Up, Up and Away

Lessons learned....

I finally got the chance to go back up with Kary again today. After the nice weather we had had for Thursday's flight with Dad, Saturday was forecast to be a bit windy. Forecasts this morning were saying 10-15 mph winds from the NW. I figured I'd be cancelled for sure. But, as luck would have it, the flying gods had other plans.

Two hours before my lesson, I called AWOS and found that the wind was 320 at 7. Not too bad. LUG has runways 2/20, so 320 would be a nice little crosswind for runway 2. "No big deal", I thought, "a few weeks back we had 9 gusting to 13 and I actually did pretty good".

Well, doggy.

I got to the airport and the wind was up to about 330 at 10. I had been watching every flag between my house and the airport trying to figure out exactly how bad 10 could be. We pre-flighted the plane, discussed my flight with Dad and all it's lessons, saddled up and went flying.

Ok, there was a little more to it than that. Being that it was 37 degrees, it took a little doing for me to get the plane going and there was this small issue of 300 degrees on a compass not equaling 30 degrees (he's a little picky about silly things like that). But for the most part, it was status quo all the way out to the runway.

During my runup, I had something happen that I've never seen before. We had carb icing. For the uninitiated, the runup is a "one last check" kinda deal where you bring the engine up to a descent RPM so that you can check to be sure your producing the power you'd expect. While the RPM's are up, you check all your systems and the mag's (most GA airplanes run on magnetos). While your checking things, you will check each mag at a time to be sure that both are pulling their weight. Then you pull the carb heat lever to be sure it's operating and to check for carb icing.

Carb icing is a problem in carbureted engines because the carburetor has a throat through which all the air your engine needs is sucked through. The problem is that the throat causes a pressure drop due to an increase in the airspeed (e.g. 40 degree "still" air outside your airplane is suddenly sucked into the carburetor and is "sped up" by going through the narrow throat). Bernoulli's principle tells us that an increase in a fluid's speed will cause a decrease in pressure and a decrease in pressure causes a loss of heat (drop in temp).

So, all that said, what can happen if you have a lot of humidity in the air (August in TN) or a lot of moisture (in between snow showers in February), that moisture will freeze up inside the carburetor and choke the engine. If you've ever used "canned air" to blow out a computer, you've experienced this same principle. The loss of pressure inside the can causes a loss of heat and the can of air will actually frost over. Not something you want to happen inside your engine. So, the manufacturers give us a carb heat lever that when pulled will dump hot air directly into the air intake so that it will help melt any ice or help prevent ice from forming.

So, back in the plane, when I pulled the carb heat, we dropped about 400 RPM rather than the normal 100ish. I left it there for a few seconds and it started climbing back up. We then pushed it back in, let the engine come back up to speed and retried it. Again, it dropped more than normal, but we let it run with the carb heat for several more seconds and all was well. Nothing too exciting, I was just proud that I had actually noticed the problem. Maybe I'm actually understanding all that stuff Kary keeps yakking about.

Needless to say, we kept an eye on the carb situation and never really saw much more of it. We did have a couple of times that we'd pull in carb heat just to be sure, but nothing exciting....nothing like the rest of the lesson.......

So, we're at the end of runway 2. Crosswind is blowing a good hard (for me) 10mph from 320 now. So, this means we've got a 60 degree crosswind blowing a bit harder than I'm used to. We start the roll and I immediately can feel the "weather vaning" tendency of the plane. The nose really wants to make a left, so my feet are working a bit to try to keep it....on the runway. We come of the ground and almost immediately, the plane starts moving laterally to the right. I check and I've actually got the plane pointing at about 005 degrees, so I'm crabbing 15 deg off the runway heading and still being pushed away. By the time we reached the end of the runway, I glanced down out my left window and watched the threshold go by. "This is going to get interesting".

We did a circuit and I think I did a fair job of accounting for the wind all the way around. Wasn't high (see Dad, it must be you), and we got setup about 3/4 of a mile out for final. It is at this point that I start appreciating Kary a little more than I normally do. We crab most of the way down and, while I was on the controls, to say I landed the plane would be a joke. Kary was in there with me the whole way in from short final. And thank God he was! It was a bit interesting, but to experience it was even more fun. I know the way your supposed to make it all happen, but to (somewhat) do it really makes it make sense.

Gary, one of Kary's other students, was standing out in the wind watching all this. He commented after the lesson (yes, we lived) that he had learned more from just watching our landings than he had ever picked up on before. I tried to charge him....didn't work out.

Well, we get it on the ground and cleaned up. I throw the power back in and the plane decides it wants to go right....I mean lots right. In fact we were at the point that the plane wanted to fly, but not technically fast enough to rotate. The wheels were chirping as we were being blown sideways. This did NOT feel good. I was pushing left rudder, but obviously not enough. Again, as I was thanking God that Kary doesn't mind dying...er...flying with me, he's able to get us off the ground and climbing. Wasn't really that big a deal, but it got my attention at how fast things could have gone wrong and how you don't always have time to "think" about what you have to do (sounds like a cheesy Top Gun quote).

As we're climbing out, we switch back over to AWOS and waddayaknow? 300 at 11 gusting to 14....woohoo! At this point Kary calls off the touch and goes and we go play with some S-Turns and turns about a point. Was interesting to see these in the amount of wind we had. I did ok on those. Funny thing is, I actually held my altitude better during the maneuvers than I would flying to/from the airport....odd.

Well, anyway, we noticed what looked like snow moving around the area and decided to cut the lesson a few minutes short (ended up with 48 minutes). As we are preparing to enter the pattern again, we recheck the AWOS....11 gusting to 15 and now its almost a direct 90 degree crosswind.

I'm quick to tell Kary......."ok HotShot, you think your so smart, "I" did the last one, so lets see if YOU can land this thing in that wind!" (translation...."Mommy!")

So, we get in the pattern and I get us to final. Then I make it exceptionally clear that I'd love to do this landing on my own, but I've pulled a muscle in my knee and just would feel better if he went ahead and took it in....you know...routine stuff, so I'm really not missing much.

We crab down to short final and as we cross the threshold, he kicks in the rudder and cranks the aileron to the left. Then I notice something quite interesting. As he's fighting the wind to keep us in the middle of the runway, he's hit the stops twice.....meaning he's gone as far left as the plane will let him go. Now, don't get me wrong, he didn't keep it there, but there were at least two times that it required that much control input to keep us over the runway. These gusts are making him really work at putting this plane on the ground.

As we're doing this, I'm on the controls very lightly, just to see what he's doing. Then I notice that his right foot is crammed into the floor pushing right rudder (rudder keeps the nose straight down the runway when you landing). Wow. I would have screwed this one up something good.

It takes some playing, but we flare and the upwind tire touches, the downwind tire touches and the nosewheel comes down....perfect crosswind landing...just like the book says. John and Martha King would be proud.

I start breathing again and tell Kary that I learned more off that one landing than all the previous ones combined. Granted, it wasn't "dangerous", but seeing the extreme side of landing helps me understand my landings when the winds aren't gale force.

We taxi back and shutdown. Good lesson.

Of course, when I get out of the plane, I tell Gary "Yea, I don't think Kary thought I could pull that one off......"

jf

posted by Jeff Franks @ 9:02 PM