Up, Up and Away

We go Up, We go Down, We go Up, We go Down......

I woke up this morning to a perfect flying day. AWOS was saying calm and 12 miles visibility (I don't think LUG's AWOS will go any higher than that). But, for such a perfect day, wouldn't you know it, my 6 year old woke up throwing up her toenails (and everything else). Most of the time, this wouldn't be an issue. My wife would simply take care of the situation and the flight would be on.

Well, you see, herein lies the problem. My wife (along with several of my friends' and relatives' wives) is one of these "Day After Thanksgiving Shoppers". I'm not talking about a group of women that decide to go browse the deals at the local mall. No, no. Your thinking way too small. Our group of gals starts planning for "T-day" MONTHS in advance. Then they spend all Thanksgiving afternoon flipping through sales bills and ads to determine the best plan of attack. They carb up, go to bed early and are out the door by 3:30am. Yep, you read that right...3:30 AM...as in "in the morning". They shop with a mission and God help any poor soul that might hinder their progress. You ever see Female Meercats on the Discovery Channel? How they can tear apart animals three times their size? .......... Wusses.

So, now that you know that, you understand this mornings predicament. After a few calls, I am able to swap flight times with my brother (have I mentioned he's working on his ticket as well?) so that rather than an 8:00 lesson, I'm on for 11:30ish. I work out a sitter for my kids (Thanks Mom!) and set out for the wild blue yonder.

(Meanwhile, back at the mall, Momma has learned that I would rather fly than clean up vomit.....I'm sure I'll get to post on that later.....with my good hand.)

Seriously, all was well, and after thinking that I was going to have to cancel, I got it all worked out and was able to come off looking like a caring dad that was only going through with this lesson to help out my poor, broke CFI that needed the money. :)

I arrived at LUG just as Kary and my brother (Scott) were returning from a flight into a local Class D airport and they dropped by our Dad's grass strip on the way back. Seemed to have a good flight and I think Scott enjoyed rubbing it in that he has seen what flying looks like from outside the pattern.

I preflight the plane, hop in, start up, call in on CTAF and start taxiing to runway 2 and then it hits me.....I just did all that without "thinking" about any of it. I'm starting to "get" this. What started out as a lot of stuff to learn has almost become common. I know I have loads to go, but hey, if you want to taxi around LUG with little fear of dying....I'm your man.

As we took the runway, I made a concious effort to "think" rudder. I've not had too much trouble with takeoff's as far as rudder goes. I'm still a little wiggly as I'm trying to learn how much I need and when, but for the most part it's there. We climb out and turn crosswind and lo and behold.....THE BALL IS CENTERED!!!! What the crap is going on here? I glance at Kary's feet, I look at the ball, I glance at my feet, I look at the ball, I give Kary a half smile, half smirk and sit upright with a full chest when he does it......"rudder" he says. DANGIT!!! I was there, I swear. There was a moment, albeit short, but there WAS a moment that the ball was between the little black lines. Oh well, thats a start.

The first circuit was a bit ugly. I was so intent on "thinking" rudder, I wasn't "feeling" the rudder. I also caught myself with a death grip on the yoke. So, by occasionally releasing my grip just to relax and to stop fighting the plane, I was able to cause much less problems for myself than I did last time. It's starting to click. We spent the entire lesson in and around the pattern doing Touch and Goes. We did exit the pattern a couple of times just enough to re-enter it. This gave me the chance to see things looking different than the normal rectangle of flying the pattern only.

Now, I'm going to gloat. In the course of the lesson, we did 8 landings. None of them would have caused major injury to pregnant women or patients with back injuries. In fact, one of them was "perfect". I can't tell you how I did it :), but it was nice to actually hear the tires squeak and not feel the thud in your butt.

One thing that I figured out between lessons was that I was carrying way too much speed into the flare. Kary was telling me this all along (He's kind of a know-it-all), but until I figured out what that meant and what that was doing to my landings, I didn't see it. So, today I told Kary at the beginning that I wanted to tighten up the amount of error he/I was allowing on the speed. If I need to be at 70, then 73 isn't good enough. And WOW what a difference that made. We had a small quartering crosswind that was pushing us very slightly (no real correction required), but once I started rounding out, it was a different world if I had my speed right. It was almost easy. But for the few that I was hot on, they were fixable, but nothing like "doing it right". I might need to start listening to Kary more often. I think he's done this before.

Eight landings in the books, some ok, some not so ok, one beautiful :). We taxi back, shutdown and we're done. Great lesson. More of the same, but even more needed.

Things I've noticed that I still need to work on---and no, Kary, this isn't an all inclusive list :) :

- Getting down out of Pattern Altitude sooner. I tend to be waaay high when turning final. It allows me the luxery of doing some way-cool slips, but I probably should fix it earlier in the process.

- Fast Taxing. I like to wiggle on the runway while cleaning up the airplane for the next go. Gotta get that right.

- Centerline. I guess since they went to the trouble of painting it all the way down the runway, I might as well use it.

- What was that last thing?....hrm.....oh yea! rudder.


jf


-Prologue:

I started this "blog" as a journal when I was starting my lessons a few months back. The main reason for it was so that I could review the lesson in my head as I typed what I had been through. After my first couple of entries, it was suggested that I setup a blog site, which, obviously, I did. And I'm glad I have, because the response has been tremendous. Thanks to everyone out there for stopping by and for the words of encouragement. I have at least 15 other student pilots reading this as they go through their training as well. I hope that it shows that we all suck and that we all are doing great. Please drop me a note by clicking on the comments at the bottom to let me know you were here!

jf

posted by Jeff Franks @ 8:27 PM