50.0 nm or bust!
I didn't blog on my flight of last Thursday. But it was a short dual-cross country to Beech River airport near Parsons/Lexington, TN (PVE). It was a perfect day for flying with little or no excitement in the trip. Here is my latest blog about my solo trip to the same place.... Enjoy.
jf
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I had been planning to fly my first solo cross country for over a week and finally it looked like the weather was going to cooperate. I had called Flight Service last night and gotten the lowdown on what the weather was going to be. The forecasted winds at 3000ft was for 270 at 10. So, I pulled out the trusty E6-B and figured my heading/time enroute and got the numbers over to Kary for his blessing. Once I had that, nothing was stopping me from making this thing happen.
I got to the airport around 7:30am and started trying to get the plane pre-heated. The airport AWOS was reporting that it was about 25 deg outside and I wanted to get some heat on the engine before I tried to start it. I called FSS again and got the updated winds (they had changed a bit) and refigured my heading. I had some issues with the preheater, but was still able to get about 25 minutes of good heat on the engine before I was ready to go (the outside temp had already climbed to about 30 as well).
I killed the heater, put it back in the hangar and jumped in to get the engine started before it cooled down again. With a couple of primer shots and 2 prop blades, the engine fired up and I was ready to go….cold…but ready. I gave Kary a call to let him know I was about to head out and began to taxi.
As I taxied out, I started pulling together all my paperwork/charts, etc and get my head wrapped around what I was about to do. I did my run-up, took the runway and took off. About the time I broke ground, it occurred to me….it had been 9 months since I had flown solo. My last solo flight was in April ’08 and then I “took a break” until about a month ago. Since then, all the good weather (and convenient times) has been used to fly with Kary. So, I had the immediate thought of “what the crap am I doing?!?!”. But, it didn’t last. A few seconds later, all was good and I was climbing out from 24. Since I had realized that I was doing this alone for the first time in a while, I stayed in the pattern and did a GREAT touch and go. With that landing and confidence restored, I turned west and headed to PVE.
I had intended on flying at 3000ft on the way over, but as I climbed through 2000ft, I realized I might have to keep climbing to get above the turbulence. I climbed through 3000 and opted to go on up to 4500 and see if things smoothed out. About the time I climbed through 3500, the air smoothed out and life was good. I settled in at 4500 and stuck my nose on 275 deg (course was 278, so not much of a change). This is when I figured out that weather forecasts (winds especially) are just really good guesses.
Looking out the window, I could tell that I was being pushed south of my intended track. And when I say pushed, I mean PUSHED. Over the next 5 minutes, I kept turning my heading north to see how much it would take for me to stay on the straight line I needed. I went from a heading of 275 to a heading of 290 before I finally could tell that I was tracking the course I needed to get to my first checkpoint. Even with all of this, I still hit my first checkpoint within a minute of my estimate. As I was making it to my second and third, I ended up increasing my heading more and more just to stay on course. I ended up flying a heading around 290 to be able to hit my checkpoints.
Being above any turbulence, I was able to fly hands off and make only small adjustments as I went. I kept a close eye on the engine instruments and tried to not fight my DG to keep me on my heading. I hit checkpoints 2 and 3 right on time. But then I lost it.
I had just crossed over Perry Co airport (off to my left) and was coming up on the TN river. I looked out the windscreen and NOTHING was where I thought it should be. From the Dual trip that Kary and I had taken last week, I knew that I should be able to pickup the destination airport by now, but it wasn’t out there. I started looking for some landmarks that I knew were there (a bridge near where we used to camp, etc) and nothing looked right. I turned around in my seat and could still see the Perry Co. Airport just behind me, so logic should tell me that I was close to the right place. But who thinks logically when you’re lost :). It didn’t take long for me to realize what was going on. Either the wind had died down in the last 15 miles or I had way overcompensated, but either way, I was about 10-12 miles north of where I should have crossed the river. Since I was at 4500 ft, I was further north of the Perry Co Airport than I should have been, but I really didn’t notice because of my altitude (if I had been lower, it would have looked further away than it did the higher I was).
So, logic prevails and I look off to my SouthWest and viola! There is the airport. All is well. I start my descent about 10 miles out and notice that the turbulence picked back up again as I dropped through 3000ft. I entered the downwind for runway 19 and make an uneventful landing at PVE. I taxied in, shutdown and spent about 20 minutes chewing the fat with a couple of locals (very nice guys, btw).
When I left PVE, I departed on rwy 19 as well, turned east and kept climbing to get above the bumps again. I climbed to 5500 on the way back and noticed this time that the wind wasn’t blowing me south near as bad as it had been on the way over, so I’m thinking that my mis-queue over the river was my lack of noticing my off-course track between Linden and the river. But hey, it was good. With my VOR’s acting flakey, I got to use my chart and some pilotage to figure out where the heck I was.
The flight from PVE to MRC covers quite a bit of area that is heavily wooded. There are a plenty of fields and places to put down, if needed, but I liked having more altitude to have more options when coming back. I was bored and the only people on the radio were folks going into Shelbyville, so I started playing a mind game with myself. I would try to figure out where I would put down if I had to. I looked for signs of the wind (smoke, ponds, etc) and then would pick out a field that ran that direction and then tried to figure out if I could make it to it. This got me to thinking about another option here. When picking out an emergency landing location, if you have a choice, you need to put down near people. I noticed several logging roads that could easily be used to land on if needed, but they were miles from any highways or houses. So, if things don’t go well in the landing, no one would even know you were out there.
I hit my checkpoints within a minute on each and started down from 5500 about the time I crossed Hohenwald (16 miles out). I started listening to the MRC AWOS and each time it was reporting “calm” for the winds (more on this in a minute). As I closed in on MRC, there was an Archer departing on 24, so I opted to use the same runway. I crossed midfield as he was taking off and entered the downwind for 24. I misjudged my downwind entry and ended up getting parallel to the runway at the point of the pattern that I am usually ready to start the landing process (the numbers). The problem was that I was already fast and behind on the “norm”. I extended my downwind a little to give me time to get slower and lower. As I turned final, I had it in my head that the wind was calm, so this should be a simple landing. Just setup the final and let it land….no wind, right?
Well, not exactly. As I crossed the end of the runway, I noticed that I was getting pushed to the left. “that’s not right” I started thinking….after all it was “calm” on the AWOS. So, rather than let the plane tell me what was going on, I kept trying to force the “calm” issue into the situation. Rather than let logic rule my landing, I should have just dealt with what the plane was doing. So, with about 10 ft left to go, I got the nose straight and dropped the right wing. It was ugly, but I landed…too fast. I bounced a little, added power and landed on all three wheels, flat. Not hard, but VERY ugly AND I was mad. I was on the ground safe, but only after ignoring everything I should have been paying attention to. So, rather than going back up (my plan was to do a couple of T&G’s before I quit), I just pulled the power and called it a day.
All in all, a good trip. Got to deal with unexpected winds, screwy VOR’s and mark up my first Cross Country time. Cool enough.
It's COOOOOLD outside!
Since I still haven’t gotten my student certificate renewed, (another story for another day…but it involves my growing disdain for Federal Employees who don’t realize who their “clients” are) I met up with Kary this morning to bore some holes in the sky and just see what we could get into. He’d told me after the last lesson that he was comfortable giving me my 90-day sign-off, but with no Student Cert…I can only fly with him. (hopefully all of the certificate issues will be resolved by the time you read this on Friday).
So, I scheduled an 8:00am flight time with Kary late yesterday. I got to the airport about 7:30 to try to pre-heat the plane using a new setup Scott and I have with a small ready heater. When I scheduled the flight, I didn’t realize it was going to be 12 degrees during the preflight. I got the hangar opened up and setup the ready heater to blow into the engine cowling and let it go. As I froze my extremities, I started realizing that this new heater wasn’t quite powerful enough to do this job efficiently. But it was doing it.
For those of you who might not know, piston engine planes need to be preheated when they are extremely cold to help prevent excessive wear inside the engine. The crank and bearings are made of steel, while the crank case and such are made from aluminum. These 2 metals shrink and expand at different rates, so when it’s cold out, you can damage the engine by not preheating and allowing the 2 metals to have less than expected clearances while running.
So, after about 30 minutes of heating the engine and freezing my toes, the inside of the cowling was fairly warm and seemed like we might be in business. Anyway, we pulled out 51F and fired it up without issue. I was concerned about the battery. Although sluggish, it managed to fire up without a problem.
We let the engine warm up for a good while and discussed what we were going to do. Basically, we decided that we’d do a few laps of the pattern and then just see what happens. Since I only had an hour under my belt in the last 9 months, I figured a few more supervised landings couldn’t hurt. So, we taxied out to Rwy 6, did our runup and took off. As soon as the wheels left the ground, I realized that the “calm” part of the weather report on AWOS really meant “right crosswind”. But no problem, we climbed (“climbed”? “Clumb”? “Clumbed”?) out much faster than we do in July and made the pattern to do some Touch and Go’s.
The first approach reminded me of the “good ole days” of my flying. Too High and Too Fast. What was interesting is that I could tell from the time I turned final that we had a bit of a right-quartering head/crosswind. The plane weather-vaned into it enough to be noticeable, but I had just listened to the AWOS again and it was still reporting “calm”. The “interesting” part is how I had it in my head that “calm” meant this was going to be a straight in final, no crosswind adjustment, just fly it down. Even though I noticed the crosswind when we took off and now the plane was crabbing it’s way down, my “logic” kept trying to do away with what the plane was actually doing. Needless to say, the first landing was not pretty. Kary didn’t say much other than I wasn’t on the rudders enough. It wasn’t horrible, other than I knew that I had totally discounted the fact that the plane was telling me there was a slight crosswind and my mind refused to deal with it. Oh well, lesson learned…apparently AWOS isn’t always right :)
We managed another 7 landings and they did start getting better. We played with some Soft/Short field setups and Kary had me do a soft field T&G without letting the nosewheel touch the ground. Attempt #1 wasn’t great, but then Kary took a turn and showed me up, so I had to come back and do a better one. Gotta let the instructor win sometimes, I guess J
After the last landing, we taxied up to the gas pumps and line guy asked me if we’d been transmitting during the flight. I told him we had called at least twice per lap. Apparently, he could occassionaly hear a mic click, but never heard a radio call. After a quick look, I realized that my headset was plugged into the passenger side of the intercom, but my Push To Talk switch was hooked into the pilot side. So, every time I was transmitting, I wasn’t. So there is one more thing I need to check in preflight.
Overall, I was glad we spent the time to just “get back in the groove”. We discussed the next steps in my training and it sounds like we’re ready (again) to hit the cross countries, so maybe I can hit it hard for the next several weeks and get this thing wrapped up! We’ll see.
Hellllloooooo?!?!?!?
Well...It's only been 16 months since my last post, so I figured I'd catch everyone (well ok, the 2 of you) up on what's going on. Since Sept '07, I was able to get a little flying done. I flew solo for a couple of hours and Kary and I took a short Cross Country to Muscle Shoals, AL. He signed me off to fly the same solo and then that was it.....no more flying for Jeff. As life would have it, I let everything at work and home get in the way. My last flight was in April, 2008 and was just a quick flight with Kary to get my 90 day signoff re-upped. Then I stopped flying altogether.
I started trying to get back in the air again around December, 2008, but bad weather and bad timing never let Kary and I get together....until today!
Kary and I agreed to meet up at the airport around 4:30, so I got to the there a little early, pulled out the plane and preflighted it (hoping I still remembered how). When Kary got to the airport, we loaded up and it was time to figure out what I'd forgotten in the last 9 months.
I grabbed the checklist and followed it line for line (like I always should) since I was convinced that I would miss a step. We started up 51F and started taxiing (hmmm..."taxi-ing", "taxing", "taxying"?) to runway 24. I was a bit concerned because this was my first flight since April and there was a 8 kt quartering crosswind to deal with. Well, nothing like REALLY learning how much I've forgotten.
We taxi to 24, go through the runup checklist, make the departure call and take the runway. It was at this point that I realized that much of this was "old hat" and I hadn't forgotten as much as I was afraid. For instance, as soon as I added power, I noticed my right foot pushing in on the rudder. Although I realized I was doing it, I hadn't thought TO do it. So, cool...maybe I can still fly!
The first takeoff was normal. As soon as we cleared the ground, the plane turned into the wind and we climbed out. We did a circuit and I did find that I was a bit rusty in judging my approach and I was a bit long on the downwind and a bit high on final. But a quick slip and we were in the flare. Left aileron, Right rudder, keep the nose straight....erp....we're down...not bad. So, we do it 2 more times and they get a little better with each. The final T&G we intentionally turned final high and did a BIG slip all the way down....that's always cool.
We climbed back up to 3000ft and did some steep turns. During these, I was able to hold altitude and speed, but my mind was in overload. I was having to "relearn" how to do this and what effected what. When you get up on your side like that, your controls tend to do different things than when you're straight and level. But, I managed to get the job done and kept it under control.
Then Kary gave me the option to do "whatever I wanted", so we did some power-on stalls, which were....uneventful. In our plane with the Horton STOL kit, stalls are really a non-event. There was a slight break during the first stall, but releasing pressure was all that was required to get it flying again. AND, as Kary pointed out, the pitch attitude that the plane was in was VERY odd feeling. I can't imagine letting the nose get that high in the air (and before the comments, I know that stalls are a function of Angle of Attack, not Pitch Attitude) to let the thing stall like that.
We played with the rudder some (can't be out of flying for 9 months without my feet getting lazy) and headed back to the airport. This is where the biggest surprise happened.
I've not flown at night since I was about 10. By the time we headed back to the airport it was getting pretty dark. I expected that the airport would jump right out at me (with all the lights and all). In the day, I can usually spot new airports pretty quickly. But now in the dark, I was couldn't see squat. I knew where the airport should be from the landmarks I could still make out in the light, but until I spotted the beacon, I couldn't see the runway.
So, we entered the pattern for Runway 6 (wind had calmed a bit) and I couldn't get over how hard the runway was to see, even from the downwind. So, Kary was quick to point out that we knew where it was, now just fly the plane like we always do. So, we turned base and final in a pretty tight pattern. The landing light lit up the runway from about 100ft above the runway, which really surprised me. I guess I just expected the light to show up a few feet away, but wow...it really lights things up.
Kary pointed out that the tendency of most students is to focus "inside" the light rather than down the runway like you would during the day. After he said this, I caught myself trying to do just that. But, without much trouble, we were safely on the ground and I get to log a night landing (I guess?).
Overall, it was just a simple local flight. But, unless something major happens at work, I'm GONNA FREAKING FINISH THIS TIME......I had a blast today and it helps me remember why I even started this whole thing : Flying is cool. :)
More later....but not 16 months...promise!
My Unusual Attitude
Well, I thought I'd get ahead of the game a little by emailing Kary the day before our lesson and find out what, exactly, we'd be doing during the flight. His reply was quick and to the point:
hood work ----unusual attitude recovery --- and locating yourself --- flying with an instrument or two not working
Kary(It never occurred to me until now, how much double entendre there is in the flying vernacular.....but I digress)With this bit of information, I figured we'd have a pretty fun flight....and we did.
After
preflight and
startup, we managed to make it out to our practice area. Even though the winds were calm, we noticed a pretty strong wind pushing us to the
SouthWest once we got to about 500ft
agl. We climbed up to 2500(
ish) feet and he had me do a 180 degree standard rate turn....wow...1 minute on the dot...
thats cool.
Then we started doing some basic instrument work. Kary showed me how to do a good instrument scan and not fixate on one instrument. Then we started doing some basic maneuvering from just the instruments. He had me hold heading, slow the plane to 80mph and hold it there. Then make some turns while holding the 80 and altitude. Real quick I figured out that this was both fun and horrifying all at the same time. I feel like I did a pretty good job holding both altitude and speed, but the heading tends to get away from me (even when I'm looking out the window).
Then we did some descents and climbs while holding heading and speed. This is when I really started to feel like I was "getting" it. When I first started flying, I was terrified to move the throttle for some reason. Now, I found myself using the entire cockpit of controls to make the plane do what I wanted. I still wish they'd nail the rudder to the Horizontal Stabilizer, but other than that, it was very comforting to know that I was doing what needed to be done without really thinking about it.
Next, Kary covers the
DG (Directional Gyro....the thing that tells you which way you are going and is a bit more "Stable" than a whiskey compass). By doing this, I had to use the compass to navigate with. To be honest, I was amazed at how slow the thing responds. There are known issues where the compass will initially go the wrong way or will not do what it's supposed to, but it still just seemed awkward. Kary asked me to make a 360 degree turn and end up back at my starting heading. Well as slow as a compass is to keep up, I can't just "fly the compass". So, I remembered the whole 180 deg/min thing and made a standard rate turn for 2 minutes and viola! we got 360 degrees out of it.....
thats just cool.
Well, then comes the part that I think Kary had been waiting on all day. We're flying along straight and level at a heading dead on 90 deg (east). He says "turn to 60 degrees". So, I glance at the compass and 60 is to the right (dang thing is backwards from the
DG). My initial thought was....If I'm flying east, then 60 should be to my left. But, half the time, I get my math mixed up and thought, nope...it's to the right. So, about the time I start turning right, Kary does what all good teachers of history do...you know...Socrates, Plato, Mr Rogers.....they all would have done the same thing......belly laugh at the moron in the left seat!
I pick up my mistake as soon as the compass starts moving. I told him I was doing a "clearing turn", but I don't think he bought it.
Then Kary had me do some unusual attitude recoveries. This is where I close my eyes and he puts the plane in some....well....unusual attitude and expects me to fix it. The first couple were fairly easy. I closed my eyes for a few seconds and we were banked pretty good and diving or climbing. But the last one we did was a learning experience. I closed my eyes and he pushed and pulled, yanked and banked. From the "feel" of the plane, I just knew we were in a left bank and nose down. When he said "it's your plane", I opened my eyes and we were in a right turn and climbing..... Note to self: don't trust your inner ear.
By this time, we start heading back toward LUG. We work with the
VOR a bit more to pickup the heading we need to get back to the airport. As we get to the airport, we cross at 3000ft and the Kary calls on
CTAF to announce that we have a simulated engine out....joy.
I actually like doing these, but I have a terrible problem judging how fast our plane falls. At 3000ft over the airport, there is no "making the field". Now it's just a matter of putting it down on the 5000ft of asphalt. So, I turn what was really an upwind, then start a crosswind over the numbers. As I'm entering downwind, I'm still at 2500ft and Kary keeps saying "don't crowd it", meaning, don't get in so tight that I'll actually overfly the field. So, I inch out a bit more. Then as I'm turning base I drop about 10 deg of flaps and realize that I'm WAY high. As I turn a mile and a half final, we're still 800ft
agl. This plane just doesn't sink. (STOL kit on it really makes a difference).
So, Kary helps me slip it all the way down to the runway. We touchdown right at the halfway point of the runway and exit. Pretty cool flight.
Next, comes solo
ATC stuff...yea me.
YEEEEEEE HA!!!!!!!!!!
This week's flight was more fun than.....well....something that's a lot of fun. The goal of this lesson was to work more with VOR navigation and (more importantly) fly into my first controlled field. I feel very comfortable with the navigation part. There are times that I still have to really think about what Kary is asking me, but if I were out on my own, I'm confident I could find my way.
On a side note, I will say that I think my time spent flying in MS Flight Sim was well used. I've heard many "real" pilots knock MSFS as a game and dismiss it. From experience, I will tell you that my navigation and instrument understanding was helped IMMENSELY. There is still TONS to learn, but basic concepts were learned a long time ago when it didn't cost me $4/gal of gas. I even "invented" my own procedure for flying paralled to a VOR and timing a 5 degree change. Then by doing the math, I could figure out how far from the VOR I actually was. I thought I was cool, until someone told me that you have to know how to do something similar for your IFR ticket. So much for being a visionary :)
But back to Thursday morning. I arrived at LUG at 8:30 and Kary was ready to go. I went out and preflighted 51F before we sat down to discuss what we were about to do. Basically, the plan was to leave LUG, keep up with where we were using the VOR's and eventually pickup the radial that would carry us from Shelbyville (SYI) to Smyrna (MQY). From there we'd make the required radio contacts and land. Take a break then head out again. We reviewed the chart, got all my frequencies together (which was new...I thought the whole world operated off of 122.8) and headed to the plane.
We fired up, taxied out and took off...eh...."departed"...Lewisburg. As we were climbing out, it was actually pretty cool to realize that we were "going somewhere", albeit only 35 miles, it sure beats the pattern I've been relegated to (not that there's anything wrong with that!!!!). As we made our way NorthEast, Kary was quizzing me as to where we were and where the SYI VOR was, etc. We ended up picking up our MQY radial about 10 miles North of SYI. Apparently, we were inside someone else's practice are, because we got to fly some formation maneuvers with a Piper who liked our airspace. We safely snuck behind him, but I still don't think he ever saw us.
We picked up our radial (352 FROM SYI, i think), and headed for MQY. One cool part of this was that I've never flown over most of this area. The majority of my flying has been west and south of here, so, it was all new to me. We climbed on up to 2500(ish) to be sure that we were well above a nice little 2000ft tower in the area and made our way north. One thing that was new to me on this flight was simply keeping up with the frequency changes. I don't think I've ever changed frequencies in 51F, other than to go from the standby freq (always set to LUG's AWOS) and back to 122.8 (CTAF for most of the airports in the area). So, believe it or not, I had to figure out how to tune our own radio. Sad, but true.
As we got about 13 miles south of MQY, I made my first ever ATC radio call. I really wasn't nervous about doing this, like I thought I'd be. Kary had told me (and given me a example "script") what to expect and what to say, so now it was just a matter of doing it. It was kind of neat to realize that someone on the other end of the radio actually gave a crap about what I was saying. When talking in the pattern at LUG, your just blindly calling out where you are for others, but no one is speaking TO you or expecting you to understand them with great clarity.
MQY is in Class D Airspace, but part of it sits just under the edge of Nashville's Class C shelf. So, even though there isn't any reason for that to be a problem, it's still cool to realize that I've got to do it right (or Kary gets blamed!).
There wasn't too much traffic as we got closer, but we were told to find a Katana on an ILS approach and were cleared to land behind him once we did find him. Now this is where everything I ever learned about a pattern went out the window. Suddenly, we're turning a VERY wide base-to-final turn and trying to keep the Katana in sight. When I got lined up with the runway, we were all of 5 miles out. I suddenly knew what it was like to fly a Citation....except it was going to take me another 4 minutes to get there!
There was traffic behind us, so Kary told me to keep my speed up to about 90mph until we got in tighter, just to be nice (we later found out that the traffic behind us was a Blackhawk....I don't think he would have complained about us doing 80....he could have just hovered and waited :) ). About 1 mile out, I drop a few degrees of flaps and slow us down. Kary had warned me that this was a BIG runway and the depth perception might be a problem. I'll admit, the sight picture is definitely different, but expecting it, I was able to make a fairly good landing. We taxi to one of the FBO's and shutdown. Pretty cool experience.
After about a 20 minute break (and the obligitory coffee and free popcorn), we go back out and fire up. Contacting ground went just like Kary explained it would. As with all the radio comms, it's just a matter of knowing what you want to do, how to say it and then what to listen for. We taxied out to Rwy 1, did our runup, contacted the tower and left....eh....departed.
The trip back was pretty cool. I opted to fly the VOR all the way into SYI, did a touch and go there, dodged another Katana and flew home.
All together, we managed 1.6 hours in the air. And it was FUNNNN! Just going places....ANY places (even the break room of Smyrna Air) makes this whole thing that much more fun.
I know guys who did all their training at a Class C airport. ATC comms to them started on the first lesson. What's funny is listening to them talk about being intimidated about flying into an uncontrolled field. They think us Class G'rs are insane! :)
I'm starting to think I like this flying thing....but that "free" bag of popcorn just set me back $100. Welcome to General Aviation, Mr. Franks!
It's all good.
jf
Back at it
To catch up on my last few weeks-o-blogging, I thought I'd throw this post out here. After this, I will start blogging each lesson, like I was doing before. I've found is that it helps me "debrief" after a lesson to sit down the night after and re-live it. I tend to learn more from it and it helps me understand what happened even better.
So, for those of you who keep emailing me, sorry. I've been lazy on my story telling :)
But you should be able to see a new post at least once a week, now that I'm flying every Thursday morning to try to get this thing done!
Since I got my medical back on track, I've been flying at least once a week. About 2 weeks ago (after my 3rd lesson "back"), Kary (my trusty CFI) felt confident enough in me to re-solo me.
I have to say, the intensity of soloing wasn't quite as hefty as it was last year. I only had a few hours solo in my logbook, but when he got out of the plane this time, I was more excited than petrified (like last time). 3 takeoffs and 3 landings later, I'm official....I can fly a plane!.....well...at least in large rectangles in the sky when the wind isn't blowing.
I've since had 2 more lessons and an hour solo. One was a basic intro to some navigation/VOR work and the last one (this past Thursday) we actually left Lewisburg and WENT SOMEWHERE!??!!?!
Yes, you read that right. I, Jeff Franks, Master Student Pilot, left the confines of Marshall County, TN and flew all the way to Bedford County, TN. ok....only about 15 minutes, but it was still cool. The purpose of the flight was to do more work with the VORs, so we flew to Shelbyville while working with our OBS's to watch exactly where we were from Nashville and/or Shelbyville (note to Kary: Notice I said "FROM" Nashville and/or Shelbyville).
When we got to Shelbyville, there was a few planes reporting in the area (it's the only VOR in the area, so lots of training/transient traffic thru there). We overflew the VOR (to watch the OBS flags flip from FROM to TO) and then dropped down and entered the pattern for my first
ever, non-LUG landing.
The flight at 2500(ish) was smooooooth. Well, at 2300, it stopped being smoooooooth and got to be a bit bumpy. Nothing terrible, but I like my landings to work more like Flight Simulator than real life. No wind, No Bumps = Not much work.
Now, in my defense of the following account, I have told Kary that I need to land somewhere else, because I've caught myself using ground references for making my pattern turns. Basically, at Lewisburg, I know "when I'm over that highway, I should be turning base" or "Turn Crosswind around the School", etc. Well, the problem with that is that there isn't always going to be a highway or a school at other airports. So, I realized that I was doing it and have been trying to NOT to, but it's harder to push it out of my mind than you'd think.
So, we enter the downwind for SYI. I'm trying to judge my turns on the runway (and not look for the highway that isn't there). It goes pretty smooth. Downwind to base, base to final....all is well. Then it occurs to me. Everything looks different. The highway that leads to the airport isn't square with the runway. The fence around the airport isn't symmetrical. I'm 200ft off the ground, trying to land at an airport I've never landed at and WHY AM I LOOKING AT THE TREELINE?!?!?!
Ok, focus.....on the runway...150ft, slowing it down a bit, 100ft looking good, 75 ft......hrm....their centerline markers aren't as wide as the ones at LUG.....AH! I'm 25 ft off the ground...not 50! Ok, no big deal....start my flare and land...squirp.....we've arrived. Good landing (didn't even wake up Kary).
Power in, carb heat cold and off we go. Back to the smooth air at 2500(ish) feet and to LUG. We work the VOR a bit more to find the radial we need to get back to Lewisburg. Tune it in, set the radial you think you'll need on the OBS, turn to that heading and then fly the needle....easy enuf.
We get back to LUG, enter the pattern and land. Nice 1 hour lesson and, most impressive of all..........I got to make right turns!!!!!!!!
It's good to be back.
jf
Wow! Has it really been this long?
Well, hello again! I just pulled up my blog and realized that it had been a year and 3 months since my last post....wow...time flies when I'm not (flying....get it?).
To catch everyone up as quickly as possible, I will tell you that after my solo and 3 supervised solo's, I did log about 4-5 hours of solo time doing my own touch & go's and such. The first time I showed up at the airport, preflighted the plane, started it and taxied out to take off was....well.....an experience. It felt like I was stealing my Dad's sports car to go out on my own and no one was stopping me! I kept looking over my shoulder as I taxied out and was thinking "ok...now would be a good time to come out and stop me!!!!" But, no, all was good. I managed to get in several good flights to try to get better......
Then life got in the way. Time and money seemed to dry up on me. When I had one, I didn't have the other. Then in December, I had a medical issue that was enough to ground me temporarily. I worked my way through that and as of about 10:00am this morning, I've got that taken care of and am good to go medically. My last flight was logged on 7/13/06. When I looked at my logbook a couple of weeks ago, I was shocked it had been that long.
I called Kary a week or so ago and scheduled a lesson with him again. To try to get back in the saddle and see if I can finally put this thing to bed.
As for the blog....I'm going to start again and do my best to keep you up to date. You wouldn't believe the number of people that I get emails from asking how my training is going, etc. People from all over the world (Italy, Great Britain, etc).
So, sit back, secure your belonging, bring your seat backs to a full upright and locked position....'cause I'm not stopping this time, till I have a Certificate in my hand!
jf
