better, not perfect - lesson 19
Jul. 9th, 2006 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slipstreamsurfrMischa and I talked for a few minutes before I headed out to preflight the plane. Tanks are still about 3/4 full so no need for fuel, I lower the flaps and start my walk around. The only problem I find is that the plane needs oil, it's a bit below 6 quarts. There's none in the plane so a walk back to the flight school and I meet Mischa coming out of the back room with a couple of quarts. I head back and top off the oil and finish up the pre-flight.
Mischa and I stand by the plan, backs to the empennage and we talk about the cloud buildups that are going around us. Where we are going to see the big updrafts, where the downdrafts are likely to be. A bit of looking at the pretty clouds and talking weather. He asks me if I've thought about the problems I was having yesterday, and I told him yeah, told him what I'd theorized on here last night. He asked me how I would address the problems today and I gave him the steps I was going to take. Good he said, then he wanted to make sure that I wasn't beating myself up too much. That there are plateaus in flight training. Everyone has them, he had them, his other students have had them, everyone has them. That they always seem to happen right after someone has had some really good lessons and then things fall out of sync again, but it comes back, we just have to bull our way through them.
A good pep talk. Then we are off to fly our lesson. We test the brakes as we start to taxi out and notice the right brake is a little soft. The pad is looking a little thin on that side, I'm sure it's going to be replaced at the next 100 hour if not earlier. It's safe though so off we go. We do our runup, and we are off.
We depart the the south west, looking for some open fields to do a bit of warmup air work. A couple of clearing turns and we go for steep turns. I go left first, watching the nose, keeping on top of it, then wings level and we go right. The nose wavers a bit more to the right, first down, then a bit too much up, weaving a bit up and down but the altitude stays within 50 feet. We go wings level and I pull another one to the left. I nail the nose and we rotate. Not a problem at all.
We go for a power off stall, straight ahead and it was perfect and clean. Mischa is smiling as he asks for a second, the nose comes up, it tries to fall off and I play the rudders and we stay straight and it breaks cleanly straight ahead. He asks for a power on stall clean, so I bring the nose up, keeping on the rudders and it falls straight ahead and I break it. A second and it's a repeat. I am cooking with gas today. I can fly. He calls for a power on turning stall to the left. I do the stall to the left, and I'm a little slow on it's recovery and we feel a little negative g on the recovery as I push the nose too far over before pulling it back. I try another, and still a little slow but it's reasonable. He takes the control to demonstrate one a straight ahead power on stall so that I can call when the plane starts flying again, because I tend to leave it a bit nose down just a skosh too long. He pulls the stall and he drops a wing. I call when we are flying again and he tries another and is sliding this and that a bit before he brakes it. He told me I've been doing them better than he can today apparently. :) He asked what I had for lunch that I'm flying so well today. So far it's the best flying he's seen of me all day.
We head back to GKY and join up in the pattern. He takes the tops, I take the rudders, keep us lined up with the runway. No problem. The feet stay awake and it's all good. We hover in slow flight over the runway then do the go-around. The next pattern I fly and I'm getting my approaches stabilized much better 80, 70, 65, 10, 20,30... I can do this. He takes the rudder, I take the ailerons. I'm on top of things today, I remember to look DOWN the runway, it makes things MUCH easier for me. I fight for the centerline, it still eludes me far too often, and we do the go-around. The next time around I take the whole thing, I end up left of the centerline again, but parallel. and everything is working. We head off again.
By this point the pattern has gotten very busy and we decide to go someplace with fewer airplanes. Grand Prairie is just a stones throw away so we switch to their frequency and ask if they mind if we play in their pattern. They tell us to come on over. GPM is narrower and shorter than GKY. This plays MAJOR havoc with my sight picture. We keep a close pattern on them and I'm high, really high. Aviate first, then worry about communicating. I dive for the touchdown markers with 40 degrees of flaps and top of the white arc. I flare, bleed off the airspeed in a way that only a Cessna with 40 degrees of flaps can do and keep it lined up, hands and feet, working away, then rolling it on with the nose nice and up. Their runway is shorter than Arlington so he calls for full power. I put in the power and carb heat and he quickly says, "no, abort." I pull power, brake and turn off the runway. He's quite for a moment and then asks what I did wrong. Flaps I tell him, with 40 degrees, I need to start them up before I add full power, otherwise we'll get out of ground effect and not climb and we'll find the airport fence at the edge of the road. He said good, don't forget next time. GPM clears us to taxi for take off and we are soon off again.
This time we come around and I'm still in too tight to the field and I end up diving for the runway again. I get it close and I start to flare it. By this point my flying is really starting to degrade. I get it down, but I'm weaving left and right, the centerline is only a distant and fond memory by this point. We touch and go, this time I start the flaps up BEFORE the power gets added. Much better and substantially better climb response than we would have had otherwise. We take it around and Mischa tries his hand at an approach. He gets everything lined up nicely, gets his speed in where he wants it, he's high too, but not as high as I have been, dives it with full flaps and no power and sets it down. The controller says that was a nice one, and clears us for another circuit. This one he gives to me, I bring it around, trying my best to match Mischa example. I get it down low, and the sight picture throws me again and all of a sudden I'm drifting fast, I start to correct and the gear goes thump thump skrrrt. I wasn't only flat, I was nose low, and I just landed with a bunch of side load nose first. He calls for the centerline and I manage somehow to boot FAR too much rudder and we slide across the runway in a way that airplanes aren't meant to move. I pull the flaps, stop my power slide and when my speed is back up I rotate and start the climb out. The controller is on, there's laughter in his voice. Telling us to not feel bad, the wind just came up and I got hit with a 13 knot gust as I flared.
We call on the way upwind requesting approval to change frequency and head back to Arlington and he tells us to have a good day. Mischa is quite, then wanting to know what happened? I'd been flying so well until that last landing, that's not what he would have expected. I don't land nose down anymore, and why the huge boot to the rudder. I have no real good excuses. The sight picture is still weird to me there, but I'd already adjusted to it on other approaches, I don't know what was wrong, and I have no idea how I slipped adding so much rudder just then. He nods, and we are setting up for a 45 entry over the lake into GKY now. I fly the pattern, pull the power at the touchdown zone, nail my numbers and flap settings and bring it down and end up flying parallel to the centerline, just to the left of it again. We break it off pretty quickly as we have someone on simulated engine out that would like to land behind us and climb out. Around we go and I go to do it again. I nail it on the approach again. There IS no flying back to the final. I've got everything working well together. I hold it off, the first 1/4 of the runway is good, nice, exactly what I want, even on the centerline. Then that wind we left at Grand Prairie has caught up with us and we start being pushed hard. I add more rudder, I drop the wing more, we are still being pushed, I get the sideways push stopped and we roll it on, but it's been busy, very busy. Then I did something, I still don't quite know what I did on the rudder but it's on nearly full left, a left over from the landing I think and we are tracking towards the edge of the runway. I didn't relax it out after I sat it down. For some reason my hands and feet now, no longer, want to work together in the way that they've been doing for almost the entire 1.4 we've been flying. Mischa ends up intervening to get me to drop the rudder out. I don't know why I blanked on pulling the rudder back out. It was almost as if I didn't know I still had it in there from the landing. I'm still trying to analyze what happened there. I get us back on the centerline and track it until the last turn off on the runway. We taxi it back and talk. What happened halfway down the runway. Why did I lock up on the left rudder. I'm still trying to figure it out.
Perhaps I was tired, overloading by that point. I don't know. I had had the one bad landing recently at GPM, then a good one at GKY, then that gust that complicated things on the last one, then I left the rudder in. I'm still trying to figure it out.
He said that other than the two off landings, it's the best flying he's seen out of me yet. In fact, it was the best flying he's seen all week with any of his students. Heck, my stalls put his to shame today. That felt good. I don't feel quite the incompetent student now. He wants me to take a look at the sectional and find a short cross country we can do this next weekend. So we'll go out and track some VOR's on either Saturday or Sunday. Take a break from pounding on landings. I think maybe they are starting to shape back up. I proved today again that I can fly them, and I can nail them without side loading things. I told him that one of these days, I'll stop scaring him on the lessons. He smiled at me and said that when I do that, then he's going to get out. :blink:
--1.4 hours
--6 landings (7? 8? I don't know, we called it 6)
Mischa and I stand by the plan, backs to the empennage and we talk about the cloud buildups that are going around us. Where we are going to see the big updrafts, where the downdrafts are likely to be. A bit of looking at the pretty clouds and talking weather. He asks me if I've thought about the problems I was having yesterday, and I told him yeah, told him what I'd theorized on here last night. He asked me how I would address the problems today and I gave him the steps I was going to take. Good he said, then he wanted to make sure that I wasn't beating myself up too much. That there are plateaus in flight training. Everyone has them, he had them, his other students have had them, everyone has them. That they always seem to happen right after someone has had some really good lessons and then things fall out of sync again, but it comes back, we just have to bull our way through them.
A good pep talk. Then we are off to fly our lesson. We test the brakes as we start to taxi out and notice the right brake is a little soft. The pad is looking a little thin on that side, I'm sure it's going to be replaced at the next 100 hour if not earlier. It's safe though so off we go. We do our runup, and we are off.
We depart the the south west, looking for some open fields to do a bit of warmup air work. A couple of clearing turns and we go for steep turns. I go left first, watching the nose, keeping on top of it, then wings level and we go right. The nose wavers a bit more to the right, first down, then a bit too much up, weaving a bit up and down but the altitude stays within 50 feet. We go wings level and I pull another one to the left. I nail the nose and we rotate. Not a problem at all.
We go for a power off stall, straight ahead and it was perfect and clean. Mischa is smiling as he asks for a second, the nose comes up, it tries to fall off and I play the rudders and we stay straight and it breaks cleanly straight ahead. He asks for a power on stall clean, so I bring the nose up, keeping on the rudders and it falls straight ahead and I break it. A second and it's a repeat. I am cooking with gas today. I can fly. He calls for a power on turning stall to the left. I do the stall to the left, and I'm a little slow on it's recovery and we feel a little negative g on the recovery as I push the nose too far over before pulling it back. I try another, and still a little slow but it's reasonable. He takes the control to demonstrate one a straight ahead power on stall so that I can call when the plane starts flying again, because I tend to leave it a bit nose down just a skosh too long. He pulls the stall and he drops a wing. I call when we are flying again and he tries another and is sliding this and that a bit before he brakes it. He told me I've been doing them better than he can today apparently. :) He asked what I had for lunch that I'm flying so well today. So far it's the best flying he's seen of me all day.
We head back to GKY and join up in the pattern. He takes the tops, I take the rudders, keep us lined up with the runway. No problem. The feet stay awake and it's all good. We hover in slow flight over the runway then do the go-around. The next pattern I fly and I'm getting my approaches stabilized much better 80, 70, 65, 10, 20,30... I can do this. He takes the rudder, I take the ailerons. I'm on top of things today, I remember to look DOWN the runway, it makes things MUCH easier for me. I fight for the centerline, it still eludes me far too often, and we do the go-around. The next time around I take the whole thing, I end up left of the centerline again, but parallel. and everything is working. We head off again.
By this point the pattern has gotten very busy and we decide to go someplace with fewer airplanes. Grand Prairie is just a stones throw away so we switch to their frequency and ask if they mind if we play in their pattern. They tell us to come on over. GPM is narrower and shorter than GKY. This plays MAJOR havoc with my sight picture. We keep a close pattern on them and I'm high, really high. Aviate first, then worry about communicating. I dive for the touchdown markers with 40 degrees of flaps and top of the white arc. I flare, bleed off the airspeed in a way that only a Cessna with 40 degrees of flaps can do and keep it lined up, hands and feet, working away, then rolling it on with the nose nice and up. Their runway is shorter than Arlington so he calls for full power. I put in the power and carb heat and he quickly says, "no, abort." I pull power, brake and turn off the runway. He's quite for a moment and then asks what I did wrong. Flaps I tell him, with 40 degrees, I need to start them up before I add full power, otherwise we'll get out of ground effect and not climb and we'll find the airport fence at the edge of the road. He said good, don't forget next time. GPM clears us to taxi for take off and we are soon off again.
This time we come around and I'm still in too tight to the field and I end up diving for the runway again. I get it close and I start to flare it. By this point my flying is really starting to degrade. I get it down, but I'm weaving left and right, the centerline is only a distant and fond memory by this point. We touch and go, this time I start the flaps up BEFORE the power gets added. Much better and substantially better climb response than we would have had otherwise. We take it around and Mischa tries his hand at an approach. He gets everything lined up nicely, gets his speed in where he wants it, he's high too, but not as high as I have been, dives it with full flaps and no power and sets it down. The controller says that was a nice one, and clears us for another circuit. This one he gives to me, I bring it around, trying my best to match Mischa example. I get it down low, and the sight picture throws me again and all of a sudden I'm drifting fast, I start to correct and the gear goes thump thump skrrrt. I wasn't only flat, I was nose low, and I just landed with a bunch of side load nose first. He calls for the centerline and I manage somehow to boot FAR too much rudder and we slide across the runway in a way that airplanes aren't meant to move. I pull the flaps, stop my power slide and when my speed is back up I rotate and start the climb out. The controller is on, there's laughter in his voice. Telling us to not feel bad, the wind just came up and I got hit with a 13 knot gust as I flared.
We call on the way upwind requesting approval to change frequency and head back to Arlington and he tells us to have a good day. Mischa is quite, then wanting to know what happened? I'd been flying so well until that last landing, that's not what he would have expected. I don't land nose down anymore, and why the huge boot to the rudder. I have no real good excuses. The sight picture is still weird to me there, but I'd already adjusted to it on other approaches, I don't know what was wrong, and I have no idea how I slipped adding so much rudder just then. He nods, and we are setting up for a 45 entry over the lake into GKY now. I fly the pattern, pull the power at the touchdown zone, nail my numbers and flap settings and bring it down and end up flying parallel to the centerline, just to the left of it again. We break it off pretty quickly as we have someone on simulated engine out that would like to land behind us and climb out. Around we go and I go to do it again. I nail it on the approach again. There IS no flying back to the final. I've got everything working well together. I hold it off, the first 1/4 of the runway is good, nice, exactly what I want, even on the centerline. Then that wind we left at Grand Prairie has caught up with us and we start being pushed hard. I add more rudder, I drop the wing more, we are still being pushed, I get the sideways push stopped and we roll it on, but it's been busy, very busy. Then I did something, I still don't quite know what I did on the rudder but it's on nearly full left, a left over from the landing I think and we are tracking towards the edge of the runway. I didn't relax it out after I sat it down. For some reason my hands and feet now, no longer, want to work together in the way that they've been doing for almost the entire 1.4 we've been flying. Mischa ends up intervening to get me to drop the rudder out. I don't know why I blanked on pulling the rudder back out. It was almost as if I didn't know I still had it in there from the landing. I'm still trying to analyze what happened there. I get us back on the centerline and track it until the last turn off on the runway. We taxi it back and talk. What happened halfway down the runway. Why did I lock up on the left rudder. I'm still trying to figure it out.
Perhaps I was tired, overloading by that point. I don't know. I had had the one bad landing recently at GPM, then a good one at GKY, then that gust that complicated things on the last one, then I left the rudder in. I'm still trying to figure it out.
He said that other than the two off landings, it's the best flying he's seen out of me yet. In fact, it was the best flying he's seen all week with any of his students. Heck, my stalls put his to shame today. That felt good. I don't feel quite the incompetent student now. He wants me to take a look at the sectional and find a short cross country we can do this next weekend. So we'll go out and track some VOR's on either Saturday or Sunday. Take a break from pounding on landings. I think maybe they are starting to shape back up. I proved today again that I can fly them, and I can nail them without side loading things. I told him that one of these days, I'll stop scaring him on the lessons. He smiled at me and said that when I do that, then he's going to get out. :blink:
--1.4 hours
--6 landings (7? 8? I don't know, we called it 6)