Up, Up and Away

All dressed up and no where to go....

After watching the weather all week, I decided the other day that Wednesday looked like my best chance for calm winds (aka "solo wx"). So, I scheduled with Kary to be at the airport at 9:00am, after I finished a meeting at work.

As usual, the meeting was over and I had a couple of small things come up that made me late getting out to the field. By 9:30, I was pulling in the parking lot and listening to AWOS one more time. In the 25 minute drive from my office to LUG, the winds had gone from 7kts to 4kts. "Woohoo!", I thought. Maybe today I can kick Kary out of the cockpit!

Well, I preflighted the plane...extry careful. I figured Kary had been there with the plane waiting on me and had plenty of time to "fix" it for me. Now, he's never done that to me before, but I'm trying to not let him :)

At any rate, no squawks found. Finished the preflight , pulled 51F out of the hangar and started her up. While the engine was warming up, I tuned into AWOS again....7kts from 80 degrees off the runway heading! DANGIT!!!. Not that 7 kts is major wind, but, like Kary has said, it would be nice to solo when everything is in my favor. Well, we decide to give it shot and do a few circuits just to see how it goes and see how I do.

We taxi out, do the runup, take the runway and away we go. As soon as the plane got "light" on it's wheels, I knew that 7kts hitting you almost directly in the side was a big difference than 7 kts quartering from the front. The plane would be juuuust ready to lift-off and the wind would start trying to push us sideways. It was just enough wind to make me appreciate what it would be like to actually see REAL wind, but not enough to make it a baptism by fire experience.

As we climbed out, the crab angle necessary to track the centerline (or somewhere close) was pretty noticeable. As soon as I started leveling off on the downwind, I realized that I wouldn't be solo'ing today. It was a tad bumpy and the wind at 1700' was a little more than on the ground. But hey, lets see what this crosswind stuff is all about.

So, we make the turn to final and I let the plane windmill into the wind....It amazes me how the plane will setup almost exactly where you need to crab on final if you just stop trying to make it do it. As we crab down, I'm thinking..."ok, Franks...here it is. Let's not make a bloggable event out of this...."

As we crossed the threshold, push a little right rudder to line up, drop the left wing and hold it there. I must admit that this is NOT how I would have imagined a "Good" landing would look.

***For those of you who don't fly, the idea of landing in a crosswind is that you drop the upwind wing to keep you flying straight down the runway. At the same time, you use the rudders to keep the nose of the plane pointing straight down the runway. So, in a crosswind, you will land cross-controlled (aileron going one way, rudder going the other).

It's exactly the opposite of what your supposed to do when your up in the air....in fact any time I feel the cross-control in my ears, I want to scream "rudder! rudder! rudder!", but alas...no.....This is the one time I get to do it my way. ***

Back in the plane, I'm trying to figure out how much aileron it takes to counter the amount of wind blowing....and then how much rudder it takes to counter the aileron's effect on the nose.....and how much more aileron it takes to counter the effect of the rudder inputs that are making the wings drop....... and so on....and so on....and so on....

Before I know it, we're landing on the up-wind wheel just like we're supposed to. Pretty cool. I do have a problem with releasing the control inputs too quickly once the wheels touch. I guess I figure if we're on the ground, then I'm finished....dunno.

We ended up with about 4 good landings. I was getting more excited with each one, because I seem to be conquering my problem of judging my height when I'm at about 1-2 ft of altitude. Before, I mentioned that I was flaring fine, but when I thought I was about 1 ft off the ground, I'd land....always a bit harder than I wanted. Well, today, I seemed to be getting better at it. In fact, one landing, I managed to come across the numbers at about 80mph (a little fast). So, I knew I was going to float. I got it all setup and adjusted for the wind and kept the upwind wheel off the ground (at about 1ft agl) for more than 100ft while the plane slowed....then eerp, erp, erp. Way cool.

Kary suggested that we make it a short lesson. Since I wasn't going to get to solo, he wanted me to end on a good note and not do anything to screw with my confidence (how's that to blow your confidence ;) ). We taxied up with 36 minutes on the clock and probably the most fun flight I've had yet.

Solo is next. We've just got to get 'ol Aeolus on my side. We'll see.....

jf

posted by Jeff Franks @ 7:29 AM