Bird Smells

After cleaning out the bird nest in the empennage, I was able to fly three times in the pattern. Even though I wore rubber gloves, I could smell bird on me the rest of day.

The flying felt great, so it was a fair price to pay. The wind was 8 to 12 knots and the direction was variable from 300 to 350. Fun stuff. My instructor pulled the mixture abeam the numbers for a simulated engine failure. I had no issue landing in this scenario. It was my best landing out of the three. I had to consult to POH upon completion for verification. I was under the impression that the 65 KIAS was applicable to 'best glide' at 10 degrees of flaps. It is not. 60 KIAS is used for up to 20 degrees of flaps.

When establishing 'best glide', it is best to avoid flaps until the landing point is picked and assured. Up to 15 degrees of flaps is mostly lift. After that, it is pretty much all drag.

I also worked on soft field take-off. It just feels so odd to push the nose down when flying so close to the ground. The idea is to stay in ground-effect waiting until the speed reaches 61 KIAS. It is more pressure on the yoke than I expect. I will get used to it.

My instructor and I postponed the night excursion. Bill needed to get current. We thought about having Bill make three full stop trips around in the pattern and then picking me up. With sunset at 7:30 PM EST, regulation mandates that he not take off until 8:30--one hour after sunset. The means we cannot start flying until 9:00. That is a bit late.

Another good day for crosswind landings

My intention for flying yesterday was simple. I wanted to solo in the pattern again. This is confidence boosting exercise as much as it is practice. With winds at 10 to 12 knots and gusts up to 20 knots, this outside my comfort zone to fly solo. Luckily, Instructor Geoff sat with me. No earth shattering lessons to report on cross wind landings. Been there, done that. Just need to firm up the skills as expected. Just a few tidbits to remember, as follows:

(1) Announce to the tower the intention to land, even in the pattern, as soon as mid-field. I tend to wait till the plane is abeam the numbers.

(2) If I am in the glide slope, do make power changes until over the threshold.

(3) Do not be so quick to add 20 degrees of flaps until on final when a strong wind is present. Judge the ground speed (as it is slower) and the glide slope. Just make sure the the altimiter is in the green (65 knots) but do not assume it is correct (TAS) with a wind.

That is pretty much it. All my landings were safe. The last one was a bit odd, as I reduced power too soon and rapidly lost airspeed in the flare. Luckily, I recovered fairly well with a firm (no bounce) landing 5 feet off the center line.

A have minor correction for a previous post. I mentioned, on an ILS approach in IMC, the copilot takes control of the plane once the runway is in sight. I investigated this procedure further and it is not a strict procedure. It depends on the airline or organization. For example, military pilots do not do this. The reason, I am told, is that the copilot may trim the plane differently, and unless they have flown with the same PIC along time, they would need to adjust. This is not a good thing 600 feet above the ground in a jet at 150 KIAS. It was funny, because I noticed my instructor trimmed the plane different than I. I tend to add a little more elevator trim so I can fly in 20 or 30 degrees of flap, and gain airspeed quickly. With Bill's trim, I felt the need to use 40 degrees of flaps to get the plane to 60 KIAS. My reasoned approach to trimming the plane comes from two considerations: (1) most planes do not have 40 degrees of flaps and (2) one should never retract flaps once added in order to gain airspeed. The risk of losing lift at the same time can and often does have detrimental effects.

First ILS Approach

I know what some pilots may be thinking. Why is a twenty-some hour student pilot flying an ILS Approach? Well, my enthusiasm and my instructor's optimism got the better of us today. FSS declared 'VFR not recommend'. The fog looked like it was burning off quickly, we had 5 plus SM visibility at the airport and a thin layer of fog above us. We could see the Sun poke through. We decided to go flying. Now, I could pin this on my instructor as his misjudgement. But, at twenty some hours, the student has to start learning to be firm with his decision making. I should have called off the flight.

So the 0.6 hour flight was short. After taking off from Manassas and turning to our Westerly heading towards Fluky, I climbed to FL020. What I saw for many miles was a blanket of white. Not even a spec of ground. Disorienting? Somewhat. I kept thinking that I was flying to far South and had this strong desire to turn right. Before we reached the edge of the SFRA, my instructor radioed approach control for an ILS approach back to Manassas, confirming that the plane is instrument certified.

The conversation between us and Potomac Approach was a series of exchanges, confirming altitude and heading changes. At the time we were west/south-west of Manassas, having taken off from 16L (heading 160 degrees for non-pilots). We were vectored northward (360 degrees) climbing and holding FL027. My instructor, Bill, maintained 105 knots, keeping the carb heat on. Speed is important since we were the slowest thing out there. To not hold up traffic, Approach brought us in tight to DORGE ( the middle marker ). I am not entirely certain of the distance but I believe we picked up the localizer for 16L at around 3 to 4 miles out, so we intercepted the glide slope pretty close to DORGE. That leaves plenty of time for a small slow plane to nail the glide slope at FL027. Since we were vectored into the proper altitude on glide slope, we did not need to dial up ARMEL on the 227 radial for positioning.

The fog was breaking at around 700 AGL. On a faster plane, the PIC is flying instruments while the copilot is looking for the runway. As soon as he sees it, the copilot takes over so the PIC does not have to readjust his vision ( a couple seconds at this point is too long ). Although not as smooth, Bill and I did roughly the same thing. Once I had the runway in sight, I took control. Bill had plenty of time as we are SLOW. It is more a matter of learning crew resource management.

In crew resource management, I did not sit idle while my instructor followed vectors to the glide path. I looked up the localizer frequency, kept checking the directional gyro, looked for traffic, and made sure the checklists were followed: carb heat on and landing lights on.

All in all, still a good lesson.

Honest Self Assessments

I have been nagging my instructor a bit about flying in windy days rather than the perfect days. The point is simple really. There is always wind and, when I earn my private pilot certificate, I want to be able to fly in those conditions confidently. This week's flight was supposed to be another solo flight in the pattern, but as luck would have it, winds where up to 15 knots with gusts up to 20 knots. These conditions exceed the constraints placed by my instructor upon solo flights. I got my wish. My instructor and I flew the pattern for 6 landings. The lesson was gift!

My landings were not perfect. Two were on the center line. The rest were not. I overcompensated for the wind in most cases. The wind kept shifting. The average wind direction was about 10 degrees to the right of the runway center line. The aircraft never once was in an uncrontrolled dangerous state. Safety over beauty first. I flew the plane to the runway. I never gave up control. So, in the end, both my instructor and I were pleased with the entire lesson.

After ever lesson, my instructor and I discuss my performance, the good, the bad and the ugly (not much of those thankfully). These discussions sound a bit odd at times. My instructor is very cautious to provide an honest well-rounded assessment. The point is to not discourage a student, but to clearly point out areas of improvement. I generally find myself walking away from these discussions a bit frustrated. It is no different from the way my son feels when we talk about his performance in Tae Kwon Do. The lesson can be good but there is always areas that need improvement. These assessments are critical to understanding a pilots skills and limitations. There is no place for over-confidence or a boosted ego in the cockpit.

Some of discussion with my instructor, both before and after the flight lesson, focused around future flights. I wanted to jump into night flights since I have completed two cross country flights. I wanted the next two or three cross country flights to be night, with and without foggles. Following similar lines of thought with flying windy conditions, I wanted to make sure I had sufficient skill to fly at night so I can start going on longer trips after attaining the private pilot certificate. For example, I may want to leave after work and fly to Connecticut to see my parents for the week-end. See the trend here? I want to make sure I have sufficient skills to do any kind of VFR flying within the contiguous United States as a private pilot. My instructor kindly tried to point out the error in my thinking.

The key word in my goal statement is 'sufficient'. When a 16 year old American earns his driver's license for a car, the kid simply cannot have the skills to drive in every situation. It is this reason that good parents and guardians do not just hand over car keys without restrictions. For example, I did very little night driving in the first month of my license. When I wanted to take my friends to a concert in Hartford, my father and I drove the route first. I needed to buid up some experience and familiarity with the surroudings. At 16, I was good driver. My father gave me many opportunities to drive under supervision, like driving to New York to visit his brother, or up to Massachusetts to see my grand parents. I even drove in snowy conditions, rainy conditions, and congested conditions. Even with all that practice, as a newly license driver, I simply did not have all skills to manage the workload all the time.

My Kung Fu instructor states that any skill requires ten thousand hours to become a master. I probably have close to that in drums. I know I have that in driving a car on the street. I definitely have that in my profession. So, a 50 hour pilot is by no means a 'skilled' pilot and very far from a master.

So what does a private pilot license gain someone? Sure, from my perspective the regulations are pretty open. There is a lot of space below 18000 MSL. However, just like a licensed car driver, regulations have some general statements concerning placing people and property in harms way. The private pilot license gives one the freedom to expand their skills. When the ink is wet on my license, will I have sufficient skills to fly at night to an airport over 300 NM from my home base, around some very busy airspace? Not by my definition of sufficient. Sufficient to me means that, unless the conditions are unusual harsh and completely outside my control, there is no chance of me harming person or property as PIC. A clear weather flight to uncharted territory at night carries quite a bit of risk for a new pilot.

It is this point that honest self assessment of skill is critical to survival. Baby steps are required, allowing the pilot to expand skills incrementally to deal with increased work load encountered in new environments. Case in point, night flying is only three to four hours of training. That is not much training. Best to do a trip several times during the day prior to attempting at night.

In the end, my windy conditions flying felt great. I suprised myself on how well I did. I also was pleasantly humbled on how far I need to go. I look forward to the journey.

Oh Shenandoah!

Not the song. The park!

Today I chose Shenandoah Regional Airport as the destination of my second cross country trip. FYI, I will address the altered syllabus in another blog.

It was a great day for mountain flying. The small mountains were covered with a white coat of snow. It was a beautiful clear day with minimal chop. The East Coast hills are not as grandiose as their West Coast cousins. However, they have their own beauty and can be appreciated at lower altitudes with less wind.

Going to Shenandoah from Manassas, my instructor and I maintained 6500 feet on a direct heading from the Casanova VOR. I even did some simulated instrument time. Not enough to take away from appreciating the view.

Resting at Shenandoah

On the return flight to Manassas, I took advantage of my instructor's presence by releasing control of the plane to snap some pictures of the valley and the airport.
The mountains

The airport

Coming out of the valley, I climbed to FL055 to get over the mountains and then came back down to FL045 to make a parallel track along the mountain range so I could get a picture of Old Rag. I then resumed course, on the 259 degree radial, TO Casanova while descending to FL030. We followed much the same track as the outbound flight with a slight detour to Warrenton as Potomac Approach waded through the barrage of traffic calls and verified my SFRA flight plan. Old Rag


As any student adventure, today's journey was loaded with simple lessons. The biggest and most humbling lesson is to continue to prioritize and manage the workload.

Other lessons include:

(1) As part of cockpit management and crew work load, I began to announce flight level changes and communicate my intentions. For example, coming into Manassas, there was a Bonanza over taking us and a chopper at 12 O'clock holding 1200 MSL. I informed by instructor that I was heading for FL020 to let the faster Bonanza fly over us as the chopper maintained altitude and flew to the East.

(2) I still get a bit excited prior to take off once I land for a 'break'. Today, I forgot to put the mixture to full rich when starting at Shenandoah. I nearly forget to switch the transponder to Mode C when leaving Shenandoah. With all the excitement, I forgot to pull the Carburetor Heat upon approach to Manassas. Where are my check lists?

(3) I witnessed my instructor communicate with a plane leaving Shenandoah as we arrived. The conversation included items like location, intentions, visual recognition etc.

(4) My landings were OK. It is easier to land when focused on pattern work. Today, I did not hold the center line with the little bit of crosswind. It comes down to the fact that I begin to doubt and over-think my ability rather than just 'fly the plane'. I should not be analytically be saying to myself 'apply right rudder and bank to the left'.

(5) I failed to refer to my careful flight plan at times, forgetting that I do not need to rethink things. I did my homework, so use it! This includes setting flight levels and following compass headings.

I did not have the same anxiety coming into the SFRA. I was on top of all the conversation. The only thing I missed was the change of personnel at Potomac. My instructor picked up the voice change and new it to be a sign of overload even before the operator announced that he had five calls waiting for clearance and patience was required.

For the next time: check lists, check lists, check lists. I am going to be MUCH MORE VIGILANT about check lists on take off, approach and landing. I will not allow my self to forget anything even in a high workload setting.

SOLO!

It was great!

I had original planned a cross country to Shenandoah Regional. It was good for my second cross country. I had already filed two SFRZ flight plans, egress and ingress the SFRZ. My instructor did not mention soloing. He wanted to work on ground reference maneuvers, something I had not done yet.

We left Manassas and headed south to our practice area. We practiced a simulated go-around and then proceeded to find an object to circle around. I found an old silo. I had some trouble with this maneuver. I had been reading about the Eights on Pylon maneuver (a more advanced maneuver not required for a private pilot) and had it in my head. The techniques are different, so that created some issues. A constant radius is not necessarily maintained around a pylon. It is also more difficult to maintain altitude and airspeed in the pylons maneuver. “Turns around a point” does not require a constant bank angle. It does require a constant radius, altitude and airspeed. It is critical in turns around a point to adjust the bank angle to compensate for wind. In the pylons maneuver, the adjustment is to the radius to maintain a pivotal altitude.

Consider that Pivotal Altitude = (Ground Speed2 /11.3) + Field Elevation. Speed is Va. Ground speed changes require adjustments in pressure: Ahead of the pylon, back pressure to tighten the turn; Behind the pylon, forward pressure to widen the turn (decrease pitch resulting in decrease pivotal altitude). Bank angle can change per pivotal altitude based on how close a plane is to the pylon. The pivotal altitude is maintained, but the altitude for the entire maneuver changes.

The next maneuver I demonstrated was S-turns along a road. I did not make the same mistake, so that went fine. At this point, I wanted to go back and correct my mistake in the ‘Turns around a Point’ maneuver. It is the musician in me that will practice the same pattern forever until near perfect. My instructor had other plans.


He wanted me to take him to Culpepper. In the back of this mind, he was thinking if I could not land the plane without assistance I was not ready for solo. I had no issue. My instructor shook my hand, signed my log book and medical certificate, and off I went, three times in the pattern at Culpepper.



Here are my observations in this grand occasion. First and foremost, I was not nervous. Not a butterfly. My first time around was not very square but the landing was fine. I noticed immediately that plane felt different. It is amazing how one less adult in the cockpit can change the dynamic of a small plane. The plane felt more responsive and more unstable at slower speeds. My second time around, my landing was a little fast but I nailed it. Third time around, same issue and I ballooned. I was going to apply power and adjust. I decided that the balloon was too high and a go-around was in order. The fourth time, again, no problems. Had it been cold, I am sure my instructor would have given some sharper jibes about the go-around (in jest, I assure you). He just chuckled at me and said that he did not see any issue with the landing. He and I both knew that I could have put that plane on the ground. I just wanted to put it down gently and I was not in mood for a mishap on my solo flight. It was my first unassisted go-around in an actual landing…good practice.


At this point, it was time to journey back. I took breather, grabbed a candy bar at Culpepper and returned to the plane for the flight back. I said I was not going to stress about flying through that 8 NM wide 500 foot corridor back into Manassas, but I stressed anyways, slowing my response time. The result is my landing at Manassas was off center due to slow compensation to a cross wind. I got “behind the plane”. My instructor made comment on this to me. I have a love/hate attitude toward such comments. A student pilot sometimes gets behind the plane, and we know it. So is the comment necessary? You bet it is. The day when my instructor does not make comments is the day that I start feeling like I can fly safely. It is a gage and a damn good one. The musician in me responded as expected: I requested a dedicated flight lesson to cross wind landings where the crosswind component is close to but not over 10 knots. Practice, practice, practice.


There are probably and handful of traditions on first solo flights. The celebration was losing the back of my shirt to scissors and marker, and then a celebratory meal of McDonalds (first time in 6 years for me…and the last time, I hope). I was wired the rest of the day from all the excitement!