to go! And perhaps most importantly, I demonstrated that whatever that panic situation was three weeks ago, it was an isolated event and not some new gonna-be-a-mommy-so-must-eliminate-all-risk subconscious freak-out policy.

Discussion:

Co-pilots: Having a co-pilot, or a pilot-not-flying, is great. It's really good and reassuring to know he's there and can help. Husband is quite talkative in-flight (honey, that's not a complaint!) and it generally helps me to continue learning. He knows the things that irk me, and can tailor his pointers around those!

Power and landings: Landing #2 at PHF saw too little power; we had bookoos of room and a whining stall horn. More power would have stretched out the descent and eased that landing. The landing at JGG had too much power; I had deliberately put it in to get past El Chupacabre but left it in quite longer than I should have, making it an unnecessarily long landing.

Hours logged this flight: 0.9
Hours logged total: ?
Take-offs and landings this flight: 3
Take-offs and landings total: ?
PIC (solo) hours total:: ?

Baby is a boy!

2007-04-09T10:36:00.000-04:00

We're growing a son! He's got the right number of arms and legs, a good strong heartbeat, a wicked-cool looking spine (really neat on ultrasounds!), and nicely defined muscles, too, don't you think? :)

News on the ground

2007-04-02T11:07:00.000-04:00

The baby-pilot-in-making is now kicking, rolling and punching such that Daddy can feel it, too. Exciting!

Finally!

2007-04-02T11:01:00.000-04:00

I never thought I'd get back to it and get it done! The writeup of the second part of my practical flight test.

The Killing Zone, killer #1

2007-03-20T21:41:00.000-04:00

I've finally made it through the first real chapter in the book. The first few pages cover statistics and give background/justification as to why 50-350 hours of flight time is the range dubbed "the killing zone."

I have to agree with whoever said it a few months back (IFR Pilot? Diary of a Private Pilot?) -- the lack of editing on this book is distracting! Seriously, people, a high school kid with a pen could have done wonders to improve the grammar and flow!

That aside, however, there's good information in there. The first "real" chapter, as I've called it, covers the first major reason why/how pilots die: VFR flight into IMC.

I have to be entirely truthful here. My meager three hours of under-the-hood training showed me that, while I can certainly fly by visual reference to horizon, I trust my instruments more than my own perception and am very comfortable with them. Given that, the idea of flying in clouds has not been intimidating. Before you go yelling and screaming that I'm exactly the kind of pilot who becomes an IMC statistic, my training dictates that clouds ahead warrant a 180 and that's what I'd do. (Hopefully; some of the cited NTSB reports and "survivor" stories describe get-there-itis and other judgment flaws that lead to problems and I assume they were all good and diligent pilots beforehand, too.) In the book, Paul Craig points his finger at me and says my attitude is the reason young (read: inexperienced) pilots die. I'm a young pilot. I don't want to die.

I gleaned several useful points from the chapter that tempered my fearlessness (again, fearless does not equate to disregard of common sense) with regards to flying solely by instrument reference. First, and worst, is the idea of instrument failures and how subtle they can be. The fact that gyros wind down slowly and feed you increasingly incorrect information but at a such an insidiously slow pace that you're willing to continue "correcting" your trajectory to level off or fly straight is terrifying to me. On our plane, the suction gauge is at the very far right of the instrument panel, and while it's part of the standard scan, I could see missing the cue that something was amiss based on its read-out in a time of extra stress. Our plane also has this hideously bright red protrusion from the middle of the instrument panel that lights up when suction is lost; I've seen that at engine startup when the attitude indicator was sad and dead, but with some added RPMs the vacuum system kicks right up. Would it come on promptly at the start of trouble?

I don't know airplane systems well enough to know how to recognize or troubleshoot every problem (or most problems, even). Carb ice, check. Loss of suction, kinda check. Blocked pitot tube or static port? Maybe, but it would take longer for me to catch on to that. This chapter spent several pages discussing how to recognize such failures and what to do about them.

The second item is the physical disorientation. My naivete' says it wouldn't be that bad since it's easy to read and rely on the instruments (barring failures). Husband described his IFR training and how very, very different it is to have foggles on and fake like there are no visual cues to overcome versus actually being in a white-out cloud situation where the body very loudly insists on assessments that just aren't right. To demonstrate, he encouraged me to try to keep reading the book while he stood a foot away yelling at me. The book goes into a little detail about how the ear participates in a sense of equilibrium and how motion affects your perceived sense of stability in three axes.

I'd love to do one of those test simulators, the ones where the statistics for VFR pilots are really bad, like the longest surviving pilot lasted 8 minutes but the average was 20 seconds. I'll take their word for it that it is that deadly; I'm not one to tempt fate. But that is just difficult to believe without firsthand experience. When we finally move up to a plane Husband feels comfortable with for IFR trips, he'll have to take me into the soup to demonstrate...

Technical difficulties over?

2007-03-19T10:03:00.000-04:00

Husband suggested it was probably a database issue at Bloglines (the reader I use) that was making it show up funny, and in fact today it's back to normal, so, good, I guess... :)

Technical difficulties

2007-03-18T09:21:00.000-04:00

Something is amiss in the blogger.com world....

If you're subscribed to this blog using the blogspot atom feed, you're probably now seeing posts from a blog called "Great blogs for you to use." Of course if you're seeing those posts, you won't see this one. I haven't determined what the problem is yet but am looking into it. Perhaps it will resolve itself in time.

I recommend updating your blog reader to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/pilot-in-training instead.

Checkride part 2 part 1

2007-03-16T19:17:00.000-04:00

The first installment of my checkride flight finally went up. I hope to finish the rest of it with only another hour or two of work...

In case your feed reader missed it on account of the post being back-dated, it's here.

I'm so sorry for the delay! I'm ashamed that it's been 3 weeks! But yay -- I've been a full-fledged pilot for 3 weeks! :)

Neat :)

2007-03-15T10:44:00.000-04:00

If you get Flight Training magazine, check out page 45 of the April issue. If you have an AOPA membership, you can also check it out here.

Should sound familiar if you've been reading along here since September...

Getting side-tracked...

2007-03-11T21:01:00.000-04:00

I'm now behind by two flight posts -- the checkride (still!) and yesterday's flight with Husband.

But I'm gonna post on a semi-unrelated topic anyway...

Aviation. Aeronautics. NASA. The universe.

Maybe it's not so unrelated after all...

Husband sent me a link to this 6.5-minute video a while back, and it got buried in my inbox, but I finally dug it up tonight and watched. It's pretty neat, especially when you're fascinated by the topic but, as they note, in your day-to-day life you just don't think about it that much. (There's some series available in full online that's pretty good, if you want more -- Husband, what is it? Is it a Nova program?)

I did have to laugh out loud, though... Not on account of the dancing dork (it's only a few seconds, bear with it), but when they said "8 planets in our solar system." It really caught me off-guard! I guess the change to that fundamental piece of knowledge hasn't sunk in yet, because when they said that, I flashed forward 10 years to when our baby is in elementary-school science class learning about the solar system, and how weird it will be to say "Back when I was in school, there were 9 planets." I wonder if they'll learn about Pluto's demotion, or if the textbooks will even mention that it was ever a planet.

The easiest hours

2007-02-27T14:04:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, I still owe you details about the checkride and I'm working on it! Here's a teaser... the METAR when I showed up at the airport Saturday morning; needless to say, it was a tense hour of go/don't-go fretting leading up to the scheduled departure time:
KJGG 241401Z AUTO 33015G22KT 10SM CLR 02/M16 A3027 RMK AO1

This morning Husband and I went up for the easiest 1.4 hours I could possibly get -- as his safety pilot! :) And so it begins! He did a good job. We did the VOR 9 and VOR 27 approaches with holds and all that down at Franklin (FKN), then a VOR check just west of AKQ at the WAIKS intersection, then the HCM VOR approach to JGG for a very well-executed circle-to-land on 13. Husband is good. :)

As a completely off-topic side note, a warning: I'm trying to resolve some identity theft issues right now and one thing the bastard(s) did was to open a Macy's credit card. Ok, fine. I saw it on my credit report as "MACYDSNB", called them up and they closed it. Today I was giving ye olde credit reports another perusal, and a new account with the same institution information appeared as "VISDSNB." I figured another credit card had been opened, but it turns out that Macy's is just a shady creditor. When they open a store account, they also automatically open a VISA account with a $10,000 credit limit and tie it to the same card so their store card can be used at any retailer that takes VISA. No consumer approval or application required (not that I applied for the Macy's card to begin with!). Shady. So I called them again and verified that the Macy's account was closed and asked that this account also be closed. They complied, but that just seems so wrong. Be advised...

Checkride Part 2b: Landings and Debrief

2007-02-25T23:59:00.000-05:00

Oh, goodness! What mixed emotions! I knew I had been doing well overall and was feeling really good about that as I got AKQ in the GPS and took us back there, but I knew that the real test was to come: if the winds were as random and variable and gusty as they were when we left, the landings portion of the checkride was going to be a challenge! Plus, the possibility of the never-before-attempted forward-slip to a landing loomed...

As we got within ~10 miles of the airport, I dialed in the ASOS. Not good news. I don't remember the exact numbers now, but I do clearly remember the sinking feeling I got when I heard them. We'd be landing runway 2 in sketchy, variable, gusty conditions.

We were on the wrong side of the airport for downwind for 2, so I decided to cross mid-field and check out the wind triangle. At that particular moment, it was perpendicular to the runway, indicating a direct left crosswind. Ok, fine, but is that what it would be in another minute or two?

As I crossed the field, someone announced they were on downwind. Eek! We were a few hundred feet above pattern altitude, and had been listening to CTAF the whole time, but I certainly had my eyes on the ground while looking for and assessing the wind situation! My instant decision was to stay straight (direct perpendicular crossing would minimize the time we might be near each other), ascend a bit more, announce my position again, and look like crazy for the bogie. I asked Linda if she had the other plane, and after a few seconds she said she had them, they had just then turned from crosswind onto downwind, and by now we were past the downwind path he'd be taking. (It turns out it was a local pilot that she knows well -- was this a test?!?!)

After a moment to chill the heartbeat -- the scare of a mid-air collision on a checkride! -- I enacted the next step in the plan. Since I was high and heading away from the airport, I announced my position again and intention to do a right-360 (well, 270 really) while descending to pattern altitude to join up on downwind near midfield. That would also give the other plane time to get out ahead of us. By the time I got to downwind, we could see him well ahead on base.

Then Linda asked me to start with a soft-field landing. I know how to do one, but thinking that this would be one of those times to demonstrate conscientious use of a checklist, I pulled out the maneuver flipbook and turned to the right page. While I was calling out the list, it got choppy over the trees and I set the book down to do the aviate thing. She commented that we were a little too close to the ground anyway to be reading instead of flying. I felt a little embarassed. Oh well, shake it off and land...

Since the winds were all sketchy, I wanted to have a long enough final to assess and make decisions, so I extended my downwind a bit. It was bouncy all the way down, and I was right on target for the numbers, nose up, right past the road and next to the hangars. The mains touched down pretty gently, and then SLAP! The nose came down firmly. I immediately said that that definitely didn't qualify as a soft-field landing, though I had set it up pretty well, but I didn't know why the nose rotated down so dramatically unless the winds just gave out at that moment. She said that on a day like this, that wouldn't be surprising, but to go do it again.

Blech. Not off to a good start. I turned around at the mid-field turn and back-taxiied for 2. With a normal takeoff, I was back in the left pattern for another soft-field landing. This time around was much the same as the first, bumpy and a long final. This time, though, she told me to aim for just past the treeline as my touchdown point, which was maybe 1/5 of the way down the runway, so that the wind might be broken up some when I touch down and to carry a few extra mphs. I did so, and was pleased to have landed at her target, but it was still not as soft as I'm capable of doing. She asked me to turn around and back-taxi again, then do a short-field takeoff and landing. I guess that soft-field was good enough!

This time, before leaving the mid-field turnaround, I pulled out the checklist and scanned both the takeoff and the landing procedures. Again, I know them, but use of the checklist at an appropriate time... you know...

The short-field takeoff was typical. The short-field landing was crap! I bounced! OMG!!!! Bouncing on my checkride! My first touchdown was right on the numbers, as requested, but the second one was a little farther. Despite the bounce, I still stopped in a pretty damn short distance. But I was dying inside! I was so flunked! My mind flashed to having to tell Husband and Chuck that I did 5 hours of great work followed by the capstone terrifically horrible landing to cancel it all out! How miserable!

I powered up and got down to the turnaround, wanting to crawl under the seat and have a good cry, when Linda asked what went wrong. I flared late, maybe the shifty winds were hosing me again, .... She said she was pretty sure that the winds were the culprit (I think she sensed my withered insides and was being nice) and asked me to go up again for a forward-slip landing this time. As we back-taxiied, she talked about one of the benefits of more experience is the use of a touch of power to cushion a badly executed flare and also to give the subsequent landing after a bounce a chance of being soft.

I was listening with my ears, but my heart was still sinking. On the one hand, if that was bad enough to fail me, would she have told me to go again? On the other hand, with just one, maybe two landings left, was she just letting me get those out of the way so that when I had to come back for the retest I'd just have to do a short-field for her? And saving the one manuever that I've never, ever done for last! The torture of it all! Ok, so I'd be coming back to retest on two things... My inner child was sad.

But as I turned around for my takeoff, I snapped to and got back on the ball. Normal takeoff, and since she knew I had never slipped as part of a landing she coached me on downwind, emphasizing that staying aligned with the runway would be the biggest challenge today and to just feel it out and correct as necessary. As we got around toward base, she suggested aiming for the treeline and carrying a tad bit of extra airspeed. I set up my aim, set up the slip, descended, stayed aligned, got past the trees, and as I started to let out the slip I realized I was not going to make the 400' touchdown zone (starting from the beginning of the trees, anyway) but it would be close. Since I was going a little fast, we floated, and floated, and floated, and then had a firm (but bounceless!) touchdown. Except for the fact that it was so long, I was pretty happy with my first slipped-in landing. I could do it again and would do it better.

Even being long, we were able to turn out midfield. She told me to taxi back and park. NO! That must have clinched it! I had failed! I bounced the short-field landing and missed the landing zone for the forward slip. I had used up all of my second chances! :( :( :( :( :(

I don't think she could tell, but I was mortified and shaking as we went back to the terminal. I turned the plane around and parked facing the runway. As I did the shutdown checklist, she pointed out that a Diamond, flown by one of the high-hour local pilots, was coming in and said we'd watch and see how he handled the variable winds. He looked about like I had felt -- wings constantly bobbing around. He landed pretty long, too.

Linda: "Even the experienced pilots are having trouble today."
Me (dejected): "Yes, ma'am."
Linda: "With more time, you're landings will get better, even in conditions like these."
Me (morose): "Yes, ma'am."
Linda: "But you'll have plenty of time to practice now that you have your license to learn."
Me (dumbfounded): "I passed?!??!?!!"
Linda: "Well, yes, didn't you think so?"
Me (shocked): "Up until the landings I was sure of it, but they were so bad I wasn't so sure."
Linda: "They weren't graceful and you know what you need to work on, but you're a competent and safe pilot."
Me (clapping): "Yay!"

Seriously, I clapped. :)

She instructed me to finish my shutdown procedure while she went in and got started typing up my temporary license, then we'd debrief. I floated through the process and bounced -- the good kind of bouncing -- into the terminal.

Inside we went over points on the oral that I hadn't done so well on -- like confusing myself about whether there's Class G airspace directly over a Class E airport (there is). We went over the flight portion, too, and she really had only three things to say there: stall recovery always, always gets full power immediately, my landings need polish, and I need to work on flying with one hand more, especially in the pattern.

I had actually been working on keeping one hand on the throttle during the climb, and I generally did that naturally on final as well. My problem, however, is that when it's as choppy as it was that day, my instinct is to death-grip the yoke with both hands. It's either subconsciously for my own comfort or to add some balance/stability to an unstable situation. In any case, she called me on that and I'll work on it.

I FREAKIN' PASSED! I'm a private pilot! :)

Checkride Part 2a: The flight exam

2007-02-25T22:16:00.000-05:00

So you know from reading the the beginning of the oral exam post that it was uncertain due to winds whether the checkride would actually transpire today. The little voice in my head was thinking about the wind conditions for my first solo, and I gotta admit that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. But I've come a long way, baby, and am much better equipped to handle some bumps now.... Still, these could be major bumps, and the questions of (1) aircraft crosswind limitations and (2) personal limits had to be asked.

When I departed for AKQ, the winds had settled somewhat and were within both plane and personal limits. On the high end of the limits, but within. Pre-checkride forward-slip landing practice was canceled on account of the winds, but closer to the zero hour it was acceptable.

This is what the conditions were between the time when I arrived at AKQ just before 11 am and just after I left a little after 4 pm:
KAKQ 241954Z AUTO 03011G16KT 10SM CLR 09/M12 A3018 RMK AO2 SLP222 T00941117 TSNO
KAKQ 241854Z AUTO 03005KT 10SM CLR 09/M12 A3019 RMK AO2 SLP226 T00891122 TSNO
KAKQ 241754Z AUTO 01007KT 10SM CLR 08/M12 A3021 RMK AO2 SLP233 T00781122 10078 21061 58018 TSNO
KAKQ 241654Z AUTO VRB06KT 10SM CLR 06/M14 A3024 RMK AO2 SLP243 T00561139 TSNO
KAKQ 241554Z AUTO 36010G16KT 10SM CLR 04/M14 A3026 RMK AO2 SLP250 T00441144 TSNO
KAKQ 241454Z AUTO 33008KT 290V010 10SM CLR 03/M16 A3026 RMK AO2 SLP251 T00281156 50009 TSNO

Big fun, eh?

So after the oral exam, we headed out to 388 and Linda asked me to do a thorough preflight, except that fuel samples wouldn't be necessary. I was to talk her through the process and point out where samples would be taken. I was actually caught a little off-guard by that. I figured that since the plane had been out of my sight for over 2 hours at an unfamiliar airport that sampling I would need to do. It may have been a challenge from her to see if I, as PIC, would do the conservative thing or not. I did not check the fuel, and she didn't say anything about that.

I walked around with my checklist, and about the time I got past the right wing up to the nose she got chatty. Ah, perhaps this is a distraction test. She asked me a question, and I heard her but blocked her out long enough to mark my place on the checklist. I then talked to her and came back to my checklist, letting her know I was going back two items in the list to ensure that I hadn't missed something. Score! A minute later the same thing happened again, and I responded the same way. Then another pilot based at AKQ came out and talked to her so I was largely unsupervised for the rest of the preflight.

We hopped in and got organized. I noticed that she didn't fasten her seatbelt, and assumed that was another test -- she has to have billions of hours, so not buckling up wouldn't be a mistake on her part. I didn't say anything yet, knowing that it was one of the first few items on the in-cockpit checklist. Preflight inspection, complete. Passenger briefing -- here we go. I explained how the seatbelts work and asked her to fasten in and tighten down, then explained the door operation, then asked her to not touch anything unless we had an understanding about it, and asked her to continue the briefing so we would know what to expect on the flight. She said we'd start with the x-c and at some point would break off to do instrument work, maneuvers, and so forth then do some landings and debrief at AKQ. Super! I was so excited!

The rest of the preflight was fine and normal and before long we were rolling to the threshold. At AKQ you enter the runway pavement on the numbers for 2, so if you want 20 you have to back-taxi the entire length. I paused before the threshold line to assess the current winds. Variable, still, but favoring 2. Well at least that part would be easy! I announced that I was departing 2 and would leave the pattern to the northeast.

And that I did, though the mechanical turbulence over the treetops, and began my climb to the x-c cruise altitude of 4500'. It was bumpy all the way up, as expected! The surprise was that at about 4400' the chop switched off, just like that. The whole x-c portion at 4500' was actually nice and smooth! I got an opportunity during the climb, though, to demonstrate traffic-scanning effectiveness; maybe ~2500' I saw a twin-engine out in front of us going the opposite direction, perhaps half a mile or so to our left and a couple thousand feet above. I pointed him out as "no factor" and continued the climb.

Here's an overview pic of the checkride flight (click to enlarge):

What I've learned from x-c planning is to not start the timer between checkpoints from takeoff, but rather from the first checkpoint, selected to coincide with reaching cruise altitude. I had shown Linda the calculations that did take that climb leg into account for total trip time and fuel consumption, and she ok'd that plan. I hit checkpoint #1 just below 4500', but started my timer anyway and jotted down the time and the ETA for checkpoint #2. I then checked the sectional to be positive of our position. Linda was pointing out features here and there and amidst scans for traffic and scans of the instruments I would indicate whether they were or were not on the sectional. (In the debrief she praised my pilotage skills! :) ) Of course, those could have been distraction attempts, too, because she had quite a few things to point out.

The second checkpoint would be a turn in the power lines we were following. We got there just barely behind schedule, which surprised the hell out of me since the winds now were supposed to be dramatically lighter than the ones predicted when I had done the calculations earlier in the morning. Something was wrong, but I didn't put my finger on it yet... I knew the plan was to fly straight (as though the power lines hadn't turned) until we hit I-95, then turn SSW. We got to I-95 ahead of schedule, according to my navlog calculations. Hmmmm...

I turned off SSW and followed the interstate with it out my window, since that was the plan. I consulted the sectional to make sure that the interchange on I-95 that was the checkpoint was indeed the one I expected. It was. So what was wrong? Why were the times off, and off inconsistently?

Duh! I wanted to throw myself out the window in shame! For the whole trip, I had picked 17 checkpoints, and that required two navlog forms. I had the second page of checkpoints on top and hadn't noticed! Bonehead! I made this realization and was analyzing my options (transfer times to the right log boxes? ignore those first two and just get back on track by starting the timer at the next checkpoint?) when Linda asked me to calculate our groundspeed based on the past checkpoints and then estimate remaining time en route. I immediately admitted my mistake and said that I planned to start the timer at the next checkpoint to get on track, and that after the following checkpoint I could do that calculation.

Still suffering my self-humiliation, after hitting the checkpoint and starting the clock I realized that I didn't need to do that to give her the time en route. The last minute of shame fell away completely as I refocused and pointed out that the GPS gave me groundspeed and suggested that I could calculate from that. She approved, I did the math, and came up with roughly an hour to get to LHZ. She was satisfied with that, and I felt a little better.

After one more checkpoint, Linda had me go under the foggles under the guise that we had just unexpectedly flown into clouds. I said I'd be doing a left 180 to go back to VFR weather, but first I wanted to tip my left wing so she could check for traffic for us (brownie points!). I did a nice standard-rate 180, maintaining altitude pretty closely.

Then she asked me to descend to 3000' while maintaining heading. I felt I did that right-on, but the GPS shows some slight right deviation. My first thought is precession of the heading indicator, but it wouldn't precess that quickly, I wouldn't think, and I don't remember which way it precesses anyway.

Anyhow, at altitude she had me turn to headings by IR. These were, in effect, clearing turns. Foggles off, time for stalls!

I swear we did a full-flaps approach-to-landing stall first, but the GPS track indicates a power-on stall first. In any case, I was glad that Chuck had run stall drills in one of our recent pre-checkride flights! The power-on stall was good, and the full-flaps stall, done while turning, seemed good to me. In training we rarely did full-flap stalls, if ever (I'll have to review my flight (b)logs!). The only thing I could remember was what I knew I had been taught about a go-around from a full-flaps configuration: half power, flaps to 20, full power, Vy, milk the flaps the rest of the way. Not using full power initially is to avoid a sudden nose-up; made sense to me that you'd use the same procedure to avoid a secondary stall. So that's what I did, and didn't lose much altitude at all. She didn't say anything then, but when we got back for the debriefing, she laid down the law: always go full-power when recovering from a stall, period. Period.

Staying in slow flight, I let the stall warning squeal while doing requested clearing turns. The foggles then came back on for unusual attitudes. The most inexplicable part of the GPS track is, naturally, during this portion! See that abrupt left (you can't tell from this view, but the side-view shows a roller coaster for altitude, too!) followed by some straight flying (the recovery portion, regaining desired heading and altitude), then a tight-tight climbing turn? Yeah....

After the unusual attitudes, which went just fine, Linda asked for a steep turn. I said that I'd do clearing turns and then start a left-hand steep turn. Near the end of the first half of the clearing turn, she suggested that I go right into the steep turn, and I agreed after vocalizing that I thought it would be ok to use that as the completion of the clearing turn. My left steep turn wasn't very pretty -- a little tight and not ended in quite the right place -- but the altitude was good and that's the #1 thing I was being anal about! As I got perhaps 3/4 of the way through it, she instructed me to go straight into a right-hand steep turn, which I did. Again, not beautiful, but better than the first and the altitude was right on.

I stabilized coming out of the steep turns and had my hand on the throttle, finishing the throttle/altitude/airspeed balancing act, when suddenly she put her hand on top of mine! If I hadn't been surprised I would have been suspicious -- odd time to put the moves on! :) Ha ha ha... I hesitated for a second, glanced over at her, and when she didn't move her hand I decided to withdraw mine. You probably guessed it: simulated engine failure. She pulled out the throttle and sat back to watch.

Instinct is a good thing, and practice gives you that! I talked through what I was doing: trim for best glide speed of 80 mph, pick a landing site and fly towards it.... As you can see from the pictures, southside Virginia is thoroughly bespeckled with fields, so finding a landing site should have been easy, considering we were at something like 3000' when I "lost my engine." But I had a dickens of a time picking a field! First, thinking out loud all the while, I was attempting to assess the winds to see if a particular field orientation would be better and to determine my landing direction. The surface winds had been generally NNW (but variable) when we left the airport, and we were within 15 miles of Wakefield, by my estimation. But I wasn't positive that that was correct now, especially given the variability. Franklin was basically directly in front of us, and the smoke stacks there seemed to indicate a wind from the southeast.

Ok, I'd go by that. I wanted to land on an southeasterly heading, so I started eliminating fields: this one's too short in that direction, that one's good-sized and aligned right but those power lines, ... I swear, it seemed like we had all the time in the world, so I let the standards be too high and just kept looking, confident that I'd spot the right one for the exercise, and frequently checking out the right side as well.

My training says to cross mid-field at 1100' AGL, hit the key point between 800' & 900', and do what you gotta do to get down from there. About the time we were at 1500', I checked the smokestacks again -- the smoke was blowing *to the southeast* now! Yay, variable winds! It was also about that time that I realized the field I was going for had goats in it. Drat, scramble time! Luckily, I looked out Linda's window and there was a gorgeous big green perfect field to shoot for, so I immediately turned right to fly over it, and was over at just under 1100', then did a good normal pattern with 20 degrees of flaps, and as soon as we cleared the trees she told me to abort.

Whew! You can certainly see the lesson in that, in what I did wrong, and we talked about it at the debrief.

As I was cleaning up and climbing, she pointed out my window at a trio of old abandoned-looking barns in the middle of a patch of fields. She asked me to do a turn around a point around those. I said I'd go up to 1000' and do it from there. Another check of the smokestacks indicated winds from the southwest; I explained that I'd use a northeast heading as my downwind entry into the maneuver and did that big loop-de-loo to get positioned right. It became obvious that the winds were not what I thought, or at least they weren't being consistent. I really don't think she had noticed how non-circular my turn was -- she was dialing in Franklin's ATIS and CTAF (presumably so we could shoot landings there). About 2/3 of the way through, though, I was irritated by my turn performance (altitude was just fine) and told her that I was dissatisfied, that I felt that just at that moment the winds were at our back. She said "Okay, then do another one."

Me and my big mouth, huh? But I did it, and as you can see from the GPS track this one was pretty darn good! :)

You know what, that's quite enough for this post! I'll publish the finale, including the reasons why I thought I wouldn't pass, in a bit!

Checkride Part I: The oral exam

2007-02-25T21:05:00.000-05:00

[Update: Man, for the most momumental post(s) of my training, I would have thought this would have more detail about the actual content of the oral exam! But the parts of the day that really stood out to me are described fairly well...]

This past Wednesday I had lunch with John, one of our partners in 388 and a friend who did his checkride a few weeks back with the same examiner I was going to, Linda. Over the course of two ham biscuits each from his wife's restaurant (website coming soon courtesy of Husband), a slice of homemade chocolate pie for me and cherry pie for John, and three hours, he divulged all the details of his oral, his flight test, her methods and the items to which she seemed particularly sensitive.

Everything seemed ok, with two exceptions: (1) In the oral, she asked him a lot of engine and system mechanics questions, and I'm not too good with that stuff -- tell me symptoms and I can tell you what's likely the problem and how to troubleshoot, but it's not because I know how everything works. (2) She asked for a no-flap, forward-slip landing, which I've never actually done -- I'd done forward slips as part of forced landing practice out over the fields of Virgina, but of course we do go-arounds there, and I'd never used that technique to land.

Needless to say, that night I boned up on the mechanics. Husband quizzed me, and I learned a lot.

The forward-slips were worrisome, though. Everything else I was comfortable doing (or else I wouldn't have scheduled my checkride!), and really it's my fault for not seeing that red flag when going through the PTS. Husband and I had been planning to go up on Friday afternoon, so I'd plan to try it out then under his supervision.

Unfortunately, as the week went on, the light winds became more extreme, with base winds in the mid-20s and gusts into the 40-kt range. Friday's practice was cancelled, and so I asked Chuck to go up with me at 9 am on Saturday to stay in the pattern a few times to do forward slips to landings, knowing that I'd like to leave at 10 to do the 15-minute flight to AKQ and have time to stow 388, settle in and get organized for the 11 am appointment.

Surprisingly, Friday night I felt quite tranquil. I had largely stuck to my plan of finishing all studying and x-c prep (sans wind-based calculations) before Friday evening so I could have that time to get on the elliptical, have a nice dinner, take a bath and read a (non-flying) book, and just unwind. It was nice.

Saturday morning was a different story. I got up at 6, expecting to do the usual morning routine, get the winds aloft, finish the x-c plan, and get to JGG at 8 with Husband to check out the Columbia 350 that he and John would be test flying while I was out on the checkride. It seemed, though, that for every minute I spent doing something, three minutes went by on the clock, and before I knew it, Husband was ready to go to the airport! Stressed out at being behind schedule and angry about it, I told him he'd have to go drool on the Columbia without me. I still intended to meet Chuck at 9 for no-flap landing practice.

On top of that, the winds were unfavorable. Winds aloft were 40-kts at my cruise altitude of 4500'. Surface winds were gusty. The forecast had been for 8-kt winds in the morning, 6 by lunchtime, and calm by afternoon. What was with this 16G22 mess? Drat. To go or not to go?

Well, I'd at least go to the airport. The 9 am practice was probably not going to happen, but maybe the checkride still would. I got out there around 8:30 and fought the wind across the ramp to the Columbia to spend a minute soaking in the luxury. What a pretty plane! :) (No, it's nowhere near our price range, but the opportunity to try one on was there...)

Just before 9 I met up with Chuck and we agreed that, while crosswind conditions were perfect for practicing no-flap landings, winds this strong and gusty weren't good for learning that. So best case scenario turned into me going to my checkride without having done that particular maneuver (worst case being no checkride today).

We went up to the terminal and hung out for an hour. We went over my x-c plan, chatted about a few oral questions that might come up that would pose a challenge, and then just wandered through topics like kids and planes and whatnot, all the while staring out the window at the erratic wind sock and shivering bushes. Every few minutes I called AWOS to get the bad news. Here's what the METARs said for that period:

KJGG 241521Z AUTO 31012G18KT 10SM CLR 04/M14 A3026 RMK AO1
KJGG 241502Z AUTO 30011G15KT 10SM CLR 03/M15 A3026 RMK AO1
KJGG 241441Z AUTO 32012G19KT 10SM CLR 03/M15 A3026 RMK AO1
KJGG 241421Z AUTO 32009G20KT 10SM CLR 02/M16 A3027 RMK AO1
KJGG 241401Z AUTO 33015G22KT 10SM CLR 02/M16 A3027 RMK AO1
KJGG 241341Z AUTO 34011G22KT 10SM CLR 01/M16 A3026 RMK AO1

At 10:30, the AWOS report came out that said steady at 8 kts. Bitchin. That's what I wanted to hear. The wind sock was less squirrelly, so that felt better, too. Even so, I was cautiously reserved, still expecting to hear it turn gusty again, but at least I'd go preflight and keep an ear on the reports.

And then, finally, as I did the in-cockpit preflight checklist and tuned in the AWOS much to my delight. The nearest METAR said:
KJGG 241541Z AUTO 30007KT 10SM CLR 04/M14 A3026 RMK AO1

Ok, a quick call to the AKQ ASOS gave their winds as 6kts (no gusts), so I decided it was a go! With a wave goodbye to Chuck, I taxiied out to 31 and left, on my way to AKQ FOR MY CHECKRIDE!!!!

It was a bumpy ride. All the way down. I was having second thoughts. If I did the flight exam, it might be stressful with all the chop, and the possibility of busting altitude would not be entirely up to my skill. Oh, sheesh, what to do?!?! I tuned AKQ ASOS and it didn't help -- variable 10G16. Ugh.

Well, I decided to check it out in the pattern for AKQ and if I didn't feel good about it I'd abort the landing and head back to JGG, hopefully to conditions that would let me land and try again another day. It was actually a tad better down low, and on final for runway 2 I felt I could handle the winds I had at the time, so I landed. Not a beautiful landing, a little too firm, but safe with no bounce.

A small victory to change the course of the day! :)

I taxiied back up 2 to the terminal, parked and shut down. I walked into the AKQ terminal right at 11, which kinda sucked because I wanted to be early to have that organization time, but I'd take what I had. Linda met me at the door, and she was super nice, with a nice smile and she started in on the wind conditions we had right then. She'd done another checkride earlier in the morning (the poor bastard!) and I don't know whether he passed or not but apparently it was a very rough ride. We agreed to do the oral and decide afterwards whether the conditions had improved and whether we'd go.

She chatted with me just about general stuff for a few minutes, giving me a chance to unpack my bag and get situated, of course after the obligatory la pregnanto bio-break. You probably didn't need to know that. :)

So, finally, on to the oral exam!

We spent about 2 hours talking about stuff. We started with my logbook, application and medical.

Linda: "Technically, you shouldn't have flown down here today."

Me (to myself, breathless): "Oh, crap. Not only is she going to cancel the checkride, but she's not going to let me get myself back home!" (Driving to AKQ is about an hour's effort, thanks to the river.)

Linda: "Your student license isn't endorsed for solo cross-country."

Me: "Oh? It has a current 90-day solo endorsement, and my logbook is endorsed for solo flights to AKQ."

Linda: "But the license isn't endorsed."

Me (to myself, no pulse, trying to maintain the calm exterior of a well-trained pilot): "AAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Linda: "We'll overlook that for now, but let your instructor know that he needs to do this for his students."

Me (relieved!): "Will do."

She double-checked my logbook entries against her checklist for the prerequisite training and solo hours. That all checked out. Next we were on to the aircraft logbooks, and that all checked out as well. I had put sticky notes in the logbook and binder of ADs/W&B updates/other documentation so I could quickly flip to items like the last annual and the latest ELT battery change.

The rest of the oral exam is mostly a blur. Almost everything she asked was routine or common sense or a matter of knowing where to look, pretty much what you'd expect if you had used a study guide or listened to anyone who had been through it before! A few things do stand out to me:

When asked about the vacuum system, I was happy to be able to divulge all the new information and understanding that I had about it. I had a little internal giggle (or was that the baby? :) ) at feeling almost like I had cheated since John tipped me off that this particular area of weakness for me might be one that I should brush up on.

However, I was an honorary blonde for a few moments during this segment of the exam... She asked which instruments were vacuum-driven. Reflexively I said the heading indicator, the turn coordinator, and the.... the.... oh no! I totally drew a blank. I felt like such a doof! I asked for a moment to go through the instrument panel in my head and I STILL couldn't come up with it!

So she said we'd move on and if I thought of it to say so. Her next question was what the consequences of losing suction are. Again, reflexively, I said 'You lose your attitude indicator.... THAT'S IT! The attitude indicator!" Duh! Bonehead. She smiled and scratched out the little "come back to this" note on her question list. Phew!

She asked if 388 has a strobe or beacon. I was confused for a second because we have a beacon on top of the tail and strobe lights on the wingtips, so I said we had both. She then asked whether, if during preflight I found the strobe to be not working, I would take the flight. I thought out loud for a moment about the requirements, saying I believed the beacon to be required equipment but the strobe lights to be optional, but that I'd want to consult the FAR/AIM to confirm. She said go ahead, and I flipped to the part 91 index, found the appropriate paragraph (205, 213, something like that) and read through the required equipment list for VFR day. Beacon, required; strobes, not required. That was apparently satisfactory; I figure the exercise was really geared towards determining whether I could find stuff in the FAR.

We had talked also about what to do if weather conditions change in-flight. If things deteriorate ahead, you do a 180 and stay VFR. This I know, this I said, this we talked about. Later on, we were talking about flying westward over the Appalachian Mountains and suddenly realizing that we were developing some structural ice. Since I had already demonstrated that a 180 is a good thing to do when presented with an unexpected meteorological situation, I chose to answer with next steps for what I as an inexperienced PIC would do: If the plane was still behaving well, I'd try to find the nearest airport, land and assess both the existing ice and the conditions to see whether the trip could be continued. If the plane wasn't behaving, then I'd execute an emergency off-airport landing. That seemed like a good, conservative approach to me since all I've heard is bad stuff about ice and I know it alters the lift and flying capabilities of the wings, not to mention possibly freezing up the flight controls. In our post-flight debrief, she told me I first needed to turn back. Well, yeah! I thought that was understood!!! The lesson there is to give complete answers.

Anyway, eventually we wrapped up and she asked me to take her for a flight. Yay! The oral part went well enough that she wasn't stopping the exam right there! Other than the forward-slip landing, I was confident about passing the flight portion, so this was looking good! Except for those doggone winds...

I called 1-800-WX-BRIEF to get an update on the winds aloft, hoping they had calmed down for our x-c portion. They had -- down to an estimated ~12 kts at 4500'. And the ASOS at AKQ was giving better news, too -- still variable in direction but only 6kts with no reported gusts (right then, anyway).

After another bathroom break and a pause for some baby-factory refueling, it was time to go! Details about the flight in the next post...

PPL'd, ppl*lol!

2007-02-24T17:51:00.000-05:00

Look out birds, here I come!

Details tomorrow... tonight it's celebration with rest and relaxation. :)

Blowhard

2007-02-23T16:00:00.000-05:00

It has been extremely windy here the past few days. And gusty. Husband and I were planning to go up this afternoon for one last pre-checkride flight, but alas, 13 gusting to 24 isn't good for me.

But check this out. Emporia, an airport a little farther inland southwest of JGG, is reporting something that looks pretty unbelievable to me:

KEMV 232035Z AUTO 22014G96KT 10SM CLR 11/M02 A3007 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT E

22014G96KT!

(For what it's worth, there are no radar returns in the area...)

Updated status - sanity check

2007-02-22T09:31:00.000-05:00

Gotta be sure I'm all set with the requirements! There'll be another 0.3-0.5 solo time getting to the airport where the examiner is.

Aeronautical knowledge
- Passed the written on 1/19/07.

Aeronautical experience (61.109a): For an airplane single-engine rating. Except as provided in paragraph (k) of this section, a person who applies for a private pilot certificate with an airplane category and single-engine class rating must log at least 40 hours of flight time that includes at least 20 hours (31.7) of flight training from an authorized instructor and 10 hours (14.7) of solo flight training in the areas of operation listed in §61.107(b)(1) of this part, and the training must include at least—
- (1) 3 hours (4.8) of cross-country flight training in a single-engine airplane;
- (2) Except as provided in §61.110 of this part, 3 hours (3.5) of night flight training in a single-engine airplane that includes—
  - (i) One cross-country flight (done) of over 100 nautical miles total distance; and
  - (ii) 10 takeoffs and 10 landings (10) to a full stop (with each landing involving a flight in the traffic pattern) at an airport.
- (3) 3 hours (3) of flight training in a single-engine airplane on the control and maneuvering of an airplane solely by reference to instruments, including straight and level flight, constant airspeed climbs and descents, turns to a heading, recovery from unusual flight attitudes, radio communications, and the use of navigation systems/facilities and radar services appropriate to instrument flight;
- (4) 3 hours (3.4, done this week) of flight training in preparation for the practical test in a single-engine airplane, which must have been performed within 60 days preceding the date of the test; and
- (5) 10 hours (14.7) of solo flight time in a single-engine airplane, consisting of at least—
  - (i) 5 hours (5.2) of solo cross-country time;
  - (ii) One solo cross-country flight of at least 150 nautical miles total distance, with full-stop landings at a minimum of three points, and one segment of the flight consisting of a straight-line distance of at least 50 nautical miles between the takeoff and landing locations (Done); and
  - (iii) Three takeoffs and three landings (3) to a full stop (with each landing involving a flight in the traffic pattern) at an airport with an operating control tower.

Checkride scheduled!

2007-02-20T10:43:00.000-05:00

I'm scheduled to be at AKQ (~15 minutes flight time from JGG) at 11 am to meet the DPE for my checkride!

JEP FIII-24: Checkride prep #1

2007-02-19T19:33:00.000-05:00

Goals:

Checkride prep flight #1!
Practice maneuvers, keeping to standards.
Get more of the remaining required instrument time in.

Flight:
Today we went up for 1.6 of the 3 required hours of checkride prep flights. Normal preflight, and for takeoff we rolled into a 12-kt headwind with rotation and climb-out at Vy to push through the expected mechanical turbulence as we rose above the trees. We turned out west and rose through the bumpiness to 2000', where the foggles came on.

We did a full half-hour of hood work, starting with turns to a heading in both directions, cruise climbs and descents while turning to headings, and slow flight maneuvers. The chop was challenging, especially the updrafts that would knock me around right as I was reaching a target altitude, but I did what I could do -- correct as quickly as possible. The chop was also challenging, and a little nerve-wracking, as we dangled off the prop during slow flight, but again, I just managed as best as possible with power and pitch.

Next we practiced stalls -- Chuck had read my post about how rusty my stall recoveries were -- again and again and again! It was good, and it was easy enough. We did power off stalls both straight-ahead and while turning, clean and with 20 degrees of flaps. My one goof was starting to pull in the flaps before I established a positive rate of climb, but the stalls with flaps after that one I did correctly.

We then headed down toward the intersection of the James and Chickahominy to do ground reference maneuvers. Remember me complaining (or revelling, depending on the day!) that there were never winds when I was learning turns around a point and S-turns? Well, today we got good noticable winds and the practice was very useful! We started with a right-hand turn around a point, but I was in too close to the landmark and grew frustrated as I lost sight of it -- not a good feeling when doing the maneuver for the first time in a long time and with winds for which I'd actually need to compensate! I asked to do a left-hand turn first, and Chuck assented, so I picked a point and headed for it. We estimated the winds to be from 280, and so the maneuver would start from 100 (after a false-start heading into the wind), and overall it went pretty well. I could see the point the whole time, and at the end I got in a little tighter, but not too bad. Then we did a loop to the right around a pair of very close cell towers, and it went a lot better. I did two loops here, the first being a little oblong and the second being much closer to round.

Next we did S-turns. My first attempt at an S-turn was pretty crappy. I did enter downwind as appropriate, but I started with waaaaay to much left bank, so instead of being a nice deep round half-circle, it was as shallow as a parenthesis! We didn't even bother with the second half, but instead did a big rectangle to get back into position for a restart at the same point over the railroad tracks. This time, Chuck advised me on a better target to keep in mind for the mid-point crossing of the tracks, and I did a much better job. Even the second half to the right to complete the S was pretty decent. As I concluded the first full S, Chuck instructed me to keep going for another S to get us back to our start. I did so, and did mostly good, but got straightened out approaching the last crossing of the tracks a little early (banked too aggressively entering that last downwind portion). So, that became a figure-8. I wish I had taken the GPS! :)

By this time, I was feeling a little icky. Be it from not flying much recently or from the pregnancy hormones, I don't have the endurance I used to have, at least not when higher G's and unusual attitudes are the bulk of the flight. Oh, that reminds me, sometime in there we did recovery from unusual attitudes by instrument reference.

It didn't take long to get back to the airport. I entered crosswind for 31 and had a good pattern and landing. The wind had died down quite a bit, only 5 kts from 290. There was the usual chop over the approach end of 31, but not horrible. We did two more times through the pattern for short-field takeoffs and landings. The takeoffs were fine. On the first landing, I was a little low turning final and on final the full 40 degrees of flaps come out for short field, so I had to throttle up to ensure we'd make the field and ended up dragging it in and floating a little before touchdown; we still stopped well short enough to make the first turnout, so it was satisfactory for the exercise. On the second one, I was more focused on my altitude and let my airspeed get a little too high, so when I flared we ballooned and then landed firmly (no bounce); had I kept braking we would have stopped just past the first turnout, but since it was obvious we'd need to roll to mid-field I let it go. Chuck said that would also count as satisfactory, but obviously I need to keep all of those factors under control!

Chuck is happy with my status. He believes I'm ready for the checkride now. We've got 1.4 hours of checkride prep and that 0.8 of instrument to finish up to meet the requirements, and I've got to finish the oral prep.

Discussion:

Instrument time: I've still got 0.8 hours to get in! We haven't worked on it much because I don't have a problem with it. I'm an engineer, it's easy for me to trust the instruments and do what they tell me! So in our next flight, we'll have a stretch of hood time to wrap that up.

Right-hand turns around a point: From the left seat, it's harder to keep an eye on a landmark out the right window. It's better for the right-hand maneuver to pick a landmark a little farther out and to make a wider turn (thus a longer (duration) turn) because it's easier to keep it in sight. For me, at least, that's the case.

Self-Assessment: Feeling better about coming off a long stint. For 1.6 hours of flight time today, we sure did a lot of stuff! The practice was really good. Overall, I'm feeling mostly confident. I haven't done emergency procedures in a while, so next time we're going to do several of those; then I'll feel prepared.

Flying

Preflight, taxiing, normal takeoff, short/soft-field takeoff: Good.
Maintaining airspeed, stalls, slow flight (VR/IR), maintain/change attitude/altitude/heading by instruments: Good.
Recover attitude, altitude, heading by instruments: Good.
Forced landing: Good, need more practice.
Forward slip:: Dunno, needs more practice.
Pattern, normal landing, directional control after landing: Good.
Crosswind landing: Decent.
Radio work: Good.
Short/soft-field landings: Good, need to practice hitting the aim point.
Night operations: Decent.

Navigating

ADF: Haven't used it since the intro, needs practice.
VOR: Good, will get more practice.
Dead reckoning: Improving but needs practice.

Next: Wednesday morning we'll go for the next (and possibly final) prep flight. If that is the final one, I'll probably go up with Husband on Friday. Checkride is scheduled for Saturday at 11 am. Woo!
Hours logged this flight: 1.6
Hours logged total: 51.3 (44.2 counts toward reqs)
Instrument hours logged this lesson: 0.5
Instrument Hours logged total: 2.2
Take-offs and landings this flight: 3
Take-offs and landings total: 110
PIC (solo) hours total:: 14.7

Refresher flight

2007-02-17T17:06:00.000-05:00

Goals:

Knock the dust off.
Practice maneuvers again.
Flying with a pseudo-DPE and being critiqued.

Flight:
One month to the day since my last time in the cockpit. Sad, eh?

Husband was kind enough to go up with me today (his much more succinct account of the flight is here). On account of the hidden passenger and it being my first time going through these, shall we say, state changes, I'm disinclined to fly solo right now, just to be on the overly-cautious safe side. Since I've got all the solo time in that is required, and the rest of the requirements are with an instructor, it should be all good.

Like it's hard to convince Husband to go flying... sheesh! :)

The winds were forecast(ed?) to pick up throughout the day, so we hit the airport ~9:15. No frost on the wings, despite a 15-degree night and 31-degree morning so far. Everything outside looked good. It was cold, so I gave 388 4 1/2 shots of primer to get started. Not enough. Another 1 1/2. Not enough. 3 more. Not enough. After 12 pumps, the engine wanted to catch, but I may have messed up with adjusting the throttle because it conked out. 3 more pumps and stable throttle so almost had it, but as I added some throttle it conked out again. 3 more, for a total of 18, stable throttle, and it rolled over like our familiar trusty ol' happy plane.

Winds were 240@4, so we'd use 31. Altimeter, set. Radio check, check. Lights and coms, as desired. Seats and seat belts, taxi, brake check, run-up, all good. Thank goodness for checklists.

Husband DPE (HDPE) asked for a short-field takeoff. I think he planned to ask for that anyway, but that would give us a chance to run the engine full out and check gauges with time to change our minds about leaving. I pulled out the trusty maneuver flip-book and read through the process before moving onto the runway (after announcing, of course) and lining up with as little pavement behind us as possible.

Brakes on, throttle up, check gauges, release brakes, right rudder, all felt normal. Airspeed alive. Vx, time to rotate and climb out. I wasn't compensating for the crosswind so we drifted a little right of centerline, which HDPE pointed out. I corrected, and before long we were at 400', time to turn west for noise abatement. We continued the climb to 2000', then HDPE asked me to track to HCM. The VOR was dialed in, I spun the indicator knob to find the "direct to" heading of 015, then tipped the right wing up and turned us to that heading.

Again I wasn't compensating for the winds, which seemed to be stronger at 2000'. The needle was persistently left of center, and at first I didn't recognize that the wind was the problem. First I realized that I hadn't set my DG once we got airborne, so I flew straight-and-level, correct the DG (which was only slightly off), redialed for the direct-to heading and set up on that. After not more than 30 seconds, the needle was off again. I looked down and saw that I wasn't dead-on my desired heading, so I chalked it up to sloppy out-of-practice-ness, dialed again for the direct-to heading and vowed to pay closer attention. Another 30 seconds later, the needle was off again, and as I thought about what my problem could be, I was checking for traffic and saw the smoke from the West Point factory -- blowing completely parallel to the ground -- and that's when it hit me.

So I took one final desired-heading reading from the VOR indicator, and pointed myself left of that by about 10 degrees. That turned out to be too much, but at least I was on the right track and could feel it out for an appropriate correction after that. HDPE critiqued my choice to re-set the VOR indicator to new headings, and said that instead I should have corrected myself onto the original heading. I knew when I was off course that I had two choices: get on the original heading or update to a new direct-to heading. Since I was trying to limit the variables and minimize the time spent chasing it while doing so, I opted to update. But I can see that it could (or would) be viewed as weak that for something as simple as tracking a VOR radial that the pilot picked a newer, more convenient radial instead of correcting onto the desired one.

Once I was established, I think HDPE realized that I was not as busy and so he started chitchatting. I grinned at his distraction attempts. It killed some time as we got to, over, and past the VOR. The test here was to maintain the same direction coming out the other side, and using the VOR in "from" mode to assure that. With that reasonably accomplished, Husband had me turn to 060 and climb to 3000'. We were heading for a cluster of fields over which we'd do steep turns.

As we got there, I did clearing turns left and right, then entered a left steep turn. Using all of the controls, including power, I did a fairly good job and maintained altitude pretty well. HDPE asked for more bank at one point in the turn, and so I banked harder, pulled back harder and throttled up. I forget now what heading we were on when we entered, but I rolled out perfectly on it, reduced power and kept at 3000'.

I felt good about that! Husband complimented the maneuver and pointed out that when you bank more in the middle of the turn, it takes noticeably more back pressure (and throttle) to maintain altitude. A few nights ago a question came up in the oral review questions about how you compensate for the loss of vertical lift in a turn, so it was theory in practice... :)

We were getting up toward the Tappahanock River by this time, so I chose to point us southwest to get back safely over land and near a nice patch of fields. Once there, I went into the right steep turn. It did not go well. I think I overbanked and overcompensated at first, because we were climbing and that sight picture was moving awfully fast. I tried to rectify the maneuver, but then we were descending too much and still turning very tightly. We were maybe 2/3 of the way through it when I called it off. After that nice left one, I was a little shaken and disappointed to have done so badly on this one. But I stabilized, got my head back in it, and tried again. This time around it went much better, but I rolled out about 10 degrees too early. HDPE reminded me to shoot for at most 30 degrees leading to start the rollout.

Since we knew we were limited on time, we pointed back to JGG. Whilst over the upper peninsula still, HDPE had me slow to slow flight, maintaining 3000', with 20 degrees of flaps. I didn't anticipate well enough the power and pitch changes that were needed as the flaps came out, but I did correct quickly enough to not bust altitude. With the stall horn complaining and us drifting along at about 60 mph airspeed, I performed the requested 90-degree left- and right-hand turns, overshooting the left-hand target heading by a few degrees. HDPE asked me to accelerate to 70, maintain 3000', and milk in the flaps, which I did and which required constant tweaks of pitch and power. Then he asked for a power-on stall. I know how to do that, and I certainly know the recovery, but since it has a checklist in the flip-book, I thought I'd just take a look to show the DPE another instance of using checklists. HDPE didn't really like that for this particular maneuver, and absolutely for the recovery a checklist MUST not be consulted(!) but for setting it up I figured it was ok.

Anyway, that aside, I powered up, pitched up, and we climbed a bit and we got slower and slower, then I pulled back that last inch on the yoke and it broke cleanly. And my recovery totally sucked, and that was so scary because the suck was mental. Nosing over is not a problem; the plane does that pretty much by itself. But when I checked the instrument panel, my eyes didn't go to the airspeed, they went to the VSI, and it wasn't showing a positive rate of climb and I got confused. I didn't spend any time on the confusion, but rather looked back outside and pulled the nose up to the horizon. I glanced at the VSI again and still not a positive rate of climb. Well, duh, I had just leveled off. I started to raise the nose, but Husband said we were high enough (from the pre-stall climb) and to just get stabilized at 3000' again.

Man, that totally bit. I'm just appalled at how bad such a critical thing became after a month off. I'll have to look back through my training logs and see when the last time actually was that I did a stall; it's been a while. That's so scary, though, because while I figured it was something I'd practice periodically after getting my license, now it seems like it needs to be practiced frequently!

Anyway, next HDPE had me don the foggles and he punched JGG into the GPS and use that instrument to get back home. I corrected the DG again, then turned to 190, the desired track announced by the GPS. Not long, again, and the destination was to the right of my track. Dumb, dumb, dumb! When would I learn! I have to correct for wind! The VOR and GPS headings don't do that for me! As we got back over the middle peninsula, we hit a lot of turbulence. That was ok for a little while, but I started to get kinda icky feeling and elected to take off the foggles so I could see the horizon.

HDPE vocalized our position, told me to descend to 2000' and then to do what I would normally do when approaching an airport to land. I appreciated the cue, since I was still trying to get my physiology back on track and wasn't keeping track of our distance to the airport. It was still more than 10 nm at this point, but that's ok. I tuned in AWOS and heard 270@7, so we'd land 31. HDPE asked me to cross midfield to enter the pattern.

At about 5 miles out, in between the chatty jerks at another nearby airport, I was able to announce my location and intention. I slowly descended to 1200' just before the airport, and then just as we got over the field they shut up long enough for another announcement. I turned left downwind, descended to pattern altitude of 900', and began to drop airspeed as quickly as possible, seeing as we were still going about 110 and I wanted 80. When we were abeam the numbers, I was still dropping speed, but felt it was under control and we were in the flaps-ok range, so I put out 10 degrees and kept pulling out the throttle. Upon the next glance at the runway, I saw that yet again I had failed to compensate for the wind, and we were being blown in tight. I told my HDPE what was up, that I was going to crab to prevent further deviation and would extend my downwind since we'd have a short base.

By the time we got around on final, I was set up exactly the way I wanted to be. A little higher than usual since we were longer than usual, airspeed at 80, power (and carb heat) out, and 10 degrees of flaps. For the typical landing I'd do 20, but what with the wind and upcoming swamp monster and all...

HDPE instructed me to land long to avoid the swamp monster. I did as requested since I gotta be able to hit the DPE's target. Setting up for this, however, I kept a little too much altitude and then suddenly wished I had the extra 20 degrees of flaps because I was carrying a little extra speed anyway and now needed to descend faster. We weren't in danger of running out of runway, so I just rode it down. Being fast, I floated a good deal after the flare, and we touched down a little harder than I would have liked, but no bounce.

After that, it was a normal rollout, turn off, announce clear, checklist for post-landing, and taxi back through the empty parking lot for our spot. I called for a fuel refill, and we buttoned up our worthy old flying mobile.

Later in the day I would file a POREP -- not a PIREP for the turbulence, but a police report for the identity theft. What jerks there are out there!

Discussion:

The good and the bad: I'm obviously a little rusty on these flight logs, too, since I did so much analyzing up above in the narrative! The main point that I take away from all of this is that I surprised myself in good and bad ways today. Going a full month with no flying, and more than that since the last time I practiced any maneuvers, really left me lacking. Lots of pilots say it, and I'm living proof: Today I was current but not proficient. On the other hand, the everyday stuff -- using checklists, taking off, pattern and landing -- all of that was just like it ever was.

But I wonder, and I put this to you, dear reader: In the time that you've been licensed, how often do you practice the things you learned while training? Steep turns and S-turns aren't something you use very often, but they're obviously something that takes practice to keep sharp. How about more important items like stalls? I'd like to hear from you.

Husband: I'm so thankful to have him, and that he's so supportive and helpful! :)

Self-Assessment: Oh, geez. Man do I need the upcoming practice with instructors!

Flying

Preflight, taxiing, normal takeoff, short/soft-field takeoff: Good.
Maintaining airspeed, stalls, slow flight (VR/IR), maintain/change attitude/altitude/heading by instruments: Good.
Recover attitude, altitude, heading by instruments: Acceptable.
Forced landing: Good, need more practice.
Forward slip:: Dunno, needs more practice.
Pattern, normal landing, directional control after landing: Good.
Crosswind landing: Decent.
Radio work: Good.
Short/soft-field landings: Good, need to practice hitting the aim point.
Night operations: Decent.

Navigating

ADF: Haven't used it since the intro, needs practice.
VOR: Good, will get more practice.
Dead reckoning: Improving but needs practice.

Next: I'm due for that phase check with Dan, then three hours of checkride prep, two of which will be with Chuck and the third should be with the chief pilot at the flight school, Mark. I really need to practice engine-outs again, in addition to freakin' everything else.
Hours logged this flight: 1.2
Hours logged total: 49.7 (42.8 counts toward reqs)
Instrument hours logged this lesson: 0.0
Instrument Hours logged total: 1.7
Take-offs and landings this flight: 1
Take-offs and landings total: 107
PIC (solo) hours total:: 14.7

First of the last steps

2007-02-13T14:10:00.000-05:00

Today I talked to Linda, the nearby DPE who did John's checkride a few weeks back and also Husband's IFR checkride a few years back.

She'll be out of town for the last week of February and first few days of March, unfortunately -- the timeframe I had in mind to do the checkride. But that's alright. She expressed flexibility, so if I find that this last training push goes quickly over the next week and a half, I can call her and we might be able to get up and go then. Otherwise, we'll do it soon after she gets back and I'll have extra time to polish my manuevers and answers.

And I'll have to put the baby books aside and hit the textbooks and test-prep books again...

C'mon, weather!

Flying for two...

2007-02-11T13:40:00.000-05:00

So, I hope this doesn't count as carrying a passenger, else I'm in trouble!

Tiny Baby Cargo is due August 19!

Thanks, folks!

2007-02-08T09:20:00.000-05:00

My parents sent me a few books for my upcoming birthday (thanks, Mom and Dad!). They look like good reads...

101 Things to do with your Private Pilot's License by Leroy Cook

The Killing Zone: How and Why Pilots Die by Paul Craig.

I gotta say, I was a bit taken aback by the killing zone book when I first saw it. I don't think the dust jacket has a sentence on it that's not about doom. If their intention was to get you to read it based on fear, they got their marketing right. But it does look like a good book, and it appears to instruct based on anecdotal lessons -- this went wrong, this is what the pilot did, this is what happened, this is what the pilot should have done -- and I learn very well from that type of instruction. It's broken down into ~20 chapters that focus on accidents caused by different factors or during different stages/types of flight: pilot attitudes, ice, runway incursions, takeoff and climb out, night flying, etc.

Husband is looking forward to reading both books, too.

Oh crap

2007-02-04T15:21:00.000-05:00

After nearly 40 years of running our beloved JGG, the Waltrips want to sell it.

In the words of every Star Wars character, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

Odds and ends

2007-02-01T15:42:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the hiatus, folks! It was expected, given interceding plans, but there it is and it feels like it's been going on for ever and that it's never going to end.

L'aero is planning to leave tomorrow for two weeks. It was to leave today, but a wintry mix postponed the departure.

I've just returned from a five-day visit to a dear college friend in Florida, and now it's time to crank up the oral test practice. I expect that part of the pre-checkride prep flights with Chuck will include some oral questions, and Husband is helping me to get through the practice book. I'm also looking at possibly getting together with another local instructor who took newly-certificated-388-co-owner John through his training. The more practice, the more knowledge, the better, I figure.

Coming back from Florida, I was on a 737 cruising along at FL370. Perhaps you peeps can tell me if I'm tricking myself about this: So we're hovering in the blue, and below us is a nice, soft-looking cloud layer. A little ways off to the side I see a dark gray line that appears to be sitting right on top, contrasting with the bright white of the clouds. I follow with my eye to the "end" of that gray line and find a lil' plane. Hmm. Contrails through clear skies are white. Are contrails through clouds gray? (Or maybe this phenomenon can't be called a "contrail," but it left similar enough evidence that that's what I thought of...)

Written exam... check!

2007-01-19T15:53:00.000-05:00

[Update: The missed question...]

I took the written this afternoon, and got a 97! I missed a question about minimum height AGL for flying over a wildlife refuge; I answered 2500', but the correct answer is 2000'. So I'd add some extra buffer for the cuddly bunnies and badgers, I can live with missing that question.

Super special thanks to Husband who quizzed me on the meteorology stuff on the way to the testing center since that was the section I studied least recently. The vast majority of the questions on today's test had to do with weather! Can you believe it?! Opposite-Murphy's Law, I reckon...

If you're in this area, be advised: the LaserGrade testing fee at Hampton University's Department of Aviation is $60, as compared to the apparently standard fee of $90.

Yay! :)

Now for the oral test practice, after a good rest...

JEP FII-16: Local night flight

2007-01-17T22:23:00.000-05:00

Goals:

8 night landings, with and without landing lights.
Light night maneuvers.
Night VFR navigation.

Flight:
We met up at 6 at the terminal to sign me off to take the written exam and to chat about a few things I missed on the "official" groundschool completion test. I got 94 out of 100 questions right. We chatted about some night topics and the plan for the flight. Sunset was at 6:15, and at 6:45 we headed out to 388 for preflighting.

During the day it had been windy, 13+ kts, but tonight I got lucky and scored calm conditions. But man oh man was it cold! Earlier in the day Chuck had called to ask what the owners' policy was concerning cold-temp starts of the plane. This had not yet come up for us with 388, so I had no idea. Husband indicated that the policy on planes he had rented in the past required preheating at or below freezing, and tonight it was expected to drop below freezing around 7 pm (where'd our unusually tropical winter weather go?!?). I called Kevin (mechanic) to ask if they had a preheater and, upon hearing that they didn't, asked his advice. He relayed that most POH's say preheating isn't required unless the temp is in the teens (Fahrenheit, obviously!) and that provided the engine was "willing" to start he saw no reason for us to cancel the flight on account of temp.

Preflight was cuh-old. Thank the heavenly stars that there was no wind, or else we'd have canceled on account of not physically being able to do the preflight! Ok, maybe I'm a wimp, but it was unpleasant. Husband had given me his hat with bill-clip light again and this time I remembered to bring it. It was fantastic, making the whole process more efficient! Soooooo much easier than fumbling with a hand-held flashlight while using two hands to preflight and hold a checklist.

I found that frost crystals were starting to branch out on the fuselage, and thin smooth patches of frost were forming in various areas on the wings, especially near the tips. Chuck looked it over and said it wouldn't affect airflow and that we'd be ok; it was due to temp differential between the fuel inside the wing and the cooling surface of the wing.

Chuck showed me about rotating the prop a few times manually to get some oil moving up from the sump into the engine as a preparatory action. Finally we got in (although it was not any warmer inside yet, of course).

Three shots of primer. Not enough, engine wouldn't catch. Three more shots. Engine wants to catch, but won't. Three more shots, plus a loaded shot that, while I cranked and Chuck managed the throttle, I'd smoothly feed. This got it, and 388 came to life just like its normal happy self.

On to the flight... I turned on the runway lights (7 mic clicks in 5 seconds) and turned off the blinding runway end strobes (3 long clicks), plugged in the FYJ AWOS in the standby com slot and tuned the HCM VOR on the nav, then executed a standard takeoff on 31. As soon as I rotated and began to climb, all I could see was a gorgeous big sky full of stars. Wow. But weird, too -- was I pitched too far?!??! A quick check of the airspeed indicator said all was as it should be, so after running through the other instruments to verify that we were in good shape, I returned my gaze to that beautiful picture. That must be what the lucky shuttle astronauts get to see.

We climbed to 2500' and headed north. Immediately I could see the telltale city and factory lights that are West Point. For good measure, I dialed the VOR indicator to take us to HCM (after verifying the Morse code), knowing that the 337 would kick us over to the airport. Once departing the VOR and hearing on the AWOS that the winds were calm, I began the descent and set up for a 45 entry into downwind for 27 and clicked on the pilot-controlled lights. As we got onto downwind, however, I noted that the well-lit smoke coming from the well-lit factory was blowing gently westward; perhaps there would be a light tailwind, but it shouldn't be much. We'd give it a shot.... (Famous last words!)

This first approach was probably the worst as far as organization. I was very preoccupied with the differences compared to a daytime pattern, with making my pattern turns at the right time, using the runway lights as the visual cues, and, knowing that 27 has a displaced threshold on account of trees that I most likely wouldn't be able to see, I was major-preoccupied with not being low on final. Also, FYJ has no VASI or PAPI, so it would have to be all based on my judgment and gut feeling about the situation.

Predictably, I came in way high. I was probably still at 300' at least as I came over the threshold at idle power with at least 20 degrees of flaps, maybe 30. Ok, I had wanted to be some high, but that was too much. Also amidst the new distractions of a not-so-well-lit airport environment, I did a poor job of managing my airspeed and was probably ~85 mph on short final where it should be more like 65-70. Go-around #1. I was a little frustrated with myself, but being conservative assured that I'd get to try again!

Second time around was better, but resulted in another go-around. This time I was very careful with my airspeed, keeping it where it ought to be, and at the beginning of final when I realized I was high I put out the full 40 degrees of flaps. I should have made it down this time, but that's when I realized that that tailwind was having a bigger effect than anticipated and was forcing my glidepath to be longer than what I wanted. So a night go-around from full flaps ensued.

Third time around, I was on downwind and Chuck said to turn this pattern into a crosswind entry for runway 9. I was a little glad at that moment to not have to do 27 again since it wasn't going well. My downwind leg was a little too close to the runway, so I decided to extend to compensate for a short base. I ended up drilling along on final, trying not to lose too much altitude too far out, and the landing lights clearly lit the trees below us short of the threshold (they were well below us, but still...). That was proof of two things: 1 - don't wanna be low on final! What if the landing light was out? I wouldn't have seen those trees and while seeing the trees is not what determined how I tweaked my power/glide, it's nice to see something if you know you need to avoid it. 2 - I never saw the trees on 27, so I must have been way-plenty-extra high.

The landing was just fine. No problem. I rolled out to the end of 9, turned around and departed 27 for another attempt at 27. And yet another go-around! Can you believe it?!?! I couldn't. I was starting to feel very frustrated. Things were going wrong, we were talking about them, I was fixing them. Airspeed under control, check. Wide-enough pattern to descend on base, check. Flaps set appropriately, check. Corners of the pattern at proper altitudes, check. Beginning the go-around, I put in the power, started on the flaps, and let out a little of the tension by swearing, followed by an apology to Chuck for the swearing.

Next time around was very similar. I thought I was doing well and anticipating the tailwind. Turning final I was at ~375' AGL. Full flaps. Power off. 75 mph, pulling up a tad to slow those last few mphs off. And we just drifted. Still probably 100' above crossing the threshold. I was ready to go around yet again when Chuck said to land it. This, I felt, was doable but pushing it. Part of the lesson on this landing was that the runway looks shorter at night than it really is. We did finally get down, and with plenty of runway to spare, but I was still feeling very negative about the whole thing and voiced that it wasn't working for me. We talked more about all the variables and left it basically at "more practice needed;" I thought I was compensating for everything already, with the exception of selecting an aim point short of the runway, knowing the wind would drift me past it.

2 landings, 5 approaches. Ugh. (Although if it was baseball, .400 would be heroic!)

I turned us around for a 9 departure, and Chuck called for a soft-field takeoff. I considered going for the checklist, but instead I rattled off the procedure from memory: 10 degrees of flaps, get airborne asap, accelerate in ground effect to Vx, climb out. And so that I did.

When I got abeam the numbers for the landing on 9, Chuck called for a soft-field landing. Again from memory: Full flaps, shallow approach (which I would consciously forgo), hold the nose up for as long as possible after landing. This wasn't so good. Final was fine, and I was good and slow, <65 mph. The stall warning came on before we crossed the threshold, which made me a little nervous since that was not typical for my landings -- horn during the flare was normal. I just tried to be careful with it, and as I flared, we stalled, plopped down a few inches, and I was unable to hold the nose off the surface. I pulled back to at least keep the weight on the mains, but failure on the soft-field landing.

3 landings down.

Roll-out to the end of 9, turn around and prepare to depart 27. Chuck wanted another soft-field takeoff but asked me to use my checklist, basically saying that if I have a checklist for something, even if I know what needs to be done, to use it. A point well made and well taken; the DPE will like that. That's one of the fundamentals, right? It did make me wonder if he disapproved of my technique on the previous one, but he didn't critique it at all. I was doing the right things, but obviously I was being a little overwhelmed by new stuff and different stuff and feeling frustrated. I never felt overwhelmed, but in retrospect I think that might have been the case.

After a good soft-field takeoff, we were downwind for 27 when Chuck said that the landing on 27 should be non-standard, but lady's choice for how. I opted for a short-field landing. Full-flaps, slow, steep approach. Again I thought I had accounted for the tailwind but didn't land until 2/3 of the way down the runway, as the side lights changed to red. We stopped in an extremely short distance (good short-field landing except for completely missing the target landing zone!) and had to throttle up to get rolling to the end of 27. I turned around and reviewed the checklist for a short-field takeoff: hold the brakes, no flaps, throttle up, check the gauges, release the brakes, roll to Vx, rocket upward! And thusly was it done.

4 down.

By this time my approaches and landings on 9 were going just fine, so on final my landing light "failed" at Chuck's whim. That was totally awesome! As instantaneously as the light went off, my brain shifted gears and my eyes focused on the red strip at the far end of the runway. I mean, it was really just amazing how that naturally happened. And it perfectly, perfectly demonstrated what I should have been using to judge height and flare point this whole time! Man that was cool, and it was a really good landing, too. Chuck reminded me as we continued the rollout to turn that light back on.

5 down.

At the end of 27 we turned and departed 9 as a standard takeoff. This time around would be a standard landing with no landing light. Despite how fantastically awesome the previous no-light landing was and how enthusiastic I was about doing it that way, I still had trepidation about the trees and my inability thus far to aptly land with the tailwind. But I did what I could do: manage airpseed, manage altitudes, try to land "early"... On final the light went off and while the landing happened long again, it happened just fine and was again a very cool experience.

6 down.

The next two were normal takeoffs and normal landings, one on 9 and the last one on 27. Hmmm, you know, something must be out of order above, because the final departure was on 27, followed by a left turn to the south to head home, so the final landing was on 9. In any case, you get the point: we exhausted the West Point pattern and accomplished the night training, with various styles of landings and takeoffs and with and without the landing light!

After departing FYJ, we crossed the river, got to 2500' and I slowed for slow flight. The stall horn was squealing as I held ~65 mph (clean). A 90-degree turn to the west, and I had to add a little power to keep from losing altitude. A 90-degree turn back to south, again with power management. Approximately south I pulled out the power and pulled back to stall. It was a normal stall recovery with the added experience that the *visual* horizon seemed more obvious as the windscreen full of stars transitioned to a combination of stars and city lights. Given the unreliability of horizons at night, that's not something to rely on, and I was actively checking the instruments to verify attitude and climb/descent rate, but it was neat. Immediately upon establishing a positive climb, I moved on to the power-on stall, which took a good deal of effort to induce and with all those stars and no sense of horizon I was sure we were about to flip over backwards! (Go, little Cessna, go! :) Ha ha ha ha...) Again, the stall recovery was normal and it illustrated that I still need to work on getting a clean break to demonstrate to the DPE.

Getting back to JGG was an adventure. After the slow flight and stalls, I didn't have my bearings for where we were, even with the peninsula spread out before me all lit up. I couldn't immediately tell where I was based on city lights and roads, so I started searching for the beacon. (Turns out the beacon was on this time, thankfully, but that it's kinda hard for me to make out until within ~6 nm or so.) Chuck asked what I was going to do. I said there were two primary options: first, HCM VOR 188 is part of the instrument approach to JGG, and I had HCM tuned in so I dialed in the radial and turned eastward to intercept. Second option, head south, knowing we'd eventually cross the James River, at which point we'd be able to identify the telltale features like curves in the river, Jamestown Island, the power station, etc. After puttering along for a few minutes and still not hitting the 188, which would have sent us right to the airport when we really wanted to be to the west of the airport for a 31 landing, I changed methods with Chuck's approval and went river-hunting. It was not long at all before we found it. I was still looking for the beacon along the water's edge when Chuck knowingly said, "Aha! What's that?" and pointed just off the left of the nose. The ferry docks!

From there, I clicked on the runway lights and got on downwind, where the runway lights were promptly obscured by the treeline. The approach was normal, although I do remember being a little tense about it. Probably on account of the fact that 31 is the less predictable of the two finals at JGG because of the swamp monster; but he would probably be hibernating right now anyway... JGG does have three lit bars that align when you're on the glidepath (APAP?), and so I used those to bring us in for a decent landing.

Discussion:

Tailwinds are bad, m'kay: Well, I suppose not necessarily bad, but they definitely require adjustments to the standard landing setup. When possible, I will be avoiding that situation! I believe I proved tonight that despite my efforts to correct the elements that were not working, it still didn't come under control adequately.

And that was such a light tailwind, too! AWOS said calm, but the smoke from the factory was disturbed. That was good proof of why you land into the wind, even when the reports say there's no wind at all! :)

Maneuvers at night: Theoretically, maneuvers at night should be quite a lot like maneuvers during the day. On a reasonably clear night, even with no moon, there's still a horizon. Well, let me rephrase: Last night it was clear with no moon and we could pick out the horizon here. Maybe it was as simple as where the stars stopped. Maybe there was a subtle color difference between sky and dark land. But the horizon was there and that was useful for stall recovery. It would have been usable for steep turns and the like as well. For slow-flight turns, with squealing stall warning, airspeed, DG and attitude indicator were my primary inputs.

The obvious difference, however, is the trouble scenario. NTSB reports that the vast majority of accidents happen during maneuvering flight. An emergency at night is more serious since it's so much harder to find a safe landing site. In stark contrast to the night x-c a few weeks back under a full moon, tonight I could barely tell the difference between water and land, let alone pick fields out from trees or even gauge the size of fields. We did the maneuvers last night with caution, with confidence in the plane's performance in the conditions, and to a minimal extent.

Doing night stalls was a valuable experience. I'm glad we did those. I don't think that doing steep turns at night would add much to my skill set or comfort level or whatever. Stalls are always practical to practice, and since the visuals are quite a bit different at night, it was good to do it. In the end, it went to show that the process is the same (naturally!) but that the instruments play a more important role since a horizon may not be available.

Landing at night: The number one thing to remember about landing at night is that it follows the exact same procedure as landing during the day. The same procedure. Altitudes are the same. Airspeeds are the same. The pattern is the same. The visual cues are different, especially for runways with no approach path indicators, but it's still the same process.

Self-Assessment: More polish, more practice!

Flying

Preflight, taxiing, normal takeoff, short/soft-field takeoff: Good.
Maintaining airspeed, stalls, slow flight (VR/IR), maintain/change attitude/altitude/heading by instruments: Good.
Recover attitude, altitude, heading by instruments: Acceptable.
Forced landing: Good, need more practice.
Forward slip:: Dunno, needs more practice.
Pattern, normal landing, directional control after landing: Good.
Crosswind landing: Decent.
Radio work: Good.
Short/soft-field landings: Good, need to practice hitting the aim point.
Night operations: Decent.

Navigating

ADF: Haven't used it since the intro, needs practice.
VOR: Good, will get more practice.
Dead reckoning: Improving but needs practice.

Next: ??? Husband wants to act as DPE for me before I take my checkride, and that's a good idea since I haven't done maneuvers recently and only typically grade myself on altitude. This week we need to do that, and I need to do a phase check with Dan. Then I leave on Saturday to visit a friend in Florida for 5 days, and when I get back 388 will be gone for two weeks. So, I'll start scheduling a DPE for the end of Feb, and plan to do the 3 hours of pre-checkride flights, which will include the remainder of the required instrument time, during the third week of Feb.
Hours logged this flight: 1.8
Hours logged total: 48.5 (42.8 counts toward reqs)
Instrument hours logged this lesson: 0.0
Instrument Hours logged total: 1.7
Take-offs and landings this flight: 8
Take-offs and landings total: 106
PIC (solo) hours total:: 14.7

Star light, star bright...

2007-01-17T21:55:00.000-05:00

I'm super tired right now and am going to bed! But first I just wanted to report that I got in my 8 night landings tonight with Chuck, and we did a little slow flight and two stalls by starlight.

Pitching up to depart JGG was surreal, beautiful and a little unsettling -- having a windscreen full of stars just felt wrong! I had to keep double-checking the airspeed :)

It went well. Three go-arounds on 27 at FYJ thanks to a minor tailwind (also a learning experience), short- and soft-field takeoffs and landings, landings with and without landing lights -- without is totally awesome!

Retarding myself

2007-01-16T14:18:00.000-05:00

I've decided to slow down. I was pushing to finish up and do my checkride by Jan 26. Losing 4 days last week for personal reasons, and now not having quite as much daytime flexibility as I had hoped due to work obligations, plus with the unknowns of weather and DPE availability, it's just too much. I was stressing myself out, and that leaves open too much possibility for screwing stuff up.

So the new plan is as follows:
1 - Tomorrow night, finish up night training. It's supposed to be pretty windy during the day, but calming down into the evening. If it doesn't settle down as expected, that's ok, we'll postpone.

2 - Thursday afternoon, phase check with Dan. I'm thinking about rescheduling this for next week since I haven't practiced maneuvers at all in the last 5-6 weeks since I've been working on cross-country stuff. That would give me time to get in a little solo refresher time.

3 - Friday 2 pm, take the written exam. I took another test last night when I was sleepy, hot and not feeling well, and got a 90. I was alarmed during the test because I got several questions I had never seen before, not even the topic areas! But I'm good to go, have my "reread-just-before-test" list of facts, and just need to get some sleep.

388 will be MIA for the first two weeks of February, so I'll be planning to do my pre-checkride prep flights when it returns and then the checkride soon after. That gives me this week and next week to work in some solo prep flights in a non-rushed fashion.

Congratulations, John!

2007-01-14T18:28:00.000-05:00

One of our co-owners in 35388 passed his checkride at the end of last week. Bigtime congrats to him!

He has over 300 hours in his ultralight, and now is getting ready for his early-February two-week celebration trip to FL (in 388, the motivation for me to finish my training within the next 2 weeks)!

Mixed emotions...

2007-01-09T13:23:00.000-05:00

Forgive me for a short post. The x-c went very well, I got in 3.0 hours and 2 landings at controlled airports, so I've now satisfied all of my solo requirements.

Husband's grandfather passed away this morning while I was nearing home base, so we'll likely be heading back south for his funeral in the next day or two. Please keep Husband and his family in your thoughts.

Practice test #2 - 95

2007-01-08T20:59:00.000-05:00

I did another online test -- 95. I felt like I was doing badly tonight and was just generally frustrated... the cat walking in front of the keyboard, not having enough desk space (still using the old college desk) to spread out nicely, etc. The cat got the boot, and the rest just had to be dealt with as best as possible.

Tonight I missed:
1 - cloud bases in PIREPs are AGL. I figured MSL since a pilot calling them in has very easy access to that measure, and they want to encourage the reporting of actual conditions. I suppose, though, that pilots could be reporting that way and the FSS or Flight Watch or whoever translates it according to reported position to AGL. There was logic behind my answer, just not correct logic.

2 - Measurement error -- The question was something like "From airport A to a VOR B, what is the TO radial to fly?" One answer was 359 and one was 001. My measurement said 360. Repeatedly. I couldn't see what was going wrong, so I eventually randomly selected 001. They wanted 359. I'll have to see if Husband measures differently.

3 - Another ETA problem where I came up with 30 minutes and the answer was 34. This one I have already gone back and rechecked, and upon recalc'ing I get 33, so I guess I was careless somewhere. On the real test, I'll double- and triple-check.

Consistency is good, I reckon.

X-c in the morning to finish up the x-c reqs as well as landings at controlled airports. I have to do a phase check with another instructor (probably Dan again), get 8 night landings, and do 3 hours of pre-checkride prep flights.

Bleh

2007-01-07T19:02:00.000-05:00

I spent about 8 hours today cranking through the remainder of the Jeppesen FliteSchool groundschool software, and redid all of the practice questions.

I haven't taken the official software test yet, the one that I can print out to get credit for the groundschool prereq. I'll do that after taking a few more online practice tests.

I just took my first practice test at sportys.com, and got a 95. One question I missed because I didn't read the answers carefully enough. One I missed because I couldn't remember what the min vis requirement is for VFR above 10000' MSL (it's 5 sm; I answered 3 sm). The third was a calculation error that I'll have to go back and review; time en route should have been 8 minutes but I got 11 minutes.

There's so much rote memorization. I kept a list of things I know I'll just have to re-memorize right before the test. Like FAR 43.7 allows a private pilot to perform preventive maintenance. Like whether the word category or class means airplace/rotorcraft/etc or normal/utility/acrobatic with regard to airmen/aircraft.

Maybe I'll feel good enough about it to take the written this week. Right now I just feel drained.

No x-c this morning

2007-01-06T08:18:00.000-05:00

The gusty crosswinds here and at Charlottesville stepped up. I'll try again on Tuesday. I suppose now I should spend those hours studying!

Das Logbuch

2007-01-05T18:39:00.000-05:00

Chuck needed to get caught up on flight school records for my solo time and requested copies of my logbook pages. Scanned 'em, may as well post 'em too!

I remember standing next to our cars after those first few flights and watching Chuck fill in my entries. I certainly had perma-grin then! I had flown! And then more grins when I got to start filling out everything but the comments. And then more grins when I got to fill in the whole thing all by myself!

That's my medical/student license peeking out of the top left. It's clipped to the front page...

Errr, I better double-check all those sums, now that they're out there to publicly disgrace me (if wrong)!

Solo x-c prep

2007-01-05T16:14:00.000-05:00

[Update: Dammit, it's looking gusty tomorrow, with base winds near my x-wind limits...]

I'm hoping to finish out the solo x-c requirement tomorrow. I'd like to leave around 10 am, but right now they're saying a cloud deck at 1000' until lunchtime, so it may be delayed a tad.

The plan will be JGG->CHO->JGG for ~2 hours of flying time plus land/taxi/takeoff. I'll have to see how the Hobbs is going on the way home and maybe divert down to AKQ or something if the winds have shortened the trip. Or maybe go past JGG to PHF for the last towered airport landing. Or go JGG->CHO->PTB->JGG.

I just don't know! :) Depends on how the weather shapes up.

JEP FII-??: Night Cross-country

2007-01-03T22:59:00.000-05:00

Goals:

First night flight, with night landings, of course!
Night x-c.

Flight:
Tonight I had my first night training flight. After the long holiday, I had a bit of trouble getting in touch with Chuck, and I was feeling a little (self-imposed) rush to get night time in at the beginning of this week since there was a full moon and later in the week new storms were to roll in. When he did get back to me, he suggested I contact Dan (the instructor who did my phase check) since Chuck wouldn't be able to fly at night this week. I did so, and Dan was gracious enough to trade shifts at his part-time job to free up his evening for the lesson. We arranged to meet at the airport at 5:45 and for me to have planned a x-c down to ASJ (Tri-County Airport in Ahoskie, NC).

I got to the airport early and preflighted in the dark. That took about twice as long as usual, and I kept feeling disoriented with my checklist. I think this was because I couldn't just hold my finger in place and quickly glance down to see what was next on account of needing an extra hand for flashlight management. (I had grabbed Husband's hat with bill-clip light at home but somehow neglected to actually put it in my flight bag, stupid me.)

When Dan got back to the airport from helping a friend ferry a plane from another local airport, we met up and chatted for a while about night-flight topics. Empty-field myopia, where you stare at one spot and it kinda blanks out. Rods (movement) and cones (color) and using peripheral vision more. False horizons, and being diligent about checking instruments to keep oriented. Target fixation. The tendency to flare too high for landing and how to use the REILs to combat that. We looked over the route I had picked, then adjourned to 388.

After we hopped in and got situated, I started the next checklist, which begins with "Preflight inspection - complete." Since it had been 20-30 minutes since I did the preflight, I did a quick recall and remembered that I had chocked the plane (but not tied down) when I went to the flight school to meet Dan. Aha! Good. Hop out, unchock, re-situate. No embarassing attempts at departure with the wheels chocked!

After starting up, I spent a minute experimenting with lighting options. 388 has a fantastic red dome light that was beyond perfect for illuminating the instrument panel. Really, I wouldn't change a thing about that. For reading checklists and sectionals, however, it wasn't sufficient and I was regretting not having the hat light. I had two flashlights, one for a backup, and neither was particularly convenient to manage. One had a clip, so if I had a shirt pocket that might have been easy, but I had a thick fleece sweater on. The other had a short lanyard, wrist-sized, but a dangling device wasn't appealing. Dan's flashlight was on a neck lanyard, and that seemed like a workable arrangement, so I'll try that next time (or remember the hat!). I ended up holding the clip flashlight during the whole flight except for takeoffs and landings; that one has the push-the-end-for-temporary-light-or-twist-for-constant, and the push-style was most useful for short checks of the papers.

Eventually we got going. I always use the beacon and strobes, but Dan emphasized that they're required for night flight, which makes perfect sense. The landing lights were useful for taxiing, and my confidence in where the wings end was definitely compromised by the darkness! I thought my distance-judging skills were bad in the daylight -- that's nothing! Let's just say it was a slow, cautious and kinda tense taxi experience. Checking the rpm/oil/suction/amp gauges over in front of the right seat was more inconvenient in the dark during run-up, but not prohibitive. When ready to depart I flicked on the strobes and man are they bright. Dan recommended limiting their use to pattern and airport vicinity, and turning them on at the last moment before taking the runway. I'd have to agree -- the extreme contrast and flickering effect is pretty hard on the eyes.

I keyed the mike according to instruction to turn the lights on -- 7 in 5 seconds for high, 5 in 3 for medium, 3 in 1 for low, and 3 slow clicks to turn off the blinding runway strobes.

Takeoff was no different than normal. I suppose perhaps I'm used to giving some minor awareness to the periphery when rolling since deer and turkeys live in the area, but the limited visibility due to the night eliminated that possibility, kinda like a runway tunnel.

While climbing out, maybe around 300' and after checking gauges and instruments, I took in my first few quick glances of the night. It was really breathtaking. Huge full moon over the glistening river, woods and fields and streets, neighborhood lights, the brewery was shining in its pocket of woods, tiny aircraft lights way up high... Very special.

But no time for that yet! It was time to get the flight set up. As we crossed the river and continued to climb, I got set up on the 233 heading to AKQ (first checkpoint) and then called Leesburg Radio and opened the VFR flight plan. Next it was Norfolk Approach to pick up flight following, and quickly we were handed to another Norfolk frequency and then to Washington Center, who advised us of traffic at 12 o'clock that we already had in sight. It didn't take long to be able to pick out the green-and-white beacon of Wakefield -- it proved to be much easier to locate in the dark than it is in the day!

I leveled off at 6500' for the cruise portion of the trip. While working down to AKQ we played two "games." One was identifying landmarks outside and trying to find them on the sectional, and vice versa. There was a school that was well-lit and on the map. Thanks to the moon, the big straight cut of road that connects several towns on the southside was visible; also on the map and the main daytime indicator that AKQ is nearby. The second exercise addressed emergency landing site selection. Since Dan and I are both familiar enough with the area to know that the vast majority of fields down there -- easily identifiable in the glorious moonlight -- are flat and unobstructed, they provide an obvious option although they specific choice must be more guarded and having nearby alternatives would be more important since a last-minute rethink might be necessary. We talked about roads as an option, which many people don't like and which also must be considered with utmost care and reservation. If the moon wasn't so fantabulous, picking fields from woods from water would be more difficult and thus the emergency decisions would be much harder.

Oh, another aspect of this trip that was new to me was fuel tank management. The placard on our fuel selector says single-tank operation is needed over 5000'. As we passed through 5000' we were across the river and so I chatted it over with Dan for a minute and then reached down and clicked it to the right tank. This all happened very quickly: I felt it slip past the right tank (towards off!) ever so slightly, and was backing it up to rest in the notch when Dan took it and seated it. How did he know I had missed it? How did he possibly have time to get his hand down there between the time when I went past and started to go back? Literally, it was like 3/4 of a second. There was no change in performance. I understood that he'd check it after I switched, but the quickness with which he was on it surprised me. He did say right afterwards that had we gone for 10 seconds like that we'd be restarting the engine, but it would have been less than a second before I had seated it properly. I suppose he was ready to check it immediately after my switch so that I would not get first-hand experience in what happens when you screw up your fuel management, and that his response just came more quickly that I had anticipated. Anyway, I made a note of when the tank was switched.

We got to AKQ right on schedule. Sweet! (And I wonder why this time the DR worked out just right, whereas all my other attempts at DR to AKQ have failed miserably.) Next leg: 240 for 11 minutes to the town of Courtland, west of the town of Franklin, home of the Franklin-Rose Airport (FKN). FKN's beacon was easily visible from AKQ -- ~18 nm maybe. The towns were pretty easy to pick out based on size and relative locations. Awesome, going well. Well, almost going just right. We were two minutes late getting to Courtland. I adjusted the ETA for the next leg, a 6-nm hop to the teensy town of Newsoms, which we were skeptical that we'd even find: most of the stretch from FKN to ASJ is pretty empty.

We took a few minutes to talk again about false horizons and tricks our human eyes and brains play at night. Looking behind us at the peninsula, several things were apparent. For one, you can definitely tell where there's land v. water! Newport News and Hampton run together, wedged on the peninsula, and after a small break that is the James River entering the Chesapeake Bay, Norfolk and Chesapeake and other southern cities all clump together. We know that all of those city lights stop because the Atlantic ocean starts, but I could see how it would be easy to think they stopped because of a horizon. Another element of the city illusions was that the York River-bounded side of the peninsula runs basically at a diagonal, so I could also see how it would be disorienting to think that a line of city lights at a slant in front of darkness might be the horizon. Another thing was that some haze was apparent, and it somewhat blurred the line between land and sky. The haze was lit from above by the moon, and probably from below by the cities. We'd see more about this effect soon enough...

We did find something that we decided was Newsoms, and were two minutes late here as well. Our heading seemed ok still, so perhaps the wind had just picked up a little since I wrote up the numbers. With only 20 miles to the airport, I didn't think that trying to recalc in the dark while fumbling with a flashlight would be worth it. The next waypoint was Murfreesboro, a bastion of civilization in the VA/NC countryside, in 12 nm. A thin layer of clouds was forming up below us and to the east, and while we could probably see Murfreesboro, we decided it was time to descend to get a clear view of the ground and also just because of proximity to the destination. After alerting ATC of our intentions to descend to 3000' and being instructed to maintain VFR, I started the descent. The clouds proved to be at ~5000', and no course alteration was required to stay clear of them; they were entirely to our left, but in fact they were preventing a clear view of Murfreesboro. As we got lower we found that we were farther west of the town than planned, but could clearly see the ASJ beacon.

I continued our descent as we tuned in the AWOS to find calm winds. I chose to circle the airport and enter crosswind since we still had some altitude to lose for a landing on 19. My plan was that since no one else was around and the winds were calm and we wanted to go back north that I'd depart runway 1. The night pattern was normal, using the runway lights for reference was no different procedurally than using the runway itself, and the only part that was a little sketchy was not having a clear view of treetops on final, but Dan recommended a little extra precautionary altitude and it turned out just fine. I did use the VASI this time, and just after turning final was on the glide path it signaled, but then applied that little bit of extra height and so watched the double-whites until I could see the transition from dark trees to lighter (dead) grass, at which time the runway and the horizontal strip of red lights marking the other end became the focus.

Sooner than I anticipated Dan said to start my flare. The typical response for pilots new to night landings, I understand, is to flare too high, thinking they're lower than they actually are. Perhaps my feeble brain was overly aggressive in countering that impulse and went the other way. Turns out we were just right and had a very nice landing, slightly left of center.

I rolled to the end, and since no one was around I turned us around on the runway and quickly cleaned up, organized my papers for the next leg and prepared to depart. We took a quick look at the fuel selector (which had been switched back to both for the descent) and I gave it a practice turn in each direction before returning it to both.

We departed straight out and tuned in the FKN VOR for the return trip, estimated to take about 32 minutes that we'd fly at 3000' to ensure the clouds we saw on the way down couldn't increase below us going home. Radial 027 would take us to it from ASJ, then 034 would send us to JGG. Once established on 027, it was time to call FSS and close the JGG->ASJ flight plan. The Cofield VOR (CVI) was nearby and was a remote for Raleigh FSS but required transmitting on 122.1 and listening over the VOR freq. Dan dialed it in and made it the active nav freq. We identified the Morse code and then I tried to hail Raleigh.

In retrospect, I think Dan and I had miscommunicated about the frequencies -- obviously we were listening on the VOR freq (the Morse code was ID'd) and the com had 122.1 in it. I should have said "Raleigh Radio, 35388 is listening on ", but instead Dan had said to tell them I was transmitting on 122.1. At the time I thought they shouldn't care what I'm transmitting on, they care what I'm listening on, but he's the instructor so I did as told and got no response, twice. Between tries, Dan tapped my VOR indicator which was showing the needle fully deflected to the right. I was surprised but couldn't eliminate the possibility that I had drifted that far since I was preoccupied with the nav and the sectional and whatnot and we were relatively close to the VOR. So I chased it with a good turn to the right and had probably gone through 45 degrees of heading before I realized that the wrong VOR was active in the nav. Duh. I pointed that out to Dan, who said "Good catch." That was probably a test. So I switched FKN back up to active and reaquired my radial, then back to CVI for attempt #2.

Dan's next suggestion was to pick up flight following and then we'd try another frequency for FSS. We were almost immediately handed off by Wash Center to Norfolk Approach, and next to nothing was going on on those airwaves, so Dan suggested just asking if they could close the flight plan for me. The fella had been super nice, so I was a little surprised when he didn't come back with an acknowledgement or anything. After a minute of silence, he asked if we had a number for it. That confused me, and I asked Dan if he meant something other than 1-800-Wx-Brief; Dan said just to tell him the outlet and see where it went from there. I said that we had filed with Leesburg Radio (shoulda just said Leesburg) and had been unable to hail anyone yet to close. After another few moments of silence he came back saying that Leesburg had my cancellation. I thanked him in the best sweet girl voice I could conjure.

Ok, back on track. Soon enough we were on the 034 radial outbound to JGG, leaving Franklin, with the Newport News sprawl getting closer. Dan pointed out the bend in the river with the power station brightly marking the southside point across from the airport, though we were still too far out to pick out the airport.

I was hoisted by my own petard again on this last bit. As we continued up, I was scanning and putting together the light puzzle, working from NN and the power station and all that, searching for the JGG beacon. Aha! A green flash. There it is; outside of the city lights so it's not PHF, too far up river to be Fort Eustis. So I consciously stopped holding my radial and headed for the beacon. As I made this decision, Dan was pointing out PHF and we chatted about the ILS clearances for inbound pilots we were hearing over the radio. A few minutes later, I reacquired the beacon and that's when I realized my folly: green-white-white. That was Fort Eustis, not JGG. Crap.

I admitted my mistake to Dan, who then asked me what I was going to do. The first plan that came to mind was to dial in the Harcum VOR, knowing that the 188 outbound radial was part of the instrument approach to JGG; that would be the backup. For visual acquisition, I'd need to look west of that FAF military beacon. By this time I could make out Jamestown Island and knew the airport to be just beyond it. But I couldn't see the airport yet, and neither of us found a beacon there. We agreed that we were basically there, so I cancelled flight following so we could switch over to CTAF and activate the runway lights. From out there I never saw the lights lining the runway, but the runway is a cut through the trees so that wasn't terribly surprising. What I did see, however, was a short, neat line of bright white lights that conceivably could be end lighting. Dan confirmed, so I began the descent. We were going to be way high, so I executed an S-turn over Jamestown Island to buy us some time. That was pretty weird, and didn't quite feel right in the dark. I thought back to the flight training articles warning that the vast majority of accidents happen during maneuvering flight.

But we got down and into the pattern for right 13 and it was just fine. The winds had picked up some and were blowing me into the runway pretty good, which I didn't notice until he pointed out that I was getting kinda close. I was looking back periodically to judge my position relative to the runway, but I admit that I was also trying to savor the last few moments of the first night flight and also taking stock of how the usual daytime visual queues for key pattern points are invisible. A little crab took care of that. On final I had a pretty good right crab in, but was happy with the stable track of runway centerline. Below the trees I was able to straighten out without having to slip (the trees broke the wind) and had a good landing.

And for the record, we never, ever saw the JGG beacon; perhaps it became inop. no NOTAM regarding its status before we left...

Discussion:

Picking a night route: Part of this lesson was to do cross-country planning with visual checkpoints and dead reckoning navigation. The challenge, of course, is finding items on the sectional that you think will be easily identifiable in the dark.

On the first half of the route going down, there were some reasonable choices. Towns. Airports. A school (assuming it would look like a school at night from 6500'). The second half, however, not so much. At one point there was a cluster of towers marked on the map, but they weren't the icons with a flashing light at the top so I didn't know whether they'd be lit (man I hoped so! and it turns out that cluster made an excellent checkpoint) and couldn't rely on that for planning.

I also realized from this first experience a little something about using cities as checkpoints. First, some cities -- townships or villages, rather -- are on the map but really don't make good checkpoints because nearby neighborhoods have more lights on. Second, some cities run together (like NN and Hampton) so more specific checkpoints would be needed. Third, and this kinda goes with numero dos, a city may stretch for several miles so having a clear idea of "city center" or "western edge" or "trailer park on the outskirts" is advisable.

DR, winds and climbout: So, you know the winds at the airport and the winds at your cruise altitude. What's the correct way to calculate DR parameters, adjusted for wind? First, it seems obvious to pick a first checkpoint at the beginning of cruise, since after that the number of variables should be reduced and thus the error should be minimized. Getting to that first checkpoint, though... It doesn't seem right to use the winds aloft at 6500' to determine groundspeed, distance covered and timing when climbing from field elevation of 49'. Nor does it seem correct to use the AWOS winds. Nor does it seem realistic to break the calculations down into 1000'-increments and get data for each "layer" of the climb. So there's the question: What's the proper way to determine the parameters for the climbing leg?

Raising the bar: I know I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's really awesome to know you're making progress when things that seemed stressful just a few flights ago no longer take a second thought. Talking to controllers is no problem, carries no intimidation anymore. Landing at new airports, even in the dark, is no biggie. :)

Spotting traffic: Picking out other traffic was easy at night, and I like that. There were no other aircraft near us, so I didn't get a good feel for how the perception might be different, say in the traffic pattern, in deciding how your path might cross another plane's, but finding them to begin with was simpler in the darkness, even when the background was a city. Is this how it's supposed to be, or was it a product of the conditions, or am I fooling myself?

Self-Assessment: More polish, more practice!

Flying

Preflight, taxiing, normal takeoff, short/soft-field takeoff: Good.
Maintaining airspeed, stalls, slow flight (VR/IR), maintain/change attitude/altitude/heading by instruments: Good.
Recover attitude, altitude, heading by instruments: Acceptable.
Forced landing: Good, need more practice.
Forward slip:: Dunno, needs more practice.
Pattern, normal landing, directional control after landing: Good.
Crosswind landing: Decent.
Radio work: Good.
Short/soft-field landings: Good, will get more practice.
Night operations: Good, will get more practice.

Navigating

ADF: Haven't used it since the intro, needs practice.
VOR: Good, will get more practice.
Dead reckoning: Improving but needs practice.

Next: I've got the plane Saturday morning/afternoon for another x-c. I would like to do something different, but I've gone to most of the area that's in "short" cross-country distance. I was thinking of going back to Elizabeth City because it's an interesting flight and would get one of the two remaining required towered-airport landings (although maybe some of the 8 night landings will be at PHF). An alternative would be to fly up past Richmond and hit Charlottesville (also towered) and back. Either of those should easily get the 2.1 x-c hours I have left to do. But you know what I realize? I had been hung up on those numbers but now that it's FUN it seems so easy and kinda sad that they ONLY require 5 hours of x-c time! But the overhead of getting logbook endorsements and planning reviews... There'll be puh-lenty of x-c time after the checkride!

Revisit stalls and maneuvers that have been neglected during the recent cross-country work and personal travels.

Hours logged this flight: 1.8
Hours logged total: 43.8 (38.1 counts toward reqs)
Instrument hours logged this lesson: 0.0
Instrument Hours logged total: 1.7
Take-offs and landings this flight: 2
Take-offs and landings total: 95
PIC (solo) hours total:: 11.7

Night x-c!

2007-01-03T13:18:00.000-05:00

Super news! Dan can fly tonight, so we're meeting at the airport at 5:30 to do an x-c.

I'll be planning a trip down to ASJ (Tri-county airport, NC), using the sectional as best as I can to find checkpoints that will be identifiable at night.

Status

2007-01-03T10:54:00.000-05:00

My instructor can't do any night flying this week, so I have a call in to Dan, the instructor with whom I did my phase check a while ago, to see if he can go up with me tonight. The rest of the week is supposed to be cloudy and rainy here, so it's likely tonight or not until next week.

This got me thinking about whether I really can expect to finish up this month. Here's where things stand:

Aeronautical knowledge
- Studying...

Aeronautical experience (61.109a): For an airplane single-engine rating. Except as provided in paragraph (k) of this section, a person who applies for a private pilot certificate with an airplane category and single-engine class rating must log at least 40 hours of flight time that includes at least 20 hours (30.x?) of flight training from an authorized instructor and 10 hours (7.x?) of solo flight training in the areas of operation listed in §61.107(b)(1) of this part, and the training must include at least—
- (1) 3 hours (3.0) of cross-country flight training in a single-engine airplane;
- (2) Except as provided in §61.110 of this part, 3 hours (0) of night flight training in a single-engine airplane that includes—
  - (i) One cross-country flight (not done) of over 100 nautical miles total distance; and
  - (ii) 10 takeoffs and 10 landings (0) to a full stop (with each landing involving a flight in the traffic pattern) at an airport.
- (3) 3 hours (1.x?) of flight training in a single-engine airplane on the control and maneuvering of an airplane solely by reference to instruments, including straight and level flight, constant airspeed climbs and descents, turns to a heading, recovery from unusual flight attitudes, radio communications, and the use of navigation systems/facilities and radar services appropriate to instrument flight;
- (4) 3 hours (0) of flight training in preparation for the practical test in a single-engine airplane, which must have been performed within 60 days preceding the date of the test; and
- (5) 10 hours of solo flight time in a single-engine airplane, consisting of at least—
  - (i) 5 hours (2.9) of solo cross-country time;
  - (ii) One solo cross-country flight of at least 150 nautical miles total distance, with full-stop landings at a minimum of three points, and one segment of the flight consisting of a straight-line distance of at least 50 nautical miles between the takeoff and landing locations (Done); and
  - (iii) Three takeoffs and three landings (1) to a full stop (with each landing involving a flight in the traffic pattern) at an airport with an operating control tower.

2 -- the night training -- ???

3 & 4 -- could go together, but I'm not as concerned about 3 since it's not new stuff, just a matter of getting the time.

5.i I hope to knock out this coming Saturday.

5.iii I hope to do sometime this week -- if no night flying tonight, I'll plan to fly this afternoon to PHF and do a few trips through the pattern there.

Appreciation :)

2007-01-02T14:52:00.000-05:00

I just want you all to know that I appreciate you and your knowledge and your experience and your advice!

In my few months of training so far, you have all been very supportive, helped me to understand aspects of flying that have been difficult, and enriched the learning process through your own stories.

Special thanks to BC and FD who have taken time in the past few days to answer questions and provide thorough information via email, and to Husband (VTF) who spends an immeasurable amount of time explaining and chatting, and of course to my instructor Chuck.

It's really inspiring to get to interact with people who so obviously love what they're doing. This community is really something special.

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming... :)

Time to get cracking...

2007-01-02T12:45:00.000-05:00

January. Must finish flight training.

I'm fairly close. Night flying is the last area in which I need to receive instruction. I have a few more requirements to meet, like another 2.1 hours of x-c time and two more landings at a towered airport.

But what got me going this morning was looking at the schedule for 35388 and seeing that it will be gone for a long trip from Feb 1-16. I think I'll be better off to get things done before that than to have a forced 2+ week hiatus right at the end.

The big hurdle, though, is the written. I'm going to forgo the self-imposed task of reading straight through the rest of the book and instead focus on the test guide and sample tests. That'll illustrate where I need more in-depth knowledge, and I can hit the big books in more focused bursts.

Home again

2006-12-30T21:01:00.000-05:00

We could not have had better weather for our flying days. The weather and schedules even cooperated to let us hop down to GA to see my family for the day on Thursday -- something that wouldn't have been possible if we were visiting by automobile.

It was a fabulous trip. Good family time, good food, good rest.

Since this blog is about flight training, I'll briefly state what I remember off the top of my head... I did all of the flying, from the left seat, with the exception of the return trip from SC to VA because I wasn't feeling so hot that day (I did the communicate tasks, however, so it wasn't a wasted 2.25-hour trip as far as training goes) and the times when we were carrying family passengers since Husband had to be up front!

1. Flying down last Sunday it was so smooth that I set the elevator trim, sat back, and enjoyed a little under 3 hours of sight-seeing, scanning for traffic, petting the dog, and enjoying the time with Husband. Occasionally a retrim or a nudge of the yoke to correct a drift was required, but it was a very easy trip.

2. At KUZA I had one of my best landings ever, and Husband was genuinely impressed :).

3. KUZA-->18A with a fly-over of Clemson University (that's Death Valley at left) was a nice trip down to see the folks with a few minutes of "where's the airport?" at the end -- even with the GPS, we couldn't visually find it until we were almost right over it. My landing there was firm, but no bounce or control issues. Just after landing, my dad met us at the airport and we talked him into taking a short flight over the lake with two big circles over his house and a quick jaunt over Hartwell Dam -- yes, the lake level is unusually low, and thus the large bright orange ring of Georgia clay along the shorline. Husband was PIC for the tour with dad, and his landing at 18A was similar to mine; must be something about the airport! ;)

4. 18A-->KUZA later that day was good, too. We snuck into the pattern between a cute little red low-wing that was doing pattern work and another fella coming in for a full-stop. I held my flare a few inches high and after drifting with the stall warning on for a bit it plopped down; firm, no bounce, but not one to be proud of.

5. KUZA-->KJGG was Husband's leg. Various ATCs pointed traffic out to us, two of which were aircraft passing left-to-right of our path directly in front of us, with less than 1.5 nm separation. This was (1) a little unsettling (but not really) to see other planes that close without it being the usual pattern kind of close, (2) good to know ATC had our backs (and nose), (3) neat to see other planes that close in flight, (4) good to see what other traffic really looks like -- I've been a little anxious that my scanning technique is ineffective due to how little traffic I see when VFR all by myself (it is a big sky, isn't it?!), but every time ATC has pointed it out, it has been obvious and these that were in close quarters were quite obvious, and (5) proof of how flight-following is a super service but also a warning that it's an as-time-and-workload-permit service that is no substitute for pilot awareness. We saw some very odd low thin clouds, all roller-coastery, as seen in the pic at right...

6. The night before we returned home, we spent some time weighing our Christmas booty (gifts, silly!). Husband had the forethought to email our W&B spreadsheet to himself so we sat down and worked it out. Even with 60 lbs of gifts, us, the Dog, luggage, etc., there was still plenty of room for another full-grown adult. The catch the next morning would prove to be organizing those inconsistently shaped boxes in the limited-sized spaces under and behind seats.

A great trip, and perfect proof positive of why having (a share in) a plane makes traveling easier! Had we driven, we wouldn't have gotten to GA, and all useful time in the day Sunday going down and Friday coming back would have been spent driving instead of enjoying time with family or settling in at home.

Xmas Eve X-C

2006-12-24T14:40:00.000-05:00

Santa came early for us. He brought us a beautiful day with very smooth skies for our trip down south to see the family. With 2.9 hours on the Hobbs and a landing that impressed the pants off the Husband, I got a nice x-c for the log book (that doesn't count toward training/PIC time, of course) and had a good time with the Husband and the Dog.

And this time we've got pictures of said Dog with his Mutt Muffs on -- how prosh! Will post them when we get home :)

I hope Santa brings you all gorgeous weather and safe journeys! Happy holidays!

(Off topic)

2006-12-23T21:18:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry, I try to keep this blog focused on my flight training, but right now I'm feeling rather irate. If you don't care, that's fine and I'm sorry for wasting your time. If you do care, here's what's going on.

Solo 11: First solo x-c

2006-12-22T10:32:00.001-05:00

[Update: added pictures. Chuck -- I couldn't figure out how to make my camera include a timestamp actually on the image, but it's in the picture file's metadata, so I can Photoshop them in, but that kinda defeats the purpose of the timestamp!]

Goals:

First solo cross-country flight, to airports at least 50 nm from home base.

Flight:
It was looking to be a spectacular day for my first x-c! This is on the way to the airport, waiting at a traffic light:

This flight started with Chuck and me sitting down in Charly's for 40 or so minutes so that I could brief him on my plans and we could chat about stuff. He asked for the sectional, which had my course drawn and highlighted with checkpoints circled. He asked for my nav logs, which had all headings, miles, times, fuel usage and wind calculations. He asked for the applicable airport diagrams. Everything was in order. I showed him my note cards with the different frequencies along the route that I might need for talking to FSS or with flight following, as well as the VORs with Morse code IDs that I could use throughout the course.

We talked briefly about my trip Monday to PHF. The main thing was that I have no limit for headwind because I don't need one; my judgment is good enough to make that call. The crosswind, however, is still a matter of inexperience for me and so I do have a limit on that. We talked about what would happen if I tuned in the AWOS at one of my x-c airports and found that the winds were beyond my endorsements; since we were talking about viable alternatives, I would be allowed to find another nearby airport with suitable conditions and land there, even though my endorsement only said LVL and OFP. Speaking of which, I almost walked out of the terminal to head to 388 without getting my logbook endorsed for the trip, but luckily remembered at the last second!

I was grinning, and I was jittery. The jitters were because my 5'6" girl body couldn't contain all the enthusiasm! Not that the coffee was helping matters... But I got down to 388, preflighted, pulled the chocks, and hopped in. Just before takeoff I fired up the handheld GPS to start the track, and away I went!

On my way south across the river to my first DR checkpoint (very close, only 5 or so minutes away), I called Leesburg FSS over the PHF frequency of 122.2. I chose that one so that I wouldn't have to transmit over one freq and listen over a different one; Harcum and Hopewell VORs are nearby and are remotes for Leesburg, but why bother if a unified freq is available? Flight plan open, check. Then I hit my checkpoint and changed course and set the timer for the second checkpoint: the town of Waverly, west of Wakefield. Then I called Norfolk approach for flight-following, got a squawk, and was immediately asked to switch over to Potomac approach. I figure since he new I was headed SW away from Norfolk, it would just be easier to get me out of his collection of responsibilities (not that he has much of that for a VFR flight-following engagement!).

My predicted time to Waverly was for 10.5 minutes. At about 12 minutes I was abeam the town, with it out my window. It seemed like I was looking more down than out at it, so I called that a hit for the first DR leg. The GPS track shows that it wasn't as near as I felt it was. So I snapped a picture of it and set up for my next leg, which was calculated to be 12 minutes. Since the first leg took a little longer, I was prepared to allow the second leg to be a few minutes longer as well.

So I flew along, keeping my heading, keeping the heading indicator in sync with the magnetic compass. I scanned a lot, took in the scenery, evaluated different forced-landing sites. Thirteen minutes went by, and I hadn't seen the next checkpoint: the town of Jarratt, with its factory and water tower nestled next to I-95 and railroad tracks. I-95 would be the big tip-off, and there had been no major roads yet.

Then fifteen minutes went by. I saw a dot of a town ahead, but began thinking that the plan wasn't working out as expected and started formulating alternatives. The obvious alternative would be to switch on the GPS. Another alternative would be to dial in the LVL VOR and either fly the radial that went through the airport, to the VOR and back if necessary depending on where I was at the moment, or use that VOR and another one to pinpoint my location, then refine the plan from there. The alternative I chose was to switch over to pilotage, but after scanning for identifying landmarks and finding nothing that really stood out, then checking the sectional for something that would stand out and finding nothing except an occasional tower across this portion of the route, I knew that wasn't going to work just that moment. During this time, however, that dot of a town was getting nearer, so I decided I'd circle it and see if it would disclose its identity to me, or give me a clue to find it on the sectional.

Ah, there was and interstate: I-95 is the only one in that region. There's a water tower. Could that be Lawrenceville, my destination?!?! What happened to checkpoint #3? Believing this to be Lawrenceville, I fired up the GPS to confirm; yep. At 21 minutes past checkpoint #2. Now a choice: how to find the airport. The sectional gave me clues to get me in the right direction. East of I-95, southeast of town, with runways 18/36 (and an intersecting turf strip) I'd know the orientation. So I did a big loop around the western edge of the city and flew up the southern side, keeping an eye out. After a minute or two, I really felt like I should have been able to see it, so I cued up the GPS to take me to KLVL, and there it was, just a few miles ahead. Just needed to be patient and I would have flown right over it. At this point I called Potomac approach to cancel flight-following.

Ok, whew. No one was answering UNICOM, and no one was self-announcing on CTAF, so I overflew the field to check out the windsock: 18 would be favored. After flying away from the airport for a little bit, I swooped back around to the right to enter a 45 for left downwind, then had a normal pattern and pseudo-short/soft-field landing (it's 3000', but what the hey); it was a steep 40-degrees-of-flaps final where I tried to be slow, but then kept the nose up to prevent the shimmy as much as possible. I pulled off the runway, cleaned up the plane, snapped my picture, got my materials organized for the next leg and rolled back out toward the runway to depart. I was expecting to back-taxi for 18, but in the 3 minutes that I was on the ground the wind had shifted and was favoring 36. That was more convenient, since I was at the approach end of 36, so I didn't complain!

Normal departure. The plan was to fly northward until I picked up the 042 radial from LVL VOR. I did depart to the north, and expected to have time to talk to FSS and get flight following. I think the FSS operator was the same guy I had talked to earlier, and he closed my JGG-->LVL flight plan for me and wished me a good flight. I thanked him and asked him to open the next flight plan for me, and I was set to go. Potomac approach gave me a new squawk and had me on radar.

Then my attention shifted to getting on the radial. A NOTAM had advertised that the 042 radial was unusable along this Victor airway up to the DALTO intersection, just past which I'd be turning up to the Flat Rock VOR -- I was prepared for this possibility, or as Agent Smith would say, this inevitability, and had a back-up plan for using the RIC VOR on the other end of the airway. The VOR indicator was very confusing. I did not expect to be on the 042 radial yet, so I was still going generally north. During this time, the needle was swinging from left to right, which didn't make sense to me. It was possible that I was too close to the VOR, so I decided that I'd turn to 042 and fly that for a few minutes until I could expect to be away from the overly-sensitive region of the VOR, then it would probably stabilize and I could do something with it.

But it still didn't make any sense. It was on the left, so I drove toward the left. It wasn't changing, wasn't changing, wasn't changing, then all of a sudden swung all the way to the right, then bounced back to slightly left of center. Eh? So I turned a little each way to see what it would do, and it just didn't behave as I expected. Next, I tried a dramatic turn to the right, and it would twitch some to the left and some to the right. Ok, time to give up on that one. I dialed in the RIC VOR, verified the code, and turned back to the NW to pick up its outbound 223, the other end of the Victor airway. As you can see from the track, that went fine!

Approaching Richmond, flight following was proving its worth. It was a busy day (busy by my one-plane-every-fifteen-minutes-is-normal standards), and the good people at Potomac approach alerted me to a bunch of other traffic as I made my way to OFP. Before my big left turn south of Richmond, they announced another Cessna "orbiting" at my altitude 4 nm off my 11 o'clock. I found it and called that I had the traffic. A minute or so later I was tuning in the Flat Rock VOR in preparation for turning up towards it, and when I looked back up I had lost the Cessna. I scanned for a moment, glanced at the VOR indicator and saw that I was on the radial. I told Potomac approach that momentarily I'd be turning up that way and had lost the traffic; they came back to say the traffic was behind me, no factor. Ok, yay!

Up to FAK VOR I went, taking in the sites, watching a shiny Beechcraft descend into Richmond, looking out for the regional jets and commuter planes coming and going. Another aircraft was being handled by Potomac approach by the ID of "388V", so it was back to full tail number for me. This leg was pretty easy. As maintaining the needle on the VOR indicator in a perpendicular orientation became more difficult, I knew I was getting near the VOR. I set the OBS for 065, the radial that would take me to Hanover, then started a shallow bank to the right. I expected to roll out in the vicinity of the radial on a heading of 065, then scooch around as necessary to align just right while moving away from the sensitive spot. And that's pretty much what happened.

Once I got situated, I scanned and checked the local landmarks. A nice big obvious granite quarry just north of a river was right outside my window. That was clearly marked on the sectional, confirming where I believed I was. Off to the right (east and southeast) I could see the tall buildings of downtown Richmond.

This leg of the trip would be relatively short, and it was only a few minutes after that turn that a lady controller with Potomac approach called to say that Hanover was 10 nm directly in front of me and that I could start my descent anytime. That seemed a little weird to me, so I wondered whether it was really a gentle nudge to cancel flight following. I thanked her and cancelled.

Hanover stood out pretty well: a nice big runway in a nice big clearing next to I-95, lots of planes and hangars and buildings on the airport grounds on the southwest side. A lady with a great voice answered my request for an airport advisory, then asked whether I'd need fuel or anything. I know I was smiling when I told her I was a student on my first solo x-c so I'd land, take a picture of the terminal and then depart, and you could hear her smile when she wished me a great flight and said to let her know if there was anything she could do.

I wasn't super happy with my descent; I was still about 400' above pattern altitude when I wanted to get on the 45 for left downwind for 34. Since the only other plane around was a fella preparing to depart straight-out, I called that I'd do a left 360 to drop altitude and enter the 45. I rolled out right on the 45 at my target altitude, and was pleased as punch that it worked out correctly. :) The pattern and landing were normal.

After negotiating a nosewheel shimmy while slowing, I pulled off the runway and cleaned up then called the lady to ask whether the terminal or another building had the airport name on it that I could use for my picture. She guided me to the terminal with the blue awning, and had sent a lineman out to help me park. Not wanting to park, and not wanting to confuse the lineman who was giving me the signals, I called her back (hoping he could hear as well) and asked if it would be okay for me to just turn around in the big open spot in front, snap the pic from inside, and carry on. It was, and so it was done! Two down!

Before reclaiming the runway, I popped out a power bar and drank some water. The excited energy was keeping me going, but it had been about 6 hours since the morning bagel, so it was time for more nourishment. I got my papers in order for the next leg, which wasn't much since this was going to be primarily a pilotage leg after using the HCM VOR to ensure I'd be north of the RIC airspace; unfortunately, I didn't feel there was enough on the sectional that I'd be able to rely on for that without going a fair distance out of the way. In any case, the plan was to depart straight-out, turn east, pick up the radial and head home.

The departure was normal. As I ascended, I called FSS again and I swear it was the same fella again! I closed the LVL->OFP plan and opened OFP->JGG. I lowered the nose to clear for traffic, and was surprised to see the Eiffel Tower ahead. It's an attraction at Paramount's King's Dominion amusement park, one of the landmarks we used on our trip to Luray a few weekends back. I checked the sectional to see just how far north of Hanover I had gone, and was actually a little surprised; I figured maybe 5 or 6 miles, but it was more like 10. I had intended to turn off to the east earlier. No biggie, I turned and continued my climb, then picked up flight-following again.

When nav2 had the Harcum VOR frequency set, I turned up the volume and heard lots of static and a weak woman's voice giving what sounded like an ATIS report. Odd... Being too far from HCM and perhaps close to some other signal that uses the same frequency was the best I could come up with to explain it. I'll have to check the sectional to see if that's realistic. Since I was in doubt about when I could turn to a southerly heading, I continued to fly east clear of RIC. It wasn't long before I could see water features on the horizon; no doubt the river above the York (Rappahanock, maybe?). I tried HCM again and this time could hear the Morse code through the clutter. Since this leg was pilotage and I was confident I had succeeded in avoiding RIC, the question of whether the HCM signal would be reliable given the other mess on the frequency didn't receive much consideration. I dialed in the 137 that I had intended to fly, and the indicator pegged right, as I expected. I maneuvered to get on it, and it made sense. Now that I was on it, time to ignore it and go back to pilotage!

The landmarks were fun. The York River is fed by a decent sized creek for a while, and some power lines cross it; check. At that landmark, I turned off south and saw the big West Point factory off to the left; check. Before long, there was a collection of water spots that may or may not have been connected, but that are labeled as "5 Lakes" on the sectional and are distinguishable from the rivers and creeks of the area; check. Staying on that heading took me down to the Chickahominy, and the only pocket of turbulence I encountered on the whole trip. Home, sweet home!

Chickahominy feeding into the James.

AWOS indicated 13 for landing. When I was about 6 miles SW of the field approaching Jamestown Island, a plane called for the third or fourth time for an airport advisory, and since UNICOM hadn't answered, I figured he might learn something from my intentions, so I announced my position and that I was inbound for right traffic for 13. He rogered that and said he was crossing the James and would enter right downwind for 13. I found him and would be safely behind him when I entered the 45.

Normal pattern, normal landing -- although a bit bobbly on short final -- and I was home with a successful first solo x-c under my belt, and a long one at that!

Discussion:

Being alone: Being alone for that long wasn't scary. I had 8ish hours of solo time before this trip to get used to having all the responsibility, plus having flight following is at least a little reassurance that someone knows where you are (or were) if something was to go wrong. I have to admit that with the persisting nosewheel shimmy and the precautionary statements that the purpose of nosegear is to keep the prop off the ground, that's the thing that mechanically gave me the most unrest: the idea of landing at a remote airport and having the nosegear break followed by a prop strike followed by me in hysterics trying to figure out how to get home and what to do about poor 388 was borderline intolerable. But like all risks, it came down to considering the likelikhood of a problem and using what actions I could to mitigate the risk.

It was pretty cool to have all that time to myself, in fact. I prefer flying with Husband because it is safe and I'd always rather be with him than without. But I did feel like I was taking myself for a sight-seeing tour of the middle state, and that was neat. I was relaxed and enjoyed it.

Talking: Some switch must have flipped on Monday when I went to PHF and talked to ATC all by myself for the first time. Talking to FSS and the different approach controllers on this trip caused me no stress, no problems. It was easy and natural. The right things to say (at least, it all seemed right!) were always there, because it all goes with the situation.

You know how "they" say that one of the main psychological benefits of sleeping and dreaming is to give your brain time to digest the day's events without the distraction of further observations or inputs? I kinda feel like that must be what happened for this topic with me. I was overthinking it, and so after my brain had time to process without me getting in the way it all fell into place. Not that it doesn't have room for improvement -- it obviously does! -- but it's good enough to be safe and effective, and experience will provide the rest.

Navigation: I learned a lot on this trip, and I've got more to work on, primarily when it comes to dead reckoning. When we get back from the holiday vacation, I'll probably make a little trip between all the local airports I'm allowed to fly to using just DR, and see if I can't nail it. If it still comes out poorly, I'll have to get more training on that because my prep skills will be suspicious.

Self-Assessment: I'm feeling good about my progress. This feels like a good milestone!

Flying

Preflight, taxiing, normal/short-field/soft-field takeoff: Good.
Maintaining airspeed, stalls, slow flight (VR/IR), maintain/change attitude/altitude/heading by instruments: Good.
Recover attitude, altitude, heading by instruments: Acceptable.
Forced landing: Good, need more practice.
Forward slip:: Dunno, needs more practice.
Pattern, normal landing, directional control after landing: Good.
Radio work: Ok, will improve with practice.
Crosswind landing: Improved.
Short-field/soft-field landing: Improved.

Navigating

ADF: Okay for an intro, needs practice.
VOR: Needs practice.
Dead Reckoning: Needs mega practice.

Next: Tomorrow afternoon or Sunday we expect to fly down to SC for Christmas. We'll get at least 6 hours of flight time in; "we" meaning I get aeronautical experience and Husband gets to log PIC hours. :) The last part of my training that's left is night flying.

Night flight.
Practicing everything.

Hours logged this flight: 2.
Hours logged total: 34.8
Instrument hours logged this lesson: 0
Instrument Hours logged total: 1.3
Take-offs and landings this flight: 3
Take-offs and landings total: 89 (this number seems wrong... must check logbook)
PIC hours total:: 11.7

Ooops!

2006-12-22T10:31:00.001-05:00

Sorry about that... I accidentally hit "publish" midway through my writeup about the x-c. I've taken it down so I can finish it. Please bear with me!

[Insert cheesy grin here :)]

2006-12-20T13:43:00.000-05:00

[Update: Added the GPS track picture.... I could see checkpoint 2 from the air, just outside my window it seemed, but the track doesn't lie -- I was already off course at that point. Something to work on...)

Paul, sorry, no picture of the cheesy post-flight grin, although I think I'm still wearing it... I did a cheesy self-portrait in the air, though, and pending editorial approval by moi, it might come up here. :)

I'm home, I'm safe, the flight went very well. I'm at work now and we have our office Christmas party tonight, and tomorrow we may be enroute to SC to beat the incoming storms, so it may be a few days before I get the usual description and analysis up.

The brief synopsis:
- Leg #1: First two DR checkpoints, dead on. Third one, never saw it, don't think I was anywhere close. Fourth one, doesn't count -- it was the town of Lawrenceville, home of the destination airport -- because it was by chance that I was flying over it after having missed the third checkpoint so dramatically. Thank you GPS for confirming and helping me get back to the field without too much further daliance.

- Leg #2: The NOTAM was right: the LVL VOR is unusable on radial 042 up to DALTO. The GPS track is going to look somewhat obscene, showing how I ran around trying to figure out if I was wrong or the signal was wrong, before I trashed that plan and switched to the RIC VOR. RIC to FAK to OFP went off without a hitch; Potomac approach kept me alerted to the Richmond traffic. Super nice lady manning UNICOM.

- Leg #3: Pilotage back to JGG went fine fine just fine. Such a pretty place we live in, even in winter. The only turbulence I encountered on the whole trip was crossing the peninsula from West Point down the Chickahominy to the James; otherwise it was smooth flying.

I opened and closed my flight plans with Leesburg FSS like a good girl, and had flight following on all three legs. I took pictures of the FBOs at LVL and OFP for the proof that I was there, as well as pictures of checkpoints and other things I found interesting along the route.

It was a really good trip! 2.9 hours on the Hobbs, distances meet the long x-c requirement, and the time went by pretty quickly.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

2006-12-20T08:21:00.000-05:00

The moment of truth, the time has arrived.

And I've got the biggest grin ever!

I'm ready, it's looking to be a gorgeous day, 6 successful hours of sleep...

Flight plans for the three legs are filed. Calculations are all done.

Cross your fingers for me! :)

X-c eve

2006-12-19T20:42:00.000-05:00

I got the butterflies around 4 this afternoon. Don't know why. When I think about the trip, I'm good, I feel prepared. When I'm not thinking about it, I get anxious. WTF?

Weather for tomorrow is looking really nice. 55 degrees, 6-8 kt winds on the ground, no turbulence predicted...

If the winds aloft hold as predicted, the first leg looks like it will be shortened a little, thanks to a tailwind. The second leg will be drawn out. The third leg will be very, very fast.

The only thing that looks a bit questionable is that there's a NOTAM saying the V-042 airway from the LVL VOR to the DALTO intersection is unusable. I was planning to depart LVL along that route, then a few miles past DALTO turn up toward the Flat Rock VOR. I'll probably try it and see how it does, but that airway has an opposite end at the RIC VOR, so that may do as a replacement.

Solo 10: Towered airport

2006-12-18T14:06:00.000-05:00

Goals:

Land at a towered airport (PHF) solo.

Flight:
To help assuage some of my gooberness about planning, I decided during lunch at 11:30 that I'd go for a quick flight, just to land at PHF for the first time by myself and come back. PHF is 12 nm away, so it ought to be quite doable without much planning since this is my local area and also without missing too much work. (Husband (a.k.a., my Boss) is out of the office today for a business meeting, so shhh... don't tell him I was playing hookie!) I had gone home for lunch, so as I left I grabbed the sectional (which was out this morning for my continued planning of the Wednesday x-c) and threw my flight bag in the back seat.

I popped back into the office to check for TFRs and do a check of the weather on the way to the airport. The PHF TAF put the winds at 9 kts for the next 2 hours, mostly down the runway at both JGG and PHFj, and the JGG METAR was showing 5 kts at the moment. Well, not much for crosswind practice, but within my endorsed limits. No TFRs, no relevant NOTAMs. Cool. Aside from returning to the office after making it halfway to the airport because of the realization that I didn't have the PHF plate or airport diagram, everything went as normal through engine crank.

At engine crank, I realized that I hadn't removed the chocks. Crud. Inconvenient for being alone. Mixture to idle-cutoff, hop out, remove chocks, hop in, go through the whole pre-crank checklist again just to be sure... Ok, good to go.

So I dialed in the AWOS. 290@12. Hmmm. My logbook endorsement says up to 10 kt crosswind component, but doesn't say max wind; the older endorsement was a limit of 10 kt winds with 5 kt x/w. 12 kts at 290 means way more headwind than crosswind for departure from 31, so I figured it would be ok but was still hesitant. While I was trying to make up my mind, the AWOS loop started again, and a new report came out just then that said 290@10. Well that was no problem no matter how you looked at it.

Taxi, short-field takeoff, departure to the west to avoid the school, then north to skirt the FAF Class D and fly down the peninsula to PHF. A plane inbound for JGG asked me for location info as I was reaching my cruise altitude of 2500', and I responded with that and a location 5 nm north of the field moving east. Once I found I-64, I followed it southeast toward PHF. Staying on the northern side of I-64 would keep me clear of FAF the whole way down.

At 8 miles out, I dialed in the ATIS and got information Papa; winds at 8 kts with runways 25 and 20 in use. At 7 miles out, I called the Newport News Tower and I think made a good contact, saying that I was at 2500' 7 miles northwest of the field inbound for landing with information Papa. The lady controller told me to set up for a straight-in approach for 20 and report a 2-mile final.

Hmmmmm... I haven't done a straight-in approach before, and given my crappy skills at judging distances, I was a little unsure about doing my procedures for airspeed reduction and flaps and whatnot. Plus, if the descent here was as bumpy as the ascent from JGG, I could expect to be busy with wing-levelling tasks, too. Since 20 is 6500' long, I resolved to feel it out and err on the high side.

Using the GPS to tell me when I was at 2 miles out, I called to report that, then put out 10 degrees of flaps and began descending from 1000'. I didn't hear anything for a little while, and when I got down to 500' and hadn't been cleared to land yet, I prepared to call and remind her that I was getting there. Before I could do that, however, she called and cleared someone else to land on 25 and told me I was #2 for landing on 25.

Whoa. Wait. What?!?!!?!

I immediately called and said that I was on short final for 20 and please advise. She said to do a right 360 for spacing. Aw, crap. 85 mph, 10 degrees of flaps, 400'. I got really nervous. Here goes.... Power in, carb heat in, slight right bank to avoid the runway (was that necessary?), level, speed up, leave flaps alone, climb and turn. And there was the turbulence. Dammit. As I got to ~270 degrees of the turn and had searched unsuccessfully for this other traffic, I called again and asked the tower to confirm that I was supposed to land 20. She confirmed 20 and said I was cleared to land. I guess that either she misspoke earlier or I misheard, but if that was the case it surely wasn't for lack of listening!

I repeated the clearance and struggled to get back toward centerline after having overshot it dramatically coming out of the 360. I was recentered with plenty of short-final to spare, and put out another notch of flaps to get down. Just as I was about to touch down, a gust grabbed me and pushed my right wing up. I tried to level with the ailerons and preserve a straight-ahead track with rudder, and mere split seconds later touched down. The nosewheel was pointed off to the right, so to the right 388 went. I straightened it out quickly and came to a stop as soon as possible.

Ugh. I guess she was letting someone land on 25 and giving them time to be safely down without threatening my runway before clearing me to land.

Now I didn't know what to do. I hadn't looked up the answer to my question from Friday's lesson: Can I turn off the runway at a towered airport on any taxiway I like? Well, I figured that doing nothing until instructed was better than possibly breaking the rules, so I called the tower, told her I was a student and requested instructions.

The lady controller, who had been nice and patient with me so far, continued being nice and patient but started talking reaaaallllllyyyy ssslloooooowwwwllly. I will try my best never to have to tell them I'm a student again (I will if I need to, but this was torture!). I had stopped just short of taxiway Delta, and she said, nice and slow and clear, "Take the taxiway to your right." Oh I just sank a little. She didn't even call it by its name, she just gave me the most fundamental -- and nearly impossible to screw up -- directions. I replied that I'd take taxiway Delta, then cleared the runway.

As I was rolling off the runway, she called again.

NNT: "November 388, where would you like to go?"
388: "388 would like to taxi for departure to the west back to Williamsburg."
NNT: "November 388, take taxiway Alpha for Runway 20."
388: "Taxiway Alpha for 20 for 388."

Then I sat there for a moment to clean up the plane, as I typically do right after clearing the runway. After maybe 15 seconds, she called again.

NNT: "November 388, taxiway Alpha is to your right."

Oh come on! I could see the signs, I had my taxiway diagram, I knew what to do, I just needed a sec to finish up my checklist! There were no other planes landing or in the pattern, and it wouldn't have made any sense for any departing planes to come through my little taxi spot, so I don't think she was hurrying me... Oh to be branded a student! :)

388: "Roger, 388 will take taxiway Alpha to 20."

By then I was done with the cleanup, so I throttled up and headed up to 20. I positioned myself in place behind the hold-short line for 20 and did the departure checklist before calling the tower.

388: "NNT, 388 is holding short of 20 and is ready for departure."
NNT: "November 388, hold short for traffic."
388: "388 is holding short."

During this time, a Gulfstream landed on 25 and taxied across to Rick Aviation. He was on Delta when he called the tower. (I don't remember his tail number so I'll call him GS.)

GS: "NNT, GS, understand cleared to cross 20."
NNT: "GS, affirmative."

Then a few seconds later...

GS: "NNT, GS, be advised that your wind advisories may be wrong if you're using the midfield windsock. A red hawk has been sitting on the sock since we came in."
NNT: "Oooh, pretty."

Argh.

NNT: "November 388, cleared for departure, runway 20."
388: "388 is cleared for departure, runway 20."

And away I went. Actually kinda glad to be leaving that whole experience behind. As I got out over the river, I called the tower and advised that I was leaving her airspace. She approved a frequency change, I repeated and g'day'ed her.

On the sectional I located the FAF CTAF and decided I'd do the same as Chuck and I had done last Friday by advising that we'd transition the area above their airspace. I plugged it into the standby position, swapped the frequencies and announced:

388: "Felker Tower, Skyhawk 35388 is departing Newport News airspace en route to Williamsburg and will overfly your airspace at 2700' over the dead fleet, Felker."
NNT: "November 35388, NNT, check frequencies, frequency change approved."

Urgh. I imagine she released her mike and muttered to a coworker, "Stupid student."

388: "Thanks, and my apologies."

I looked at the radio and sure enough, I had NNT's frequency of 118.7 in BOTH positions on the com. How'd that happen? I checked the sectional again, and that was the problem -- I had misread it. PHF's info is directly under the FAF airspace, and the FAF info is below and farther to the left.

With the correct frequency dialed in, I repeated the advisory to Fort Eustis (Felker).

FAF: "Aircraft calling Felker, repeat callsign."
388: "35388."
FAF: "35388, repeat altitude."
388: "Two thousand, seven hundred."
FAF: "35388, you are above my airspace. If you need traffic advisories contact Norfolk approach."
388: "Roger, thanks."

This guy sounded peeved that I had bothered him. There was nothing else going on on the frequency, but whatever. Maybe he was doing something else, and yeah, it wasn't necessary for me to call him. Whatever.

Up near the bend in the river, I started to descend, and looked around to see where I'd go if the engine had trouble. Very few choices: Power station to the left with lines crossing most of the fields; Army land to the right that I'd use if it really was an emergency but really would rather not; river and woods ahead. From 2700', perhaps I would have made the Colonial Parkway area, but the wind was out of the west and that wasn't good. A fun time at Fort Eustis it would have to be... should it be needed.

Luckily the engine didn't fail. I dialed in the JGG AWOS and it said winds 270@8 with max gusts of 15. Oh crap. That's not what I want to hear. Me no likey gusts. A little anxious, I continued to descend over the water to about 1200', and listened to the AWOS again. It had changed, and now was saying 270@8, no gusts. Well, ok, but I was still apprehensive as I turned onto the 45 for left downwind for 31. The pattern was mostly normal, with the exception of crabbing on downwind to avoid being pushed into the airport. I anticipated a shorter base, and so chose to extend my final a little to be sure I'd have time to set flaps and slow down. That part of the planning worked out well. I was a little hot coming over the threshold, and so floated a bit and then bounced once, but the wrestling I was doing with that wind had the majority of my attention.

I can't help but be reminded of my first solo. I don't think I've flown in gusty conditions since then. And I still don't like it.

Discussion:

Talkie talkie: I feel really good about talking to the tower. Yes, it was painful once she started treating me like a student, but the parts leading up to that were good. When in doubt, I asked for confirmation. When the unexpected was happening, I piped up and requested advice. Other than the frequency change fiasco upon departing PHF, it really went well.

In retrospect I am actually laughing at how she was talking to me. Whenever possible and safe I will avoid disclosing my status in the future!

Straight-in approach: Needs practice, obviously. I'll have to figure out or learn from someone how a "normal" straight-in approach is executed.

The value of planning: I didn't plan, deliberately, beyond having the basics. Check TFRs, wx, NOTAMs. Take a sectional. On the way over, though, in thinking about the flight, I knew I'd want the PHF plate and taxiway diagram. Ok, turn around and get them. If I had spent 5 minutes planning that flight, I would also have made my customary note card with the frequencies I'd be using, and would probably have avoided the PHF/FAF mix-up, although fundamentally that was nothing more than a mistake; still, one that could have been avoided. It was fine, I had everything I needed, but my normal anal preflight planning would have made it more organized. Shame on me.

Judgment: Do you think I made the right call based on the winds AWOS reported before I left the parking spot?

(1) I'll have to ask Chuck so I'm entirely clear on just what the logbook endorsement means, but I believe that going up did conform to the endorsement; the AWOS report at departure time was 290@10, well under the 10 kt x/w limit.

(2) Moments before the AWOS report was different, and it was questionable whether it exceeded my legal allowable limits. Despite the fact that the current report was within limits, should I have considered that another change, potentially for the worse, could happen before I got back to land at JGG?

(3) What if that inbound-for-JGG report of 15-kt gusts had continued until I was ready to land? Should I have diverted to West Point or back to PHF? Would I expect it to be any better at those locations? I bet I could pick up their AWOS/ATIS from the air around JGG, but what if I couldn't? I know there's such a thing as Flight Watch, but how would I talk to them and would this be a reasonable thing to call about? Even though the AWOS report did improve by the time I was near the pattern, it had obviously continued changing since I departed and would it continue to change over the next few minutes during my approach?

Self-Assessment: Talking with ATC was decent; not verbose, good inclusion of information, good reactions. I feel good about that. Most everything else on the day, though, I don't feel good about.

Flying

Preflight, taxiing, normal/short-field/soft-field takeoff: Good.
Maintaining airspeed, stalls, slow flight (VR/IR), maintain/change attitude/altitude/heading by instruments: Good.
Recover attitude, altitude, heading by instruments: Acceptable.
Forced landing: Good, need more practice.
Forward slip:: Dunno, needs more practice.
Pattern, normal landing, directional control after landing: Good.
Radio work: Ok, needs practice.
Crosswind landing: Improved.
Short-field/soft-field landing: Improved.

Navigating

ADF: Okay for an intro, needs practice.
VOR: Needs practice.

Next: Wednesday, 10 am, solo x-c.

Talk with FSS and use flight-following.
Practicing everything.

Hours logged this flight: 1.0
Hours logged total: 31.9
Instrument hours logged this lesson: 0
Instrument Hours logged total: 1.3
Take-offs and landings this flight: 2
Take-offs and landings total: 86 (this number seems wrong... must check logbook)
PIC hours total:: 8.8

Just call me crUZA

2006-12-17T17:35:00.000-05:00

Oh that was bad. That's my mother's sense of humor coming out.

Husband has decreed that I'll be the "acting" PIC (without of course being PIC since I'm just a lowly student) on the trip to SC, destination airport KUZA. I get the left seat, and he's going to be the "pilot not flying" and will do as much or as little as I ask him to do.

I am going to plan this trip. I had said previously that I wasn't going to, but I am. I just got to thinking that it would be a massive opportunity to miss if I don't. KUZA is just on the other side of Charlotte, outside of Bravo airspace but under one of the layers of its inverted wedding cake. It requires us to skirt parts of the airspace a little and make sure we are low enough at various points to be clear. I know Husband talked to CLT last time we went, but I don't know whether it was actually required, since we weren't coming into it; maybe it was just because flight-following handed us off. Other than that, it's 2+ hours of straight and level.

Reading about talking

2006-12-17T17:07:00.000-05:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- I can't imagine doing primary training without living with a pilot!

One of the books in the reading room, I noticed the other night, is Say again, please. I set it on my bathroom counter so I'd see it in the morning, after work, in the evening... and wouldn't forget to start reading it. The book is about using the radio. It's about why we talk to each other and to controllers. It's about the information that's needed and relevant for different exchanges. It has examples for everything.

I read the first four chapters last night. So far it's easy to get through, but it is dense. There's no way I'll retain it all right now, but at least it's something practical I can add to the studying going on right now. Well, I haven't picked up my groundschool textbook in probably two weeks; it's getting to be like the kid who has to sit at the table until he finishes his green beans, sulking, checking out the curtains, memorizing the pattern on the ceiling plaster... Okay, it's not that bad yet, but I look at the book sitting there and even scrubbing the floors seems more appealing. It's just that it is sooo dry and a lot of it is "pass the knowledge exam" kind of reading, not stuff that's practical to my flights right now. Like Class A airspace boundaries and requirements. Or turbochargers.

I almost always have several books going at once, but I've been trying to discipline myself to get through the groundschool, not allowing any leisure reading until the textbook is done. This way, I'm still learning stuff that's relevant to my training, and it's very refreshing to have a book in the rotation now that's instructional but not painful to pick up. We'll see how that changes after a few more chapters. I'm into the chapters that are broken down by airspace, starting with G and moving backwards in the alphabet. When it gets to Alpha, and maybe even Bravo, we'll see how rapt it keeps me... :)

Anyway, several of you out there in interwebland have noted that I'm anal to the point of getting too keyed up. Yes, that's who I am about this training stuff. (That's not who I am with most other things, oddly.) Husband is being gracious enough to practice exchanges with me. Chuck and I hung around on the ground for a little while after the flight where I got the endorsement for landing solo at PHF to practice some different scenarios that might come up in talking with them, and also the importance of receiving and repeating clearances before enacting them. All of this prep makes me less anxious about going out and doing it. I don't care if I say something stupid, I'm used to looking like an idiot, but I don't want to say something or say it at the wrong time such that it causes problems for the controllers or other pilots.

And Husband's bookshelf is full of stuff that I'm sure is worth reading. There are a few Rod Machado books, Stick and Rudder, his instrument training books (not that I'll be cracking those babies open in the near future), leisure reading like The Cannibal Queen and Bandits over Baghdad, ... There are enough options there to enliven the reading rotation without feeling guilty, although I am going to have to crack down soon, finish up the studying and get the knowledge test out of the way.

Plus, I'm crossing my fingers for a few fiction books for Christmas, so the attention may further be divided...

No solo x-c today

2006-12-16T11:13:00.000-05:00

I had planned to do my first solo x-c today.

I spent several hours last night planning it out. It seemed like a good length (~156 nm) with good waypoints and interesting navigation paths (like using VOR fixes to route between Class C airspace and an MOA). Stuff I'd learn from but not be overwhelmed by.

At about 8:30, a wave of exhaustion just swept over me, and I could hardly keep my eyes open to finish the nav log. I wrapped it up, emailed the plan to Chuck, and went to bed.

But I couldn't sleep. At first it was just the usual thing where my brain wasn't done planning and still wanted to think through things. The plan was to meet at 9:00 at the JGG terminal to review, then I'd go at 10. That meant I'd need to get up ~7:30 to have a leisurely morning. But we were out of breakfast foods, so I'd have to go by Starbucks or something like that. And I wanted some snacks to take with me, because I'd rather fly the route and not have to find lunch along the way, so I'd need to go to the grocery store or a convenience store on the way. And then there was the matter of not having scrutinized the sectional for alternate airports in the case of a problem, so I'd need to get up extra early to find and print the appropriate diagrams.

It was turning into one thing after another, and before long I was getting worked up in a bad way. My heartbeat was too fast, my gut had that clenched-yet-hollow feeling. I kept telling myself it was stupid, that there'd be time for everything, that if something did go wrong I'd have to GPSs, etc. But it was no use, and I just didn't get much sleep.

At 6:30 I finally gave up and got up. I emailed Chuck to let him know that I was in no shape to fly and was postponing the x-c. It sucks, because it's gorgeous around here today -- mid-60s, cloudless, light winds...

Around that time I had come to the conclusion that the route was too aggressive for my first x-c. I still haven't totally ruled that out, but I think the real fundamental problem is that I don't feel prepared for that route for all the reasons mentioned above. I'll try to take a look at it again this afternoon and maybe it'll feel better.

Then again, I'm soooo sleepy!

Two new airports

2006-12-15T14:53:00.000-05:00

Goals:

More practice at a towered airport.
Get signed off for solo landings at AKQ and PHF.

Flight:
Today I rode in the back during Husband's BFR -- he did a good job, and it was neat, but I'll leave the details to his post. One point of advice: look ahead, not out the side window, when someone is doing Dutch rolls.

After that, Chuck and I went up to make sure I could find and land at AKQ and PHF (towered) so's to add two more airports to my 25-nm limitation. We departed 31 and left out to 247, as was indicated by my DR calculations. I climbed to 2500', where the winds were supposed to be 250@26 (according to RTFP at 7:45 this morning for a 10 am departure, and it was now 10:30). I was expecting a measly groundspeed of 78 kts going down to AKQ, and the GPS was showing 90+. I used power and trim to get to an IAS of 117 mph, which is what the numbers in the nav log were based on.

Then Chuck had me use the E6B to do some figuring. Outside temp at 2500' was 10C, so I plugged that in. Next, to determine true airspeed (TAS), you find calibrated airspeed (CAS), for which we substituted IAS, on the wheel and read off the corresponding TAS. I left my notes on this in the car, so I'm not sure exactly what that came out to -- something like 119 kts. So, 119 kts with a nearly direct headwind of 26 kts means a ground speed of 93 kts. So my time value would be wrong, and if it was more than a 15 minute leg, we would have reworked the numbers.

But the angle was wrong, too. I don't know whether it was (1) the wind wasn't where it had been predicted to be 3 hours earlier or (2) the headings coming out of RTFP in fact are correct and I'm doing something fundamentally wrong in my by-hand calculations; my 247 took us well west of the field, west of Waverly even.

So when I knew for certain (based on landmarks) that we were going to be passing the field off to the side, we did a VOR check. I had determined before leaving that the ORF (to) 105 and FKN (to) 190 VOR radials intersect right over the field. So we turned to a heading of 090, knowing we were south of the 105 radial and headed back east. I then tuned in FKN and waited for the needle to center. We could see the airport just out the right side of the plane, and I switched our lonely single VOR indicator back to ORF to cross check and it was close.

Great. Good enough for government work. Next I was cleared by Chuck to land at AKQ. I had already dialed in the ASOS and it said the winds were variable and the altimeter setting was a full in-hg higher than JGG. As we fley just past the approach end of 20 while messing with the VORs, I could see the wind cone favoring 20 at that time. I flew away from the airport while I descended, then turned to the right to get on a 45 for left downwind for 20.

With a 9-kt wind at my back, I deliberately turned base early, crabbed along, and had a relatively short final that took a relatively long time! It wasn't one of my better landings recently -- the strong direct headwind and slooow progression of things threw me off a little, and so I flared to early and just waited seemingly forever for the plane to settle onto the runway, and that settle happened from a few inches higher than would be termed graceful, so it was more of a plop. No bounce, a little shimmy, but it was ok.

I back-taxied and we departed 20, then turned northeast to head toward Aberdeen and PHF. Along the way we discussed initiating contact with PHF, what to use as a reference when giving our location, etc. I checked ATIS and received information Mike; PHF was landing 20 (6000', the usual GA runway) and 25 (8000', for commercial and military traffic) today. The ghost fleet a few miles up-river is flagged on the sectional for use as a VFR landmark when talking to controllers, and I probably should have used that but I used Aberdeen anyway. Coming in over Aberdeen guaranteed clearance of Fort Eustis' airspace.

I hailed him at ~9 miles south of the field over Aberdeen, inbound for landing. He instructed me to set up for left traffic on 25 -- the runway nearer to us -- and report midfield downwind. He also added the wind and altimeter info; dang it, I forgot to tell him that I had info Mike. We heard him talking to a helicopter that was working 20, instructing him to stay north of (taxiway) delta, the taxiway along 25 on the 20 side. Landing on 25 would be neat; I tried to imagine what that huge of a runway was going to feel like in our dot of a plane but couldn't, despite having landed there in 172s with Husband many times in the past!

Crossing the river, PHF stands out pretty well. It's the huge V-shaped clearing! As we neared the airport, I turned right to get onto downwind, and just before I reached midfield the controller, who must have been bored this day, contacted me first and said I was cleared to land on 25 and hold short of 20 (7500' down the runway!). I repeated the clearance, then pointed out to Chuck that I had been given a LAHSO, in which student pilots aren't allowed to participate. He said it would be ok since he was there, but when I come back by myself to either announce when I make contact that I'm a student so they won't issue it or to decline it if it is issued.

When the controller had called me with the landing clearance, he referred to me as "November eight eight." That caught me off guard, and I didn't respond immediately. I had a good inkling that he was talking to me since the helicopter's ID sounded nothing like mine and there was no one else he'd be clearing right now for 25, let alone on the frequency at all. He called back again, and this time I responded by accepting the clearance for 35388 (just to be sure he meant me).

On base I felt I was doing good and Chuck said, "Well there's a reason to keep a high pattern!" I quickly scanned to see what he was talking about and didn't see anything. Then he pointed out that we were flying over power lines, probably not more than 200' below us, if that much. I turned final and wondered briefly where I'd be expected to turn off the runway, and therefore where I should aim to touch down. I decided that the numbers, as usual, were prudent, and if necessary I could speed right along down the runway.

It was pretty neat to go in there. It's hugemongous! I think the landing went well, but I don't really remember it very well. Had it not been for the nosewheel shimmy, I could have made the early taxiway turnoff. Instead, as I rolled past it, the controller told me to take Golf (the next one) and switch to ground. I repeated that, and Chuck suggested that for that instruction I should abbreviate it to "388, wilco." For a busy airport, it would make a difference for the airway clutter.

That does lead me to wonder whether, had I slowed enough to make that first turn off, could I have taken it or must I only exit the runway when/where instructed to do so?

I cleared the runway, cleaned up the plane and switched to ground. I called them and asked to taxi back for departure, and should have but didn't tell him where I was. I should have said, "Newport News ground, Skyhawk 35388 on Golf, request taxi for departure." Given the slow day, I'm sure he knew where I was, since I wasn't a helicopter in the air at the time, and he told me to take delta back to 25. He also called me Cherokee. Doesn't sound much like Skyhawk, but given the lack of traffic and the fact that any assumptions that might be made about Cherokee v. Skyhawk for that runway or my departure would probably be okay, I just taxied away.

The engine seemed a little rough to me during the taxi, and when Husband had started up this morning it was behaving oddly (carb ice), so I elected to do another run-up. It went fine.

I hailed the tower and told him I was ready to depart. He asked how I wanted to depart. To save a round on the radio, I could have initially said, "Newport News tower, Skyhawk 35388 is ready to depart, would like to depart VFR straight out." He cleared me to depart 25, and I went back simply with "Roger for 388." This earned me a correction from Chuck. Always, always fully repeat clearances to land and clearances to take off. Period. Other stuff can be abbreviated or not repeated, but clearances are a must.

Taking off from PHF was even more interesting than landing. I could see the end of the runway for most of the takeoff! It was great. I felt like a tiny little bug. Just before we reached the river, the controller came on with "Frequency change approved." I had already determined where I would call him to say I was beyond his airspace, but he beat me to the punch on everything today (which was actually nice for me, since I'm still a little tentative about when to say what). I acknowledged and wished him a good day, then started the plan for getting to JGG.

Initially we were going to go back to the southern shore of the James and cut up on the west side of the power station, but thought it would be a good practice to overfly Fort Eustis airspace (which tops out at 2500', I think -- something around that) and talk to them. So I turned up-river and tuned them in. After listening to silence for a few seconds to be sure it was clear, I advised, "Felker tower, Skyhawk 35388 is overflying your airspace at 2600' over the dead fleet." This was not required, since I wasn't in their airspace, but Chuck called it a "good citizen" contact; if it was a busy tower, we'd leave them alone, but they didn't seem to have anything going on, judging by the calm freq and the fact that there were no military helicopters in sight.

Anyway, a nice lady came back with a "Good afternoon, 35388" and then followed with something like "proceed as described," then gave me the local weather info and advised that if I needed any assistance that I could call Norfolk approach. And she sounded like she was smiling, which made me smile, too :)

After that it was a bumpy final (direct left crosswind) with a left-of-center touchdown (the crosswind disappeared below the trees and I didn't anticipate that).

And now I have two more airports that I can go to all by myself, one of them towered!

Discussion:

Talking through things: I was very talkative on this flight. Don't know why... But it was mainly me talking about what I was doing. Things like "I see the airport, time to start descending, check the mixture, turn on landing lights, gonna descend a little faster than usual so I'll pull the throttle out more..." and so forth. Chuck kinda laughed at the end of it and said to keep that up and to do it on the checkride for two reasons: (1) The examiner will know what I'm thinking and why I'm doing things without having to ask, and (2) the more I talk, the less the examiner can!

Winds not as expected: I was surprised at how far from my expectations the winds were when we got up there. That took me aback and I got a little worried; my planning went out the window (not literally). The groundspeed issue can be worked out, and while it was unsettling to have to think about reworking those numbers and dividing attention between the E6B and the traffic scan for the amount of time it would take to redo it all, it would be doable. Wind direction, however, I don't know that I could assess very well. Well, I suppose that if I used the groundspeed indication on the GPS, I could change my heading until it was the slowest, and that would be a full headwind, right? Other than that, how do you know?

Self-Assessment: .

Flying

Preflight, taxiing, normal/short-field/soft-field takeoff: Good.
Maintaining airspeed, stalls, slow flight (VR/IR), maintain/change attitude/altitude/heading by instruments: Good.
Recover attitude, altitude, heading by instruments: Acceptable.
Forced landing: Good, need more practice.
Forward slip:: Dunno, needs more practice.
Pattern, normal landing, directional control after landing: Good.
Radio work: Needs practice.
Crosswind landing: Improved.
Short-field/soft-field landing: Improved.

Navigating

ADF: Okay for an intro, needs practice.
VOR: Needs practice.

Next: Wednesday at 10 am I've got the plane reserved for the solo x-c.

Radio.
Practicing everything.

Hours logged this flight: 1.5
Hours logged total: 31.4
Instrument hours logged this lesson: 0
Instrument Hours logged total: 1.3
Take-offs and landings this flight: 3
Take-offs and landings total: 87 (this number seems wrong... must check logbook)
PIC hours total:: 7.8

More weight and balance...

2006-12-13T17:14:00.000-05:00

We're hoping to fly down south for Christmas to visit family. Christmas presents a twist: big payload of gifts, both going down and coming back! We'll have gifts for at least 12 people, and I've thought ahead and gotten mostly gift cards or light-weight items for folks. That's cool, and there'll be room in the baggage compartment and no worries on weight there -- it'll only add a few pounds at most.

Coming back, however.... I know one gift that Husband's getting will be weighty and possibly even an awkward size for the luggage area (do NOT ask me about it, Husband, I will divulge no other clues!). Same thing for one gift idea I gave Husband that I think he gave to his mother. Plus, the luggage area has a total weight limitation, too, of something like 120 or 150 lbs.

Anyway, two adults up front, 100-lb dog in the backseat, luggage and gifts in the luggage area, fuel. I'll have to play around with it sometime over the next few days to see how much goodies we can keep! ;)

Imposed limits

2006-12-13T16:32:00.000-05:00

Today's flight was first restricted and then canceled due to limits imposed on the plane and us.

Weather
The easy one to explain is the cancellation -- the weather ultimately shut us down today, and also canceled the flight part of Husband's scheduled BFR. NOAA had very consistently been predicting 60% chance of rain from 10-2 today. This morning it was foggy. Not just foggy, but faw-awggy. But as with most fogs it cleared out by mid-morning. Husband was meeting Chuck at the airport at 11 to start the BFR, and he called on his way over to have me give one last check of the weather.

JGG's METARs actually showed VFR with clear skies (below 12000) and 10 sm vis. The skies were anything but clear today, but I don't know the difference visually between clouds at 5000' v. 15000' so that could have been correct. Across the river at AKQ, it was LIFR with overcast at 300'. PHF showed similar to JGG, and its TAF indicated clouds that would gradually descend and thicken between 11 and 6, becoming IFR later tonight.

As the morning went on, I was optimistically planning my afternoon lesson which would hopefully end with me being endorsed to land solo at AKQ and PHF (towered). Again I ran into the RTFP error in headings from JGG (grr), but gave another check of the weather at JGG, AKQ and PHF using ForeFlight. The latest JGG METAR, ~11:45 or so maybe, said IFR. From VFR to IFR in less than an hour. PHF was getting worse more quickly than the TAF predicted, too. I accepted at that time that the afternoon flight would most likely not happen, but finished up the nav log planning as though we'd go DR to each point.

So, the weather imposed its will upon the day's plans. Oh well.

Required Equipment
Huh. Losing that silly little ELT antenna yesterday kinda screwed us. FAR 91.207 says you gotta have an operable emergency locator transmitter. But subparagraph f3 says the plane can still be flown for training purposes within 50 nm of home base.

Ahhh.... At first when I read the FAR, I thought, "There go the x-c plans!" But indeed, that was too quick of a conclusion to draw. Yes, the JGG-->LVL-->PHF x-c I've been planning and reworking every day for different wind conditions would be out; LVL is 60-some miles away. But we could still do an x-c; I'd just have to get a little creative with it. So I took out the sectional and my plotter and made a big 50-nm circle around JGG. That includes EMV, ORF, RIC, W75, PTB, ... Quite a few airports, actually. So the next step was to see how I could cobble together a route to get a couple of 50+ nm legs. JGG-->W75-->FCI-->PHF would give me two legs over 50, plus PHF for the tower and W75 (Hummel) would be the shortest field I'd ever flown to. And we'd still be following the regs. Sweet!

(A replacement antenna was supposed to have come into JGG today for us. Hopefully it did and will be installed soon, because I asked and Chuck agreed that my developing nav skills are good enough to do a solo x-c!)

Solo 9: Slow flight, soft-fields

2006-12-11T16:39:00.000-05:00

The move to the new blogger appears to have gone well... yay!

Goals:

Slow flight & maneuvers.
Power-off stall.
Soft-field takeoffs.
Soft-field landings.
Use of checklists.

Flight:
The x-c for today was canceled since Chuck is sick (get better!). I used the time to get in some solo work, after getting all wound up last night when reading through the PTS. Normal preflight -- complete with verification that the ELT antenna was there and secure. Soft-field takeoff on 13, followed by a climb and turn out to the west to go to the Chickahominy River to do maneuvers. I consulted the checklist for cruise flight, which included turning off the landing lights and setting the mixture and throttle for efficient flight.

As I approached the river and did a final scan before starting my clearing turns, I noticed a bright white Cessna at my 3 o'clock, same altitude, same heading. We could have been flying in formation. I can't guess at how close he was, nor where he came from. I couldn't see people or read the tail number. He was probably at least 3000' away -- I'm trying to picture what he'd look like if we were sitting on opposite ends of the JGG runway, and I think he was smaller (farther) than that. I pushed my talkie button and announced to Williamsburg traffic -- not really knowing how better to try to alert him to my presence -- that I was 6 miles west of the field at 2500' with traffic (white Cessna) in sight. I kept an eye on him, and after 10 seconds or so he started climbing. I was at the point where I wanted to turn up north to go along the river in the direction of West Point, so I turned left (away from the plane) to start a clearing turn, and when I turned back he was well to the west of my position and my heading was now perpendicular, so it was all good.

I slowed for slow flight and listened to the blasted stall horn for ages as I flew for several minutes straight, focusing on maintaining altitude exactly on 2500'. I then used the rudder to turn left and right, scanning as much as I could -- when the stall warning is going, paranoia pulls my eyes back to the altimeter first and then the airspeed indicator. Anyway, the turns were fine so it was time for a power off stall.

I pulled back. And climbed. And the stall warning squealed away. I pulled back more. And climbed more. And the stall warning squealed away. I wish I had looked at the airspeed indicator then. I pulled back more aggressively and it broke. Carb heat and throttle, nose below the horizon, airspeed up, nose up, and rest.

So at 2500' I pointed up to FYJ and pulled out the checklist again for the "before landing" section. We've talked about, at Chuck's suggestion, creating a new checklist for "approaching the destination." This checklist includes figuring out when to start the descent, tuning in AWOS/ATIS/whatever is available, contacting ATC if appropriate, etc. I dialed in AWOS and it reported calm winds. I then dialed in CTAF and listened for several minutes as I started my descent (for such a low-altitude local flight I didn't rehearse the descent calculations, but probably ought to). The before-landing checklist reminded me to put the mixture to rich and turn on my landing light. I've also been instructed by Husband in the GUMPS mantra, even though U and P don't really apply to 388.

No one was manning UNICOM, no other calls were coming over the frequency, and my scans of the air and the ground showed no activity. I decided to set up on 9 for a soft-field landing after overflying the field at ~1300' (pattern altitude is 824). The wind sock indeed looked limp and there was no sign of life down there. The first landing was fine, fine, just fine. I landed nose-high and kept some back pressure to keep the weight on the main wheels. After rolling a bit down the runway, I eased forward and there was no shimmy -- yay! Since no one else was around, I announced that I'd roll out to the approach end of 27 (again, I should have made reference to the runway I was on -- 9), turn around and immediately depart.

As I rolled I did as much cleaning of the plane as I could remember: flaps up (from full extension), carb heat cold. During the interminable roll I grabbed the checklist and chose not to do the other after-landing items, such as switching the altimeter to stdby and killing landing/nav lights. I was going to do another soft-field takeoff and therefore wouldn't be stopping at the beginning of the runway, so I put out the recommended 10 degrees of flaps, then began the turnaround as I announced my departure to remain in the pattern.

It went fine. It's a weird-feeling takeoff. Departing 27 I turned off to the left and stayed in the pattern. Paying attention to altitude, I set up for another soft-field landing. On final I had a nice, slow approach and the short final was shallow. I was afraid it was a little too shallow and so throttled up just a tad to be absolutely sure to not touch down before the threshold! It would have been fine without the extra throttle, but really I should have picked a touchdown spot farther down the runway since it's so long and that's such a long rollout.

But rollout I did for an immediate turnaround and another soft-field takeoff to remain in the pattern. Left turn onto crosswind, normal pattern, another soft-field landing (not as shallow this time), a nosewheel shimmy when I allowed the nose to rotate down followed immediately by an opposite rotation, then after slowing the roll another shifting of the weight forward (no shimmy), a long rollout and I pulled off the runway. At this point I turned on the cell phone to call Husband so he could meet me at the airport for some engine examination.

Cell phone off, soft-field takeoff, and heading home. JGG was right-hand traffic for 13 and a normal, albeit very breeze-buffeted, landing and another nosewheel shimmy.

Husband met me at the airport and we took the upper nose cowl off to have a look around (thanks, FD, for the suggestion!). If energy persists through the evening I'll try to post some about what I learned there, but for now we just have to mention the ELT antenna since its loss was part of this flight. That's right, it was missing when I got down. WTF? Where did that go? And what else is going to just fall off mid-flight? Bizarro. Long story short, training flights within 50 nm can be legally conducted (FAR 91.207f) without a working emergency locator transmitter -- I'm just going to assume that missing the antenna counts as an inoperative transmitter. So no x-c until that is replaced; the mechanic is ordering one for us but it won't be here until Wednesday. Another partner in 388 was scheduled to fly up to Atlantic City tomorrow, but he can't do that legally now.

Discussion:

Checklists and natural reactions: Checklists are good. No need to justify that. Use of checklists is insanely important to the FAA examiner; just read the PTS if you need proof. I use checklists for preflight, cruise, before landing, after landing and for shutdown/secure. I bought a little maneuver book that effectively is a collection of checklists for each maneuver, from normal takeoffs to s-turns to stalls to short/field work to crosswind stuff to commercial maneuvers.... I've gone through and annotated the maneuvers I've been taught and will be expected to demonstrate with information relative to our plane; things like the POH recommends 10 degrees of flaps for the soft-field takeoff and accelerating in ground effect to 65 mph then climbing.

I used the booklet checklist before taking off to review the short-field takeoff and landing procedures since that was to be the main focus. I did not use the booklet for slow-flight setup and maneuvers, nor for the stall and subsequent recovery. I am going to try to get into the habit of using it every time it's practical.

For the stall, I knew what I needed to do for the recovery and it was a natural reaction. Usually when preparing for any maneuver -- especially stalls -- I'll walk through it mentally to be sure I've got the actions there at the tip of my brain. This time, though, I wasn't worried or nervous about being on the brink of the stall, and when it broke my hand was pushing in the carb heat and throttle before my eyes got down there and I don't think I lost much altitude at all. It was a reassuring stall.

The bad part of it is that I wasn't at idle when I started to provoke the stall, and that's why I kept climbing instead of pitch-breaking. My checklist would have reminded me about that.

Slowing for slow flight: Previously when slowing down for slow flight maneuvers, I've felt that I was juggling too many things: throttling back, keeping altitude, adjusting trim, maintaining heading, scanning, reducing airspeed, etc. Husband and I chatted about it over lunch and he conveyed his tactic as ignoring airspeed and reducing the number of instruments to monitor down to two: RPM and altimeter. It doesn't take much pitch for me to lose visual field out the front, so I have to periodically check the DG, too, but dropping the airspeed indicator helped a lot. I also felt that I did a much better job of maintaining altitude during slow flight (with power adjustments) compared to the usual graceful, slow, nose-high descent. And yes, that's the anti-descent power that I should have removed when transitioning to a stall.

Soft-field takeoffs: They're just weird. It feels weird. Today I wasn't totally positive I was off the ground until I started to drift laterally over the runway. Well, FYJ is a little easier to assess because it's a much rougher runway. But it's just weird, unnatural. I'd like to try it at a real soft field sometime.

Speaking of which, we had dinner recently with Gordon and Christine, the proprietors of Campbell Field on the Eastern Shore. It's a little grass strip across the bay from here, 42 nm. Perhaps we shall get some soft-field practice by going to one of their Soup on Sunday events.

Self-Assessment: Practice practice practice practice practice practice must ace checkride practice practice practice.

Flying

Preflight, taxiing, normal/short-field/soft-field takeoff: Good.
Maintaining airspeed, stalls, slow flight (VR/IR), maintain/change attitude/altitude/heading by instruments: Good.
Recover attitude, altitude, heading by instruments: Acceptable.
Forced landing: Good, need more practice.
Forward slip:: Dunno, needs more practice.
Pattern, radio calls, normal landing, directional control after landing: Good.
Crosswind landing: Improved.
Short-field/soft-field landing: Improved.

Navigating

ADF: Okay for an intro, needs practice.
VOR: Needs practice.

Next: Maybe on Wednesday if Chuck has recovered we'll get Husband's BFR and my x-c done.

Soft-field and short-field landings in succession to emphasize the differences (approach slope & speed).
Radio.
Practicing everything.

Hours logged this flight: 1.1
Hours logged total: 30.9
Instrument hours logged this lesson: 0
Instrument Hours logged total: 1.3
Take-offs and landings this flight: 4
Take-offs and landings total: 84 (this number seems wrong... must check logbook)
PIC hours total:: 7.8

Switching to the new blogger...

2006-12-11T09:53:00.000-05:00

It's time to move over to the new blogger. Crossing fingers for a smooth transition...

No x-c today

2006-12-11T09:47:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, Chuck is sick today so no BFR for Husband and no x-c for me. I suppose that's another reason for reduced time aloft in winter -- more colds.

The afternoon is looking nice for some solo practice. I'll probably leave JGG, go to the practice area and do something, maybe slow flight maneuvers and a steep turn or something. But the main focus will be soft-field takeoffs and landings, and I'll use all airports that I'm allowed to use -- FYJ and JGG :)

PTS -- eeeeeek!

2006-12-10T22:27:00.000-05:00

I just read through the PTS.

My tummy went all butterflies.

I'm sooooo not ready.

I'm at 29.8 hours, 6.7 of them solo. I had been thinking I'd shoot to do my checkride in mid-January, but I just don't predict feeling ready then.

The thing is, I feel good about at the performance stuff. Well, S-turns I haven't really gotten to practice in any wind, but everything else, sure, I could probably do it all right now. And I've got as much time as I need to refine the soft-field takeoffs and landings and other aspects that need polish but that are fundamentally in place.

It's the knowledge stuff that is so intimidating. I can't remember the various details about the different classes of airspaces. I get class and category confused for aircraft when relating to pilot certification or aircraft certification (who came up with that dumb naming system?). I don't know how the electrical system works, or what I'd do if all of a sudden my avionics when kaput; the checklists only cover so much. (Ok, that last part is more practical than knowledge, but if never used it's still just knowledge, right?!?) And on and on...

And now I'm going to try to sleep, being all hopped up (in a good way) about tomorrow's x-c and all hopped up (in a bad way) about the checkride that's not even close to being scheduled!

Winds that help and hurt

2006-12-10T22:18:00.000-05:00

I have planned the JGG-->LVL-->PHF x-c and have run through it twice with the wind conditions at the times of the exercises.

The no-wind flight time for the trip is 1:20. The first set of winds helped on one leg as much as they hurt on the other, and the wind-corrected speeds produced a trip time of 1:20. Neat! The winds today, however, were overall more beneficial and the trip time came down to 1:15.

The trip is a DR x-c since that's what I did the worst on during the last one. The waypoints on the way to LVL are the town of Waverly, with its collection of towers and pairing of highway and train tracks, and the town of Jarratt, next to I-95 with a water tower and a factory. On the way to PHF, the first checkpoint is a VOR fix between the LVL and FKN VORs, which ought to be neat since we have just the one VOR indicator. The second checkpoint is AKQ (and I'll resist the urge to cheat this time and will nail it!), then Aberdeen and then we should be on the horn with the PHF tower.

Oh, and I'm now positive that RTFP is wrong wrt JGG, for this x-c at least.

Planning the next x-c, and suspicious RTFP data...

2006-12-09T22:17:00.000-05:00

We're planning for a second x-c this Monday afternoon after Husband's BFR.

The route this time is JGG->LVL->PHF->JGG. The first leg is ~60 nm, and the second is ~66 nm. PHF is ~12 nm from JGG, but it's Class D so the aim is for me to be endorsed to fly there solo (and get more practice with a tower on my own time).

I intend to do the two long legs by DR since that's what I feel least comfortable with at this time and since it seems to me that it would be the most challenging nav method to "update" in-flight; during the last x-c, Chuck said to have my E6B in-hand on this upcoming flight and we'd do what-if scenarios for wind conditions that differ from what was expected.

Last night I sat down with the sectional and measured everything out and did all the calculations by hand for the no-wind situation. I then hopped on RTFP and compared to their results; again, it was similar* but RTFP's time was a little shorter (no landing at LVL, presumably). I then checked the weather along the route so I could do the wind corrections as though I was going to do that trip in the immediate future. ("similar*" means read the rest of this post...)

(There was a NOTAM for PHF saying: PHF 12/017 PHF 7/25 CLSD 0500-1100 DLY WEF 0612100500-0612171100. I'll have to figure that one out here shortly to see if it'll be a factor.)

I was dissatisfied again with RTFP on account of not being able to indicate different altitudes for different legs. I expect 4500 going to LVL and 3500 coming back to PHF. I decided to use 4000 for the exercise. The DUATS readout gave a bunch of information and I wasn't sure what to use; the winds-aloft/temperature table gave listings for ORF, RIC, RDU, etc but not for any place along the route. If I had to pick, I'd have chosen the RIC numbers since they're geographically the closest to LVL. Since I wasn't sure about this, I checked RTFP's nav log. The numbers it used for each leg didn't totally make sense to me. Here's what the table said:

FT	3000	6000	Interpolated for 4000	Dist to JGG	Dist to LVL	Dist to PHF
ORF	3222	3427	3323	32	77	20
RIC	3122	3426	3223	33	49	45
RDU	3320	3426	3321	129	72	134
HAT	3322	3426	3323	?	?	?
EMI	3029	3231	3129	?	?	?

I don't know what HAT is -- perhaps KHSE at 132 nm from JGG on the NC Outer Banks? No idea about EMI (other than a VOR in MD), either.

RTFP used 310@22 for JGG-->LVL, same as RIC for 3000'. Why not the 4000' interpolation numbers? It used 328@23 for LVL-->PHF. Huh? Maybe that comes from seeing that (1) LVL is closer to RDU than ORF (but closest overall to RIC) and (2) PHF is 20 nm from ORF, so there are two votes for 330 and one for 320 -- settle on 328? Why not 327? Does it take distance into consideration? (77*33 + 49*32 + 72*33)/(77+49+72) => 327.5. Maybe that's why? What about the PHF side of the trip? (20*33 + 45*32)/65 => 323. Ehrn?

There *must* be a more sophisticated model in it for how it decides what to use. But let's go back to the by-hand method: a pilot with a sectional, a nav log and a DUATS brief isn't going to use a sophisticated model. From that table, what would I use?

That confusion aside, the point of the exercise was to use some winds to practice the calculations and learn to use the wind calculator, so I took RTFP's numbers. This would at least allow me to compare my results to theirs. And it was pretty easy. That wheel is easy to use and pretty slick.

But I did get results that made me even less confident in the information that RTFP gives me, and Husband and I compared this with Seattle Avionics' Voyager (the free version) for the same trip. Voyager agreed with my calculations. The problem, I think, is that RTFP didn't correct the heading out of JGG for magnetic variance (which is 10W here) -- the heading was 10 degrees less than what I thought it should be.. I had kinda noticed in the previous x-c that the corrected heading coming back to JGG was 10 degrees different from what I had expected, but I figured since it was my first time doing the grunt work that I had mis-measured or been sloppy with the wheel or some similar error.

I'm still reserving judgment since it's such a "stable" software package that I assume is widely used. 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong, right? In that case, I must be doing something wrong. But then that means that Voyager is doing something wrong, too.

Could they have JGG in the wrong place? The instrument approach to JGG is the HCM VOR 188 radial. In RTFP if you make a direct route from HCM to JGG it says the heading is 192 (no weather downloaded). All of my other heading calculations between points -- Aberdeen-->ECG, ECG-->CVI, CVI-->RZZ, RZZ->EMV, EMV-->AKQ, LVL-->PHF -- have matched very closely to the RTFP results; it just seems to be an error with JGG, so far in my trials. But this sample size is pretty small...

I just don't know what to make of that yet.

Say it Right!

2006-12-08T16:30:00.000-05:00

Just as I'm mired in my own thoughts about communicating with ATC and other airspace regulators, I get the AOPA ePilot newsletter with info about a new program called Say it Right!

That looks pretty useful, but what on earth do they have against the mid-atlantic? I guess maybe it's a pain to get people to fly into the DC area for a seminar, but they could come to Richmond or Norfolk or Raleigh or somewhere closer than PA or SC!

Side effects of flight training, part 2

2006-12-08T14:37:00.000-05:00

We watched Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope last night. Luke, Han and Chewie got sucked into the Death Star and after many ordeals finally rescued the Princess and made their way back to the "hangar" where the Falcon was being held, guarded by a bunch of storm troopers and with a bunch of generic evil maintenance guys going about and onto the ship.

Someone says something along the lines of "You think it'll fly?" since everyone is obviously wondering what the Empire did to it in their absence.

Han looks out into the bay and two seconds later says "Yeah."

To which I said, laughing, "What a thorough preflight!"

Ah, good times.

JEP FII-17: First X-C

2006-12-05T19:12:00.000-05:00

[Updated: Corrected statistic at the bottom.]

Goals:

First cross-country trip (x-c).
Use pilotage, navaids and dead reckoning (DR) to get from point a to point b.
Talk to ATC, approach, and use flight following.

Flight:
Things were running long and busy at work this morning, so I didn't have time to update my nav log for the actual winds that would be a factor in the day's flight legs. I felt really crappy about that, but I had the AOPA RTFP wind-adjusted course printouts, so that would have to do. I can get practice with the wind side of the E6B over the next few days... I'm sure that will be a blast.

Preflight briefing was longer than usual, as you might expect. We met at the terminal and went into the closet that doubles as a pilot pre-flight area where there's a phone, deskspace and a computer for checking the weather. (There are lots of other open spaces to sit and go over charts and whatnot, but not with computer and phone nearby.) We went over the route I had planned and checked a few pieces of information. I didn't think to print out the flight plan form, which kind of screwed us in the end because we couldn't print it from the office computer. Luckily, Chuck had one in the car.

So I called 1-800-WX-BRIEF for the first time. The guy was super nice when I told him I was a student filing my first VFR flight plan. I'm sure he'd have been super nice anyway. We had already filled out the form by hand so it would be ready. Two things threw me/him off: (1) He asked for aircraft type and I said "transponder." On the form I had, the choices were transponder or DME. He asked if it was something-alpha. I told him I didn't know, and he asked whether we had a transponder and could report altimeter, and Chuck whispered also to tell him specifically no DME. I still am not sure what that means yet, but the AIM will probably tell me when I get home. (2) I gave him my name and started to give him my address, but he stopped me and asked for the home-base FBO phone number instead. Finally, he told me to call Leesburg to open it when I was ready, which we estimated to be at ~1830Z (1:30 ET).

We got down to the airplane and found Husband sitting in the backseat. He was going with us, and it was great to see him there. I wasn't nervous about anything at this point (got it all out of my system while staring at the ceiling from 2-5 this morning), so I guess it's just that I like seeing him. :)

The plan was to go JGG to ECG by pilotage at 3500', opening the flight plan with Leesburg just after takeoff and talking to Norfolk Approach to pick up flight following. From ECG to RZZ would be a 4500' leg using the CVI VOR for navigation. Finally, from RZZ to JGG would be dead reckoning at 3500', using EMV and AKQ as checkpoints to break the ~65 nm leg into thirds.

We looked at the POH to get an idea of takeoff performance at our weight of ~2150 lbs. It would take longer than usual, but I didn't find it to be alarming or anything. We left from 31 and hooked around south, staying well west of the nuclear station. I called up Leesburg and opened the flight plan. My brief chat with him should have been much briefer, but it was my first time and the task was accomplished. Then I tried to get Norfolk on the air, and it took several tries, although the first try doesn't really count because I was still on the Leesburg frequency! Dumb! Eventually I did get him and we were in the system.

The James River Bridge (I think) crossing, duh, the James River!

One of the landmarks for pilotage on this leg was Lake Drummond. From 3500' on a semi-hazy day, it's big enough and was catching the sun enough to look like a glowing disc in the middle of a gray-green swatch. Nice and easy to pick out. Just east of that lake was a long straight road with a long straight canal right next to it; another good landmark. We'd fly parallel to it for a short while, then we'd be able to see the inlet that, if followed, would lead us down to ECG. And indeed it did.

As we got close to ECG (which, by the way, is Elizabeth City Coast Guard station), we were handed off to the tower. A very good-natured guy answered, and I was happy to be interacting with such a positive personality for my first time into a towered field! He told us to set up for right traffic for 28 and to report midfield on downwind. I still had some altitude to lose, so Chuck suggested I tell him we wanted to do a 360 to bleed some off. He approved and said to report when reestablished in the pattern. You can see from the image of the track that we did that over the water, which was neat and a little disconcerting at the same time!

Anyway, we got back into the pattern and -- this was neat -- he said he'd tell me when to turn base. Well, ok then. I'd have to be a little more off-the-cuff with setting up to land, since the normal cues for putting out flaps or slowing down would be out of my control. It ended up being quite odd, though, because we had a very long downwind (extended well past the approach end of 28) before he told us to turn in. It was for the sake of ground operations: a jet and a 4-prop C130 were taxiing across the field. I reported to him when we were on final, and he cleared us to land. (Note: The GPS points say it was actually only a 2.5-mile final, but it seemed a lot longer than that! Final at JGG was less than 1 mile, and final at RZZ was a little over a mile.

And about an hour and a half we did! Just kidding, but that final was so long it seemed like we'd never get there. I had to power back up somewhat to keep from losing too much altitude along this stretch (so that 360 wouldn't have been necessary, had we known this was coming). But we made it to the runway and had a decent touchdown.

Mr. Nice Controller instructed me to turn off at taxiway Charlie, then hook a right and the FBO would be straight ahead. I replied that we'd like to taxi back and depart, and so he told us to take a left off taxiway Charlie instead and hold short for 28. I cleaned up the plane and took that left and followed a C130 to the hold short line, giving him (and his clouds of exhaust) puh-lenty of room. They took off and a short bit later we were cleared to depart straight out, which we did without event.

We compared landmarks to the sectional to decide when we were clear of his airspace and then I radioed to tell him that and thanks. He approved a frequency change and that was the end of that. I dialed in CVI, dialed in the 290 radial and then jockeyed around a little to get on it. The trip to it was uneventful as the flying goes, save for a little waddling around as I lost and then realigned the heading. Mentally, though, it was a little flustering. Chuck was asking me math questions, and I didn't think I was overloaded but I was having a hard time reasoning through. Eventually I started jotting things down on the kneeboard and was able to be more logical about it. It was stuff like "How long will it take us to get to RZZ?" That shouldn't be that hard -- I knew roughly where we were, could estimate from the highlighted path on the sectional how far we had to go, but for some reason when it came to figuring out how many minutes for that distance at our current ground speed (which the GPS gave me in knots), I just couldn't do it! I felt like a freakin moron and that was frustrating.

So I jotted down my little conversion factor -- ( 60 minutes/1 hour ) * ( 1 hour/98 nm ) * ( 42 nm left to go ) ---- so (60*42)/98. Riiiiight. I'm gonna do that in my head at the snap of the fingers. I was starting to multiply when Chuck changed it up and asked how many minutes it took to go one (nautical) mile.

If you have a dog, you know the dog reaction to something they just don't understand. Ears up, eyebrows up, head tilted to the side. That's how I felt.

Ok, minutes per mile. Back to the kneeboard. ( 60 minutes/1 hour ) * ( 1 hour/98 nm ) ---- so 60/98. So I previously had been figuring out just that conversion factor.... Ok, 60/98 is easily estimated to be around .67... So .67 minutes per mile, 42 miles left, 2/3 of 42 would be 28? Ok, 28 minutes to go.

Ugh. That was harder than it should have been. Looking at it, I think I would have been better off to think of 42/98 -- a little less than half -- and then take that portion of an hour.

So, whatever. I'll come back to this later.

A few minutes later another math problem: How far from the airport should we start our descent? Hmmm, oh, ok. We're at 4500', pattern altitude at the airport is ~1000'. So we've got 3500' to lose. Let's assume a nice gentle 500'/min descent. So we need 7 minutes. That one was easy enough.

Now what? What distance from the airport corresponds to 7 minutes? ( 98 nm / 1 hour ) * ( 1 hour / 60 minutes ) * 7 minutes ---- 98 * 7 / 60. I didn't get it in the air without some more leading questions from Chuck to break it down, but now when I look at it it seems easy -- 98/60 is roughly 1.5, time (round up to) 10 is 15. 15 miles out, plus a few miles to be near pattern altitude to check out the field and get settled in the environment. So at 18 miles out we'd start the descent.

Ok, fine. Except it didn't totally go like that. There was some other intermediate conversion factor in there, and I don't remember it specifically, but there was one on our final leg, so I'll think about it more in a few minutes...

The other thing that happened to fluster me a little was that during our discussion about how turbulent it was that day -- it was coming in waves where we'd have several minutes of nice calm air then several minutes of big bumps -- Chuck asked what we can do in the yellow arc on the airspeed indicator. The phrasing of the question threw me off. The yellow arc (on ours) goes from Vsse to Vne. I knew Vsse to be the "don't go faster than this in turbulent conditions" speed. But what can you do in that speed range? I don't know. The answer basically is that you can fly straight-and-level in the yellow arc. You don't want to stress the plane at those speeds, so you don't fly in that range when it's turbulent. You don't do maneuvers at those speeds.

When we started the descent, I was glad to be done with trying to maintain that radial from CVI to RZZ (again, you can see the squirreliness in the track). The sectional indicated that the airport was southwest of "stacks" on the edge of a town near the lake. I found the lake, found a town, and saw a plant of some sort that did have some vapor exhaust, so I started pointing to it, which was a little to the right of the nose. As we got closer, however, I realized that there was another town with two much taller stacks a little farther from the water. Consulting the sectional again showed that these taller stacks were the ones that led to the airport. I pointed back to the left a touch, and before long a nice clearing appeared with a long edge oriented the way we expected the runway to be. Sweet.

I called UNICOM, and a pleasant woman answered that we'd be using 23 and asked if she could get us a car or fuel or anything. Wasn't that nice? We wouldn't be needing anything, and so I swung wide to the southwest to get on a 45 for left downwind for 23. We had a decent, almost-perpendicular-to-the-runway crosswind at this point in the flight, and could see that the windsock down there was almost fully extended.

I started my usual pattern -- at 1000' for this airport -- abeam the numbers, and started to descend. I had overlooked that one little detail that this field's elevation is 200' higher than home, and for roughly equivalent pattern altitudes something would obviously need to change. Well, obvious to Chuck and obvious to me after he pointed it out. I powered up to stop the descent, and had also been planning on a higher airspeed over the threshold, so this was ok. As I turned final, directly into the blazing lowering sun, I was at ~500' over the field, had two notches of flaps out, and was doing the constant-correction technique. I crabbed a little, and then I decided to slip a little, and kept aligned with the right edge of the runway (the wind was from the right). I had another decent touchdown, but as I started to brake and the nose came down, the nosewheel started shimmying like it wanted to come off!

I pulled back on the yoke as far as I could with one hand, trying to get the weight shifted back to the main wheels and the shimmying to stop. Chuck hopped on to help me pull back farther, and it did stop. As we slowed and the nose rotated down, it started again. This time I jumped on it with both hands and got it under control myself. (On Wednesday (after this x-c which was on Tuesday), Husband met with the mechanic for a few different issues, and they pulled the nosewheel shimmy dampener and found that the seals had dried out and there was no hydraulic fluid left. Mechanic was supposed to fix it that day, I think.)

We taxiied back to the approach end of 23 (which I incorrectly and generically called the end of 5) and took off into that inconveniently located sun. We departed and rose to ~1200' before turning off to the left and following the pattern as we continued to climb. As we left the airport I checked my nav log for the DR "settings" for the first checkpoint and set us up. We headed out and continued climbing to 3500'.

I really fought to keep on the heading for this exercise, knowing that being off by a degree would have a bigger impact the farther I went. Granted, each checkpoint was only 16-18 miles apart, but still... Much to my astonishment, we were dead on for EMV as far as heading goes, and were only about 20 seconds late in getting there. (Since RTFP doesn't build in time for the climb out of RZZ, that seemed pretty good o me.) Enthused, I reconfigured us for the next checkpoint.

This time, I was bad. We were on course and I was holding the heading pretty well. I even had it trimmed well enough that when Chuck said to let the plane fly itself (no autopilot, remember), it held 3500 nicely and except for the occasional bobble from the wind it stayed true. What was bad, though, is that as the time for AKQ was drawing near, I started cheating. AKQ is hard to find, and if we weren't dead on I wanted to be prepared for whatever correction would be needed. The only thing that helps to find it from 10 miles out is that it's just north of a little town in the middle of woods and farmland. I saw a town, and I even thought I could make out the white radar dome. So I nudged our nose just slightly to the left to point us toward the town. That was bad, and I learned my lesson. My eyes fooled me, and that wasn't the right town. As we got even closer, I couldn't find a runway, so I glanced down at the GPS -- we were several miles west of the airport! In looking at the GPS track above, you can see where I nudged left going up to AKQ, and how if I had just stayed the course we would have been really close.

From there I could see the curves in the river that cradle JGG so we just went by pilotage the rest of the way. Somewhere along this last jaunt we talked about how next time we'll use the E6B wind wheel to make adjustments on the fly (ha ha ha, that pun never gets old), and then came the last piece of math.

The part of this math that stands out in my mind was that 102 - 60 is 42 and 42/6 is 7 so we have 1.7 of something... minutes or miles and where did that 6 come from? 102 was our groundspeed at the time, so that would be 1.7 miles per minute. I've tried that with a few other numbers and it's a math trick -- find an even number of times it'll divide (in our case 1, but think about something like 330/50, where it would be 6). Take the remainder (42 or 30) and divide by the original divisor divided by 10 (6 or 5), then put it together with a decimal and you'll get your answer (1.7 or 6.6). Ah, yes, introducing the decimal justifies dividing by 10. This obviously works nicely for divisors that are multiples of 10. Now why were we figuring that out? Oh, well, if we were deciding when to descend, we'd know how long it would require to get down, so this factor would tell us how far from the airport we'd need to be when we started the descent.

The landing at JGG was normal with the exception of another nosewheel shimmy. I was nowhere near as tired as I expected to be.

(Don't make fun of my gum-chewing! It helps me to fly better, I swear! And you can see just how bad the sun was at RZZ.)

Discussion:

ATC, approach, etc: I haven't really figured out the flow for these interactions yet. What helped me to get a grip of the various emergency procedures was to understand the flow -- for instance, in flight engine loss goes preserve altitude, figure out where to go, try to restart, communicate, shutdown. That's a logical sequence of events, and each of those items has a set of tasks associated with it.

I figure there'll be some nice flow for talking to ATC. Something like hail them, give location and intention, respond as appropriate. But when talking to approach maybe it's different, more like hail them, give intention, respond as required. Getting an understanding of that will make it easier to fill in the details. And with experience hopefully it won't seem like a random and blubbery chat every time....

Dead reckoning: So this is the kind of navigation that I've talked about with Husband and said repeatedly that I just don't see how it could work. It seems like there are so many factors, and so many things that could change between when you do your calculations and two hours later when you get in the air and two hours after that when you get to the later checkpoints. But I'll be damned if RZZ to EMV wasn't perfect empirical evidence that it does in fact work. And I'll also be damned if EMV to AKQ wasn't perfect empirical evidence of screwing up what would have worked by thinking I knew better than the calculations. I mean, you've gotta be heads-up and flexible and ready to adjust your plan, right? But I misjudged and proved that changing the plan without a good solid indisputable reason produced the wrong results.

Math: I'm an engineer. I don't hate math. I assume that (1) just like the whole can't-do-math thing from one of the first lessons, after I'm used to the various things that are going on during a cross-country it'll come easier and (2) after I've done those kinds of calculations a few more times and am familiar with what I'm trying to determine and how best to get it it'll come easier.

The workload thing (#1) is a cop-out explanation, though, since it wasn't like I had to do math while listening to a controller or something; the math came at times when it was just normal flight.

Husband: Husband said he was proud of me and my progress and he'll have no problem whatsoever letting me do everything on the next trip. The previous trips I've done everything in-flight, but no takeoffs or landings. Plus, next Monday he's going to do his BFR with Chuck, and do it from the right seat.

Tracking a heading: My goodness. When we were in the air, I knew I was doing a little meandering and realigning on the heading, but I didn't think it was nearly as bad as what the GPS track shows! Is that amount of divergence normal, or a sign of inexperience, or a sign of too little focus on heading, or what? On the one hand, I'm being pretty hard on myself about being sloppy, but on the other hand, I'd have had to spend twice as much time looking at the heading indicator and cross-checking the mag compass for accuracy to have stuck it better. I'm guessing there's a reasonable balance there. I also wonder whether a less turbulent day would have made a difference -- there was a sigmet for moderate turbulence, and the ECG-RZZ leg did have a fair amount of bumps, but does turbulence affect the heading-tracking ability much?

Self-Assessment: More polish, more practice, especially on the com!

Flying

Preflight, taxiing, normal takeoff, short-field takeoff: Good.
Soft-field takeoff: Needs practice.
Maintaining airspeed, stalls, slow flight (VR/IR), maintain/change attitude/altitude/heading by instruments: Good.
Recover attitude, altitude, heading by instruments: Acceptable.
Forced landing: Good, need more practice.
Forward slip:: Dunno, needs more practice.
Pattern, normal landing, directional control after landing: Good.
Crosswind landing: Decent.
Radio work: Untowered, good; everything else, needs focused practice!
Short-field landing: Improved.
Soft-field landing: Not sure...

Navigating

ADF: Okay for an intro, needs practice.
VOR: Use of is good; tracking the heading needs refinement.
Dead reckoning: Gotta trust the numbers! Also we'll practice adjusting the numbers in-flight for differing circumstances next time.

Next: I've got the plane Monday afternoon for another x-c, assuming Chuck is up for it after Husband's BFR.

More cross-country planning (with just-prior wind calcs!).
Short cross-country trip.

Hours logged this flight: 3.0
Hours logged total: 29.8
Instrument hours logged this lesson: 0.0
Instrument Hours logged total: 1.6
Take-offs and landings this flight: 3
Take-offs and landings total: 80
PIC hours total:: 5.7

X-c tomorrow?

2006-12-04T18:39:00.000-05:00

Perhaps...

The winds are trying to die off, but in some spots right now they're still forecasting gustiness.

I've got the route worked out.

Leg 1: JGG -> ECG by pilotage, 3500'
The route should be ~66 nm and should take ~40 minutes and a conservative allotment of 6 gallons of fuel.

The leg will start by heading south of JGG to the Surry area to dogleg around the FAF Class D airspace. (Although since part of this trip is to start talking to towers, maybe we'll contact them and then fly straight through....) Then we'll go down the southern shore until we get over the Aberdeen private strip (nicely paved and maintained, by the looks of it -- it's easy to pick out). Then we'll turn to a heading of ~167 (adjusted for whatever the wind conditions actually are tomorrow) and just stick to that heading until the Elizabeth City airport. Along the way we'll pass by PVG (where 388 had work done on the VOR indicator), a spot where we'll be over a big highway with a good-sized lake to the right and Chesapeake airport to our left, and a nice big inlet that leads out into the Outer Banks area, and ECG is at the outlet of the inlet.

Leg 2: ECG -> RZZ by VOR nav, 4500'
ECG has a VOR. CVI VOR is midway between ECG and RZZ. Should be a pretty straight-forward leg.

CVI is on ECG's 290 at 35 nm; RZZ is on CVI's 285 at 41 nm; I'm going on the assumption that the signals will be receivable along the whole route. The whole leg should last 47 minutes and take 7 gallons of fuel.

Leg 3: RZZ -> JGG by dead reckoning, 3500'
The path here is:
Heading of 46 degrees (adjusted for tomorrow's winds) for 12.5 minutes. That should put us over KEMV.
Heading of 61 for 10.5 minutes. That should put us over a little lake.
Heading of 62 for 7 minutes. That should put us over KAKQ; this will be a good test: on the best of days and even with GPS assistance, Wakefield can be very, very hard to find!
Heading of 63 for 16.5 minutes. JGG ought to be right there. (RTFP thinks this heading should be 52, so I'll have to double-check my measurements. That part of the sectional has been folded and refolded about 19 billion times, so it could very well be my error.... which just underscores the fragility of this method and emphasized how good it is to get new sectionals frequently!)

All told it should be just over 2 hours of flying time.

I may try to pick up flight following, but since each leg is only ~40 minutes, I'm thinking it isn't worth the extra overhead on this trip.

Using the analog E6B tonight was easier than last night, but it's still a pain in the rump.

X-c delayed

2006-12-03T22:36:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow they're calling for high winds and some areas along the x-c route will be gusty. So we're pushing the trip back to Tuesday afternoon.

Tonight I did the route (which may change; waiting on info from Chuck) on a nav log worksheet I found here. The route was JGG -> RIC -> RZZ -> ECG -> JGG.

After much swearing and irritation, I got everything done with the "analog" E6B. Part of it really, really didn't make sense -- like when trying to determine how long it takes to climb to 3500' from sea level at a climb rate of 840'/min. My brain quickly estimates that to be in the neighborhood of 3.5-4 minutes. The E6B, when read according to its instructions, tells me 2.1 mins. (If, however, I look at the hours scale instead of the minutes scale, it shows ~3:35, which jives with the mental math.)

In any case, I brute-forced my way through it (no wind corrections) and found that it would take 2:30 for 239 nm and we'd use ~18.5 of the 38 gallons of fuel. I calculated the time and distance for the climb-out portion of each leg, and used the remaining leg distance for calculations at best cruise performance. I did not deduct anything for lower fuel consumption on descent, figuring that could be some built-in buffer. I also used different burn rates for different altitudes, as specified by the POH.

AOPA RTFP came up with similar but different numbers. It says 2:22 for 239 nm with 17 gallons of fuel.

I learned two main things from the comparison between the by-hand method and using the RTFP. First, RTFP rounds fuel consumption up to the nearest whole number. I had been rounding up to the nearest half-gallon, but building in even more buffer seems like a reasonable thing to do (especially since I don't really know whether the POH's estimates still hold, 40 years later!). Second, RTFP isn't as flexible and therefore may not be as accurate. For the four legs in my route, I was planning to fly three different altitudes. RTFP only allows you to specify one altitude to use for the whole flight, as far as I can tell. My POH says the burn rate is worse the higher you get, so that could have an impact on the whole trip. Those two factors would reasonably explain the difference in the time and fuel estimates.

Oh, I guess I learned a third thing: RTFP beats the pants off a manual E6B in the user-friendly and time-efficient categories!

Practice x-c

2006-12-02T21:17:00.000-05:00

[Update: Link at bottom.]

Husband and I flew over to Luray (W45, Luray, VA, of Luray Caverns fame). We had a jerk of a headwind going out there, so what would be 1:10 in calm conditions was 1:45. Coming back, though, we made excellent time -- 1:01.

Husband did all the flying on this trip. I followed along on the sectional on the never-ending trip out there, practicing identifying features on the ground and correlating that to landmarks on the sectional. Pilotage practice, we shall say, and a few instances of using intersecting radials from different VORs to pinpoint a location on the map.

On the way back, I also did the radio calls. This was first to get flight following from Washington Center, who handed us off almost immediately to Potomac Approach. There were a few traffic advisories, but nothing major.

Flying to and over the mountains was neat and pretty; from the picture above, you can see why they call them the "Blue Ridge" mountains. The clouds on the way back were fantastic. The sky looked furry.

I'll try to write up more tomorrow; it was good practice for navigate and communicate.

Update: Husband wrote up an account on his blog Vectors To Final, and put up some other pics and some video.

Possible x-c routes

2006-12-01T16:29:00.000-05:00

My ability to focus on work is totally hosed now. That big outstanding "what will we do on Monday?" question is much more interesting than writing a heat map visualization tool for mass spectra-based disease classification results.

So I'm thinking two possibilities right now, either one of which will require approval from Chuck. Whenever Google Earth finally finishes downloading, I'll take a look at the route that way and also I've gotta check the sectional(s) when I get home.

Possibility the first:
KJGG -> RIC (33 nm, Class C) -> KLYH (90 nm, Class D) -> KLVL (75 nm, untowered) -> KJGG (59 nm)

Class C & Class D airspaces, both on the early side of the trip when I'll be fresher.
Lynchburg field elevation is 938', which is higher than anything around here, so that'll be different.
The eastern third of the trip will look familiar.

Still kinda long (2:28 flight time)
Flies over Farmville MOA (ceiling 5000'), so I'll have to determine how we'd leave KLYH in order to avoid it (above or around?), and overflies Pickett Two (restricted up to 10000'), so I'll have to determine how we'd get around to KLVL.
The sectional will say for sure, but there don't appear (from AOPA RTFP) to be many natural landmarks for pilotage on this route.

257 miles, 2:28

Possibility the second:
KJGG -> KECG (64 nm, Class D) -> KRZZ (75 nm, by way of CVI VOR) -> KJGG (68 nm)

Class D airspace, first waypoint.
Much of the trip would be familiar territory.
The legs are not too long, though in all honesty the numbers show them as similar to the other route (except for that 90-nm leg).
KECG->KRZZ has good natural landmarks.

Too simple?
Too short?

207 miles, 2 hours

Neither of these trips (with no wind) would require refueling; the first would use 22 of 28 gallons, the second 18. Both routes have airports with fuel available. Both give exercise with VORs, different airports, at least one towered airport, opportunities for pilotage (duh, right?), ...

Or maybe it'll be something completely different...

Cross-country revision

2006-12-01T14:50:00.000-05:00

As I thought more about the planned route for this first cross-country, I became more and more anxious about it. There are two problems for me: (1) lots of new stuff and (2) a long flight that, because of the new stuff, may be a stressful filght.

The new stuff is the main thing. Planning a cross-country. Landing at new airports. Going to a towered airport for the first time. Going to unfamiliar countryside. Going near an active MOA. Major navigation. Cockpit management for multiple sectionals and airport diagrams. Potentially updating the ETAs/fuel estimates based on in-flight experiences. Et cetera. A lot of that really is just stepping up the level of things I'm already doing -- landing somewhere else should be pretty much the same, using a different VOR is the same as using HPW or HCM, avoiding an MOA is the same as avoiding FAF, etc. But the fact remains that it's 3 days from now and my stomach is in knots thinking about it!

As for the length of it, three hours doesn't seem that bad on the surface; when Husband and I flew to KUZA six or so weeks ago, it was over three hours and I flew almost the whole way. However, that trip was a direct route for a leisure trip and he did the takeoff and landing. For this trip, it's supposed to be more taxing to develop skills beyond just maintaining heading and altitude for 300 miles. Taxing plus long makes me a little uncomfortable for a learning experience; for a long solo cross-country it'll be fine, but I just wouldn't see it being an effective learning experience if it's overwhelming.

So I emailed Chuck about it and let him know how I'm feeling. I suggested that I could draw up a route that I'd be comfortable with that would include a towered airport and any other criteria we needed to hit. He approved of this plan, so my task is to design a route that hits a towered airport and has 3 legs of at least 50 nm.

Now for the really touchy-feely part. Last night as I lay awake at 3 am thinking about the cross-country, I decided that the plan wasn't the right one. I wasn't looking forward to it; in fact, I was dreading it.

But you know what? I'm capable and confident enough now to know that I can change my training. The problem isn't me, or Chuck, or the process, or flying in general. The challenge is just the pace (which I guess is a combination of all of the things that were just acquitted!). The syllabus can't be a one-size-fits-all syllabus. This time, I heeded my apprehension and changed the pace.

On the other side of that coin, however, is that persistent self-doubt. What if I'm just wussing out? I mean, I'm not eliminating the challenge, but what if it's being attenuated too much? Am I doing myself a disservice by not trying to overcome it? If I'm not pushing hard enough, will I be getting enough out of it?

I've made the decision, and I believe it to be the right decision, but there's still a little pompous character in my mind shaking her head in disappointment and tisking at me, saying that I could handle the original plan and that I'm taking the easy way out. She's wearing really ugly red-rimmed glasses. Ah, I digress.

First cross-country preparation

2006-11-30T19:30:00.000-05:00

On Monday we'll aim to have our first cross-country. Chuck and I met up at the flight school this afternoon to talk about the planning and considerations (distance, headings, time enroute, weather, performance, fuel, etc), the chart-and-computer methods, the electronic methods, and the odds and ends of a longer trip.

My task over the next few days is to do the planning. Husband is going with us as a back-seat observer, so the weight and balance will be different from what I'm used to.

I'm going to try to figure out the circular slide-rule flight computer (wowzah) to do it the old way, and of course use an electronic system to do it in a more efficient way (probably AOPA's Real-Time Flight Planner). Of course I'll use ForeFlight to check weather the night before and the morning of the flight.

The route will basically be:

JGG to the Richmond (RIC) VOR, overfly RIC
Gordonsville (GVL) VOR up the V38 Victor airway to Charlottesville (CHO), home of Dave Matthews
Land at CHO (a towered airport), taxi and takeoff
Head down to Lynchburg (LYH), land, refuel and stretch
Get to Halifax (RZZ) or another southern-middleish airport, and either land/taxi/takeoff or just overfly
Back home

If we do go to Halifax, there's a nice big lake south of Lynchburg that would be pretty cool to use for a pilotage leg.

A preliminary throw-it-in-to-get-a-baseline routing in AOPA/RTFP says that's 327 miles, 3 hours 9 minutes, and 29 gallons of fuel. We're aiming for 3 hours of flight time, and the plane holds 38 gallons.

The western part of this route is on the Cincinnati sectional; the rest is on the familiar Washington sectional.

I'll post more as I get into the details...