Learning To Fly

Taking MY Exam

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 19:55:01 -0500

The last few months I’ve been trying to get at least a couple hour of flight time in every week in addition to ground school. I felt that I was ready for my exam and wanted to wrap up any loose ends that stood in the way of my getting my license.

The the flight portion consisted of practicing steep turns, soft field and short field take offs and landings, forward slips, stalls, S turns and turns around a point. The grounds school consisted of a lot of review for my oral exam. In addition to this I purchased an oral exam prep book and went through it about four times. Eventually I decided that I was about as ready as I was likely to get.

Weather has been spotty so it took some guessing as to when it would be good enough to fly from Lockhart to Brownwood, take my exam and fly back. Initially I scheduled for a Monday but a few days before it looked like conditions wouldn’t be good enough so I moved it to the subsequent Thursday. When Monday rolled around it looked as if Tuesday and Wednesday might work but there were thunderstorms predicted for Thursday. I called and was fortunate that they had a slot opened on Wednesday morning.

Tuesday we were socked in until about three in the afternoon. When it was clear enough to fly I still had to keep my altitude down to about 2000 feet above ground level and dodge a cloud or two. But I made it to Brownwood and then spent an extra half hour flying around the area familiarizing myself with it.

The airport courtesy car had been borrowed already so I called a cab. They dinged me pretty good on the five mile ride to my hotel so the next morning I just walked to the airport.

My oral exam went well. I only missed one question, though it did take a little prompting for me to provide all the details that Pete, my flight examiner, was looking for.

After my oral exam was completed I waited. The ceiling at Brownwood was at about 600-800 feet AGL. I was a little worried that I might have to take a Greyhound bus home and back again but around 1400 the ceiling started to lift.

My flying exam went pretty well too. I overcorrected a bit on the VOR and my final landing wasn’t the thing of grace I would have liked but all that practice paid off and I passed. From there it was just a matter of getting home before the ceiling came down again.

The sun had set when I landed at Lockhart but I no longer had to be concerned about regulations telling me that I couldn’t fly after dark because I had my license. Yay!

The whole process took me about two years, but for ten months I wasn’t flying, first because I was out of money and then later because my Tripacer needed work. It cost me somewhere around $10,000 to get my private pilot’s license. I did have to work for this one but that makes the final result just that much more rewarding.

Now I can go fly.

Night Flights

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 18:05:07 -0600

I’ve heard that flying at night can be very beautiful. I’ve most certainly have enjoyed watching cities and towns pass below us while flying at night in a commercial jet. Consequently I was looking forward to my mandatory ten nighttime landings and fifty mile cross country.

I accomplished these objectives in two sessions. First we went to San Marcos airport and just started practicing landings. I went into this feeling pretty confident but quickly discovered that I had two challenges, both of which were caused by the same problem - I had a hard time seeing.

I’ve worn glasses for most of my life and have discovered that as I get older my ability to see at a distance has improved. But a down side to age is that the eye becomes less flexible and consequently it becomes more difficult to focus both up close and at a distance. Wearing single vision glasses to correct my farsightedness I’ve discovered that I have some difficulty focusing up close, especially at night. I first noticed this on my motorcycle. But in an airplane in the dark it becomes particularly important to be able to read instruments. That was my first challenge. I guess I have to break down and finally get a bifocal prescription.

The second challenge I faced was trying to determine just exactly where to flare my airplane to land it. By the time I saw the runway I was too close and two or three times I flared it right onto the ground. As a result of this I spent an hour practicing landings during the day and an important ingredient came together for me - I recognized that the airplane is much easier to land with ten degrees of flaps rather than full flaps because it’s transition between a glide and rapidly sinking is more gentle. That’s just what I needed for night landings. Win!

For my nighttime cross country flight we went to Temple. Leaving Lockhart I contacted Austin approach and they gave me coordinates around their airspace. It was kind of interesting sharing the sky with 737s and other commercial jets out in the dark. Having cleared Austin I used my newly rebuilt Nav unit to track to the Centex VOR and from there to the Temple VOR using a combination of radio navigation and pilotage. We contacted the Gray Airforce Base near Temple as we approached their airspace and again to request flight following on the way back. I didn’t have as much trouble seeing in the dark this time, probably because my eyes had more time to adjust.

I really enjoyed flying at night. It truly is very beautiful to be out flying with nothing but darkness and the lights of cities, roads and other aircraft. This is something that I want to do more of once I get my license.

With that, I’ve fulfilled all of the major requirements before taking my test except for a final three hours in the aircraft with my instructor. I’m looking forward to taking on that final challeng.

Flying Cross Country

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:30:32 -0600

I’ve had the opportunity to get four solo cross country flights under my belt since I last posted and one more cross country with Joe, my instructor. My flight with Joe was to College Station then to Austin for a touch and go and then home. My solo cross country flights were to Brenham, La Grand and home, to Georgetown, Burnett then home, to Victoria and back and then to Brownwood, Taylor and back to Lockhart.

My cross country solo flights have presented me with new challenges, which is just exactly what I would have hoped for. I’ve had to land at three airports with right hand patterns which turn to the right rather than the left as is more common. With each new airport I’ve also had to figure out where the airport actually is and how to land at it. The experiences have challenged me, which again is what makes them fun.

With each flight I’m better able to correlate what I see out my windows with what’s on my charts. That wouldn’t seem to be so hard to do but it takes a while to get a sense of how far an inch on a chart is when compared to the real world. This is what pilotage is all about. I’m sure that the more I do it the better I’ll get but at this point I’m starting to feel that I have at least a basic level of proficiency.

I’ve also had several opportunities to fly into controlled airports and airspaces. At first I was a little apprehensive about making the right radio calls, requests and so forth but after a while I came to understand that those guys are there to help me. I have also filed flight plans for each of those trips opening them either on the ground or in the air and closing them when I reached my destination.

When we landed at Austin it was a very different experience than doing so at the other smaller regional airports. I guess that the best comparison is that the small airports are like country roads to Austin’s five lane freeway.

I had replaced my VOR nav antenna hoping that would sort out the issues with the receiver. After several times out I’ve had to conclude that the nav unit just isn’t working. One time that led me far enough astray that I thought Temple was Lampasas but after reviewing my chart I recognized the error. I bought another nav receiver on Ebay for $50 and it’s currently being given a tune up.

Flying cross country is somewhat like taking a road trip in a car except that you are in the air and there are no road signs so it’s probably easier to get lost. It’s a much faster way to reach a distant destination but with the amount of fuel that my airplane uses it’s a more expensive way to do so too.

My cross country flights were another of the big steps I need to accomplish to get my pilot’s license. Next I need to get some night flying under my belt.

Progressing To Cross Country

Fri, 4 Nov 2011 17:25:22 -0500

It’s been a couple months since Joe signed me off to solo in my Tripacer. I’ve been taking advantage of the opportunity and flying when I can but I’ve also had some down time working on the airplane. I go into the details of all that in my blog entry about sorting out comm issues.

Once I was signed off to fly solo my biggest goal was to get some practice flying into controlled (towered) airspace. Because of comm issues that just didn’t happen. But I wanted to fly, so fly I did. Mostly I spent my time over the farms and ranches to the east of Lockhart, just getting used to the airplane, learning to recognizing landmarks and other features from the air, practicing my turns, landings and other some skills. When I finally got my comm unit working I was able to move forward to the next phase of my training, flying cross country.

So what makes cross country flying different? Planning, planning, planning. And then after the planning there is the execution. The planning starts with drawing a line on a chart between the origination and destination airports. Next landmarks are identified between the two airports and distances are measured between all these points and logged on a flight planning sheet. After this it’s necessary to check weather conditions. Of course if the conditions are wrong you just don’t fly. But beyond that, it’s important to know the direction and speed of the wind at cruising altitude. This information is used to adjust the heading to compensate and the effect of the wind on travel time can be accounted for. All of it is added to the flight planning form.

After the flight has been planned it’s time to submit a flight plan. This is done by calling a Flight Service Station and providing them with some basic information. The purpose of the flight plan is to have someone make sure that the flight arrives at it’s destination and if it doesn’t then to go looking for it.

So today I made my first official cross country flight, from Lockhart (TX) to Kerrville, a distance is about 74 nautical miles. We flew through San Marcos airspace, over Canyon Lake and on to Kerrville. The flight went pretty well except that my compass turned out to be inaccurate when flying to the west. Consequently I had to use pilotage, i.e. flying by identifying and following a series of landmarks. My compass was more accurate on the return flight but with Canyon Lake to follow as a landmark getting home was easy.

So once again my instruction is moving forward. I have to do some more cross country work and some night flying. But I think I can see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Going Solo - Again

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:57:02 -0500

If you read my Tripacer blog it should give you a pretty good idea why I haven’t posted anything here for a while. After purchasing Tripacer 22D it was several months before I was able to fly her. But that’s in the past. Once I started flying again I’ve been in the air every two or three days.

I don’t know why but from the beginning I’ve been more comfortable in 22D than I was in my instructor’s Cessna 150. Perhaps it’s because she has heavier wing loading and isn’t as sensitive to turbulence. Perhaps it’s because she’s a faster airplane. Perhaps it’s just because she’s mine and I’m not so sensitive to the possibility of damaging someone else’s plane (not that I’d want to damage my own). Regardless, I find 22D an enjoyable airplane to fly.

Once I was back in the pilot’s seat it was almost as if I had never left it. The second time we flew my landings just seemed to be off, but after that things came together and for the most part it has been smooth flying, so to speak.

Joe, my instructor, and I spent five or six hours flying together while we reviewed some turns, stalls, landings and other exercises that I had practiced in the Cessna. We also did some cross wind landings, something that I’d not practiced that much and then he cut me loose to solo again. That was about a week and a half ago. Since then I’ve flown about every second day.

My first time flying 22D by myself things didn’t go quite like I would have liked. I flew to San Marcos and upon arrival my radio’s transmitter didn’t work. The tower instructed me to land with a right hand pattern, something that I’d never done before. It wasn’t pretty but I got her on the ground. After that everything has gone well, except that my radio still doesn’t transmit.

At first I was hesitant to fly without a radio. In retrospect it’s been a bit of a blessing. Because I can’t announce my position I’ve quickly trained myself to keep an especially sharp eye open for traffic. But just to be safe I have been staying away from high traffic areas and I can’t enter the controlled airspace around an airport with a tower. Consequently I’ve been spending most of my time flying to the east of Lockhart where there’s very little traffic.

Until I’m signed off to fly cross country I have to stay within 25 miles of my home airport. My Tripacer cruises easily at 120 miles an hour and at that pace it doesn’t take long to cover 25 miles. But for now just spending time in the air is good enough. The more I fly, the more comfortable I find myself when I’m flying.

This weekend I hope to get my radio issues sorted out. When I do I intend to spend some time practicing landings at San Marcos. After that, who knows. Tune in next time and find out.

Ground School

Sun, 8 May 2011 09:56:29 -0500

The second infusion of cash into my instruction ran out shortly after I soloed. Since money was tight and aircraft rental costs $90 an hour I didn’t want to go running up a bill. Consequently I set my flying aside for the time being and started to focus on ground school.

Sadly, my father-in-law passed during this period. With the dispersal of his estate Janet and I had an unexpected financial windfall and we agreed that I since it will take a while for me to complete my RV-6 project I should purchase a modestly priced airplane. This was a significant change in my plans for flight instruction. Rather than continuing to rent the Cessna 150, I decided to wait for the purchase of my new (to me) airplane and continue my flight instruction in it.

I’ve already purchased and Viewed the Sporty’s video tapes. But taking ground school classes has a couple of benefits that I can’t derive from DVDs and books alone. Joe, my instructor is very familiar with the FAA examination process and is working with me one-on one to make sure that I get all the questions answered correctly. Also, the give and take in a classroom setting has helped me to better understand material that I have had questions about. Also, all my training is put into my log book. On the down side it is considerably more expensive than a computer based training system.

So far we have covered weather, cross country flying and some other topics. Currently I’m working my way through the regulations. Let me tell you, that can be dry stuff, but you have to know it.

I was surprised to see that I had my physical over a year ago. That shows how slowly this process has been going. But with an infusion of cash I think it’s on the fast track now. I’ve been attending two ground school classes a week and I’m starting to get the sense that the end is somewhere not too far over the horizon.

Going Solo

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 20:18:18 -0600

It’s been a challenging month which has kept me away from the airport. I’ve been looking forward to soloing for quite a while and discussed how to best accomplish that with Joe, my instructor. The last few times out I’d been landing into a cross wind and he suggested waiting until the weather was a little better before he would solo me. Then life got in the way. I had to work on those few perfect days and then Janet’s father passed away.

Today things finally came together. It was a clear day with the wind blowing from 350 degrees at about eleven knots. The runway at Lockhart is at 360 degrees so there wasn’t much of a crosswind. We flew the pattern several times, including doing one deliberate go around. The first couple of times around I was disappointed to find that my flying was just a little bit off. There also seemed to be some pretty good thermals at the end of the runway where we were landing and I constantly found myself coming in high.

By the time that Joe was ready to give me my chance at soloing we’d been flying for close to an hour. I realized that I was starting to make some mistakes and lose my focus. I attributed that to low blood sugar. One bowl of Grapenuts doesn’t go too far. We returned to the the school and I accepted the energy bar that he offered. It helped. I think I’ll keep a few in my flight bag from now on.

Once I was ready to go I took my time, not wanting to rush things and make a mistake.

The first takeoff and climb out was uneventful. When I reached the point where I should start to descend I went through the normal routine. To my surprise when I turned to the base leg (90 degrees to the runway) I was still at 1000 feet above ground level. I should have lost several hundred feet by then. I threw out twenty degrees of flap and after turning onto final I was still about three hundred feet too high and not losing altitude fast enough. At that point I had a decision to make. I could have brought the airplane down if I had really need to but decided that a better choice was simply to go around and take another shot at it.

The next time around I was still fighting the problem of being too high. I pulled the throttle back to below the normal engine speed used for decent but my landing wasn’t bad, though a little far down the runway. I turned off the carb heat, kicked the throttle open and unexpectedly found myself off the ground much sooner than expected. It only took me a moment to realize I’d forgotten to retract the flaps. (Now that I’ve gotten that mistake out of the way I don’t need to do it again.)

The next time down I pulled even more power out and the landing was better yet. I think that I wasn’t quite lined up perfectly with the runway on that one, though it wasn’t that bad.

On my final landing I just completely closed the throttle for a dead stick landing. Everything was lined up very nicely on that one though my speed was on the high side as I approached the end of the runway. I brought the nose up enough to scrub the speed off and the landing was nice - straight down the runway and it touched down with hardly a thump.

Once again, I find that I really like flying without power. It makes me more focused though it’s a bit more challenging. Somewhere down the road I’m going to take a serious look at trying my hand at flying a glider.

Well, that’s a milestone accomplished. I find it somewhat less distracting flying solo but of course there’s not that second set of eyes catching my mistakes so I have to be more careful not to make them.

All in all it was a good day.

Flying Again

Sat, 5 Feb 2011 20:50:22 -0600

I’m back in the pilot’s seat again! I sold a piece of equipment and bought myself another eight hours of flying time.

During my down time I’ve been reading aviation related books and magazines and working on my understanding of aviation theory. I think that the best I’ve read so far is “Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying” by Wolfgang Langewiesche. This book was written in 1944 but is easy to read and does a wonderful job of explaining how flying works. This understanding has benefited me and my sense is that book has already paid for itself a several times. I’m also reading “Say Again, Please: A Guide To Radio Communication” by Bob Gardner.

I hadn’t been making the kind of progress that I wanted before going on hiatus last time around, so before I returned to the pilot’s seat I sat down with Joe, my instructor, and had a conversation about what I considered to be my weaknesses to be and how to take best advantage of my airtime. Then I spent half an hour just sitting in the airplane and “becoming one” with it.

When we took to the air again, the first thing I did was spend half an hour just flying the airplane, putting it into deeper and deeper banks, experimenting with the rudder and trying to achieve a good “sight picture” for different flying situations. We cut that session short at 7/10 of an hour when I started to get tired. The next day (and most the subsequent days) we had about a ten mile an hour 45 degree cross wind so before attempting any landings I practiced some side slips at two thousand feet.

Feeling more confident that I could anticipate the airplane’s behavior I started doing landings again. This time things seemed to come together quickly. I had some anxiety with the first couple of cross wind landings but they all went well enough. Again I cut my flights a bit short so that I wouldn’t get tired and start making mistakes.

Today we focused on emergency landings. First we did an off field landing exercise where we pulled the power and I had to select a field and bring it in before doing a “go around” a few hundred feet up. Then we did five dead stick landings at San Marcos airport. They all went pretty well but I noticed a lot of variation from one to the next, evidently because of changing wind conditions. Finally, on my last landing of the day at Lockhart I found myself very high as I approached the runway, apparently because of updrafts. I decided to see if I could bring her down rather than doing a go-around and so I put in thirty degrees of flaps. It worked like a charm and the Cessna touched down with hardly a bump.

I guess that we are going to work on some short field landings and take offs next. Then, hopefully I’ll solo.

Hiatus

Thu, 8 Jul 2010 08:23:25 -0500

It looks like I have to put my flying lessons on hiatus for a while. Why? Why else: money.

I was able to start taking lessons after I sold an old air compressor which gave me $1,900 that I used for lessons. My instructor said that would probably be enough to get me soloing and that a lot of people solo after about twelve hours. Well at this point I’ve got somewhere around twenty two hours of flight time, over sixty landings but haven’t quite managed to solo. My initial deposit is gone and I owe another $300. I didn’t realize that I was in the red and when I found out that was the case I decided to hold off on any more flying. I don’t want to do this thing on credit.

I’m kind of disappointed that I haven’t soloed yet and am wondering if I might make more progress working with an instructor who has a different teaching style. I’ve spoken to the owner of a flight school who operates out of Austin and may discuss it further with one of his instructors. There are pros and cons to flying out of Austin. On the plus side it will give me a lot of good experience working in a controlled airspace. The classes are also a little less expensive. On the minus side I may be spending more time on the ground waiting for clearance. I do think that spending more time in a controlled airspace will be beneficial for me.

So for now I’m going to put my head down and focus on making some money. That and I’m going to keep building my RV. I’ll post again when I’m moving forward with my flight training once more.

More Landings

Thu, 27 May 2010 07:27:23 -0500

Since my last blog entry I've done landings and more landings. Yesterday we flew to San Marcos and did three on runway 13, including a go-around, another five on runway 17 and then a final landing upon returning to Lockhart.

The saying goes, "practice makes perfect." I'm hardly perfect but I'm most certainly getting a lot of practice. I must have somewhere around forty landings at this point and it seems like there's almost always something that could have done a little better on each one.

For the most part my approaches are pretty good as are my flares. The most consistent theme has been issues with cross winds. At first the challenge was to keep the momentum of the plane going down the center of the runway on approach with the wind trying to blow me to one side or the other. The next challenge was to use the rudder to keep the nose of the plane pointing in the right direction as I flare the airplane just before touch-down. Most recently that has been taking most of my attention and then I relax once the airplane is on the ground. However the landing is not over yet. With a cross wind it's necessary to turn the yoke into the wind once on the ground to keep the windward wing from lifting as the airplane decelerates.

I mostly do all of those things now but my challenge is to do everything correctly consistently. Joe (my instructor) tells me that I'm almost ready to solo, I just need to achieve that consistency and practice some more go-arounds. We still need to do some off field emergency procedures and landings.

Speaking of emergency procedures and landings, I've landed the airplane twice now without power and done one landing without flaps. All of those landings went fine.

I'm starting to use the radio now to inform air traffic in the area of my location and intentions. I find it to be kind of tough to understand what the other pilots are saying. But radio communications is just one more skill that I need to master.

One thing I will say is that the Cessna 150 is like a flying Volkswagen beetle - it gets you up there but boy is it slow doing it. I'm been spending a lot more time flying the airplane up to traffic height than doing the landings themselves. Well, I guess it takes what it takes.

Am I having fun? For the most part yes. I'm enjoying the challenges and it feels good to know that I'm making progress. Hopefully I'll be soloing soon.