It’s been awhile and time brings a lot of changes.  First and most important is a new addition to the flight crew by the name of Josephine.  It remains to be seen if she’ll be as interested in hanging out at the airport as her older brother is, but we’re very happy to have her and she seems as infatuated with us as we are with her.  Jack is taking to her quite nicely, making sure she’s always in a blanket, giving her lots of kisses and always worrying about her.  So far he’s been the perfect big brother.

In other news I received my Temporary Airman Certificate a few days  before my son’s birthday, the first week of May, just a few short weeks before Jo was born.  The fancy plastic card showed up not too long later, but as you can imagine I’ve been too busy and under-slept to really exercise it.  I got up once to practice some landings in mid-June and that’s been it so far.  Rest assured I’ll put it to good use once I get caught up on some sleep.  I owe my wife and many friends and family members some right seat time.  For those of you that recall my time out last year (don’t click that if stitches and x-rays scare you), I had to take another much shorter one in April.  This time to extract the screw from my left scaphoid (wrist) as it had loosened up and was wriggling around.  This was causing all kinds of complications with getting flexibility back, but recovery was fast and I was on my check ride barely three weeks post-op.

On the site side of things I’ve got some plans for some of the static pages and of course I’d like to catch up with the entries in my log book.  It’s been so long I’m sure I won’t have anything interesting to say about every flight, but there’s still a lot of experiences in there to get out in to the ether and hopefully motivate some other student pilots out there.  Till next time!

In Akron we had a decent cross-wind, and I was coming in high for 29, I chose to do a forward slip, and wasn’t really correlating the crosswind (this was before my stint in the trainer) and ended up dipping the wing the wrong way.  Fortunately the wind wasn’t gusting or strong enough to push us off the centerline at a worrying rate, and I smoothly transitioned back in to normal descent without mishap or having to go around.  We touched down about two hundred feet past the numbers, which was about 190 feet past where I would have liked but the long runway worked out just fine.  I didn’t quite slow down fast enough for the sole taxiway (as you can see in the picture, it stops half way up the runway), and had my first experience putting a plane through a U-turn and taxiing back on a runway.  It’s a very weird feeling, and I kept worrying about incoming traffic.  Traffic was again non-existent that day, which was a shame as the weather was beautiful.  Visibility was incredible, and the air was smooth as glass. 

On the the return leg we followed I-76 until we had to worry about Denver’s Class Bravo airspace, and then made a due east cut over to Longmont.  By this time the winds had come up a little, and we had a mild crosswind from the left with about 10 knots worth of gusts.  This last landing was pretty long, and with no flaps it had a very different sight picture than I was used to at the time.  I never did feel like I got ahead of the plane with the gusting and ended up ballooning once before putting the plane down fairly smoothly. 

Unfortunately this was my last flight in 64055, as a few weeks later she was damaged during a training flight at metro.  Fortunately the pilot is alright.  She broke her leg, but is recovering well and will hopefully be flying again early next year.  Next up, my first night flight, and boy was it memorable.

I’m not talking about mouthing off to my instructor, or even anything as drastic as this Pitts Special.  I got in another .4 hours of instrument time about two weeks ago, and recovering from unusual attitudes was part of the time.  My instructor played the part of ATC, and vectored me out north and west, presumably to the practice area.  Next we did two climbing turn recoveries and one diving under the hood.  Recovery is the same as when you can see, but you have to recognize the condition on the artificial horizon after being tossed around a bit by your instructor.  I have to admit, this was the one time that I felt a little queasy since starting all this.  Once I got to open my eyes it quickly went away and I focused on the task at hand.  For a climbing bank, the goal is to increase power while lowering the nose and then leveling the wings.  In the one diving turn we did, you reduce power, level the wings and then pull up.  The idea is to slow the plane down and reduce the wing loading before attempting to pull up.  Many a plane has lost it’s wings trying to recover from this state while disoriented in the clouds.  These procedures help us prevent get back to straight and level flight so we can then spend some time troubleshooting how we got in this situation in the first place.  Usually that means not paying enough attention to what were doing in the first place.  We must never forget to fly the plane first and foremost, above all other concerns.  If I drop a pen I can always grab another, or search after the plane has been trimmed and I’ve taken a look for traffic and clouds.  After that we tracked an ADF, then intercepted the VOR back to BJC.  When we got the hood off I was amazed at how far out we were, but we were pointing right at the airport.  I called up to get the latest ATIS, and it was business as usual after that.

Flight 41 was some more landing practice.  I’m getting a little better at my soft-field work, though my spot landings aren’t quite bang on.  Or, when they’re spot on they’re a little too bang on as I’ve almost flown the plane right in to the ground.  Hopefully all the slip practice I got last week will help with my comfort level on final approach, and things will start coming together better. 

I still need to put together a post for my cross country to Akron.  Next on the plate is some night flight and a night cross country, probably to Colorado Springs.  I just need to get some scheduling figured out between work, doctors and my instructor.

I can’t wait for my next chance to play.

Last Thursday we left Metro intent on getting some more landings in, preferably away from BJC or Erie.  We flew up to Longmont and got in one full stop, but it was quite busy, so we meandered on over to BDU (aka Boulder Municipal).  It’s on the north east side of town, so was a very quick jaunt over from LMO.  This is by far the smallest strip I’ve landed on, though the airport itself has a lot more aircraft and services than Erie.  We got four touch and goes in on runway 8.  Gliders operate off the smaller strip just north on the runway (8G/26G in the picture), and coming in for our first circuit I finally got to see the towing operation first hand.  It’s quite impressive how quickly a glider gets off the ground!  Every single one of my landings here were way above the glide slope turning on to final.  That body of water right off the approach end of 8 is Hayden Lake, and this was my first experience being over water on short final.  I got some practice in slipping the airplane to get down without going too far past the displaced threshold.  I’ve mentioned side slipping for crosswind landings, so here’s a quick rundown on the forward slip for the non-pilots.  A forward slip is a cross controlled maneuver that allows one to bleed off altitude without increasing airspeed.  While a side slip keeps the nose aligned with the runway so that you can fly through a crosswind, it doesn’t do much to your descent rate.  A forward slip keeps your ground track, but points the nose away from the center line, and allows you to descend quite a bit without speeding up the plane, or more importantly your ground speed.  The names seem opposite of what the maneuver looks like,  but if you look at your flight path through the pocket of air you’re in it starts to make sense.

I’m hoping to get another post up tomorrow, and I may roll the last two flights in to one, as yesterday was a short flight and mostly landing practice.

Later in the week we worked on more short field landings, and even a few dead stick (simulated engine out) landings.  I’m getting better and my airspeeds, but still need some work on dropping it in steeper for short field landings.  I have a tendency to get a low approach and then drag it in with power, or coming in above the glide slope which ends up with a long roll out.  Our last landing was quite fun, but a bit unnerving at first.  We were in the south pattern, left hand traffic for 29 Left, when we were offered 29 Right if we could make our base before the numbers. We took the clearance, or rather my instructor did, and set up for a power off full flap landing.  Our nose was pointed so low and directly at the pavement that I imagined we could have been sky diving.  We touched down about a quarter way up the runway.  I was worried at first, when we were high up but at 9000 feet long there was plenty of room, and once I was closer to the ground and had a more familiar sight picture I settled in for a nice smooth landing.

• Continued VFR in to IFR Conditions (flying in to the clouds when you have no business being there)
• Maneuvering Flight (aerobatics, procedures, turns, etc)
• Takeoff and Climb
• Approach and Landing
• Runway Incursion
• Midair Collision
• Fuel (mis)Management
• Pilot Health, Alcohol and Drugs
• Night Flying
• Ice

Each chapter includes excerpts from National Transportation Safety Board reports, and almost all of the accidents are due to poor decision making on the part of the pilot in command.  These excerpts are analyzed and every single situation involves stuff we’ve learned in ground school and primary training.  In most cases, Craig also includes survivor stories from the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System.  These are reports pilots can make to NASA after they feel they’ve made a mistake.  These reports are not actionable by the FAA, and until recently some have considered them a free pass to cover them if they screw up.  This has proven pretty true over the years, but there have been cases of extreme negligence that FAA has acted on.  Though, in all of those cases that I’ve read so far the FAA was involved at the time of an incident, and not from one of these reports.  I like reading the ASRS reports, as there’s always something to learn from them.  No matter how many times we practice a procedure or read about a situation, it helps to read about real world occurrences and I feel better prepared for what flying may throw at me.

Personal Thoughts:

Craig usually includes lots of the basics about maneuvering, getting in to and avoiding a lot of the situations in the book.  I think his chosen audience includes the general public as well as student and low air time pilots.  Personally I didn’t mind re-reading some of the basics about procedures or aerodynamics, but I find I’m not always a typical student pilot.  Some that I’ve met seem to be in a rush to finish training, and one was even annoyed with having to learn the E6B whiz wheel, since he “only rents planes with GPS”.  It won’t earn a permanent place on my already crowded bookshelf, but I’ll definitely grab it from the library again after I get my ticket, and I’d highly recommend it for any low air time (<500 hours) or safety minded pilot.

If you haven’t just skipped ahead to the AOPA post yet, here’s how fuel economy works in a plane.  While flying you generate lift to keep you aloft, and a byproduct of that lift is induced drag.  The faster you go the less of that drag exists, as you can fly at a lower angle of attack (basically, how high the wings and nose point in the air).  There is a tradeoff though.  Parasitic drag increases the faster you go, unless I suppose your plane is two dimensional.  The chart above shows this curve, the scale for speed and drag can change, but the curves for induced and parasitic drag are always the same regardless of the plane.  This is a fixed ratio, which makes sense but isn’t always glaringly obvious, even to seasoned pilots.  L/D max is the point that both of those curves meet, which gives you the most efficient lift and best rate of climb (Vy), but leads to a slow ground speed and sluggish control inputs.  If you need to get somewhere for the least amount of fuel, and time is no object, that’s the speed to do it.  Pilots though, like drivers, hate poking around at speeds we don’t have, especially if it make the plane fly like it’s in molasses.  Well it turns out the L/D curve isn’t a full ellipse, it has a flat spot in it.  In that flat spot it seems you can glean almost a third more speed, for only a fifteen percent increase in drag.  That’s probably the best trade off in the whole curve.  The formula works out to 1.31 * Vy and will work for every single plane out there, since the drag ratios never change, just they’re relation to speed and drag.

It also turns out, in the planes I fly, maneuvering speed with full tanks and the lightweights that my instructor and I are meet up nicely with this formula.  I won’t have to think much about it, clear air or not.  Now if only there were such an easy formula for my Mini.

Sunday we’re planning to do my first cross country flight.  A cross country is defined as any flight where you land at any airport other than the one you took off from, but for it to qualify for most certifications that airport must be at least 50 nautical miles away.  Further for some of them.  We’re going to use a flight plan I put together to Cheyenne a few weeks ago, and I’ll just plug in the weather numbers.  This week I gleaned a bit of good information from the AOPA news feed that calculates best speed and fuel economy, which I’m going to post about tomorrow or Saturday.

I’m hoping I can keep this rate up and get my ticket while 2008 is still in session.  In the mean time I’ll follow the advice of my friend Mariko and what CFI Jason Miller say a lot (in their respective languages), “do your best”.

It was fun trying to put the plane right where you want it, but I’d like to practice until I can use a technique that actually keeps me on the glide slope.  That’s preferred for obstacle avoidance, and having enough altitude to glide to the runway should there be an engine problem.  No dead stick (engine out) landings this time, though I was kind of expecting one.  We’ll probably do some next time.  My instructor also said I’m back to where I was pre-wrist hardware, so if the weather agrees next week I’ll be soloing again.  I’m looking forward to that as I haven’t soloed at my home air port yet, and I wasn’t with my primary instructor up at Longmont.  I’m going to have to charge up my camera and clear up the memory stick this time around.

It sounds like I’m going to solo again in the next lesson or two, and after that we’re going to do a cross-country.  I was given a choice to plan a flight to either Cheyenne or Akron.  I think I’m going to do Cheyenne, as we planned a flight to Akron in ground school.  We’re going to focus on pilotage, so I’ll have to find some good landmarks to navigate by.  I picked up the latest charts and A/FD this weekend, as mine expired while recovering from surgery.  I have a check up and x-ray on Wednesday, and with any luck flying on Thursday will be much easier.  I’ll let you all know then.

That’s right, I’m back up there.  Tuesday I went for my first flight since the surgery.  I was worried that take offs or landings may be hard on my wrist, but the pressures weren’t even uncomfortable.  The only iffy thing is that I can’t pull the yoke fully back and apply full left aileron.  I’m not willing to do any solo work until I’m 100% though so it shouldn’t be a big issue.  My instructor is fully ready to give me a hand, I just have to say “help me out”.  Anyway, Tuesday we went out to the practice area and did some slow flight and some rolls about a heading.  The former went very, very well.  We slowed down to about 45 knots, with 20° flaps and made a whole bunch of turns to headings with the stall horn blaring.  This is always a lot of fun, and zero impact on the hand since in that configuration almost all roll can be handled by the rudder.  Rolls about a heading didn’t go quite as smoothly.  It was obvious to me that I wasn’t very coordinated, and a lot of that was getting used to rolling quickly without putting my thumb on top of the yoke.  I ended up using my index finger and pinky to put pressure on the top and bottom, but this made holding my pitch a little difficult.  I did have my rudder inputs correct, but either I was leading the turns too much or I wasn’t using the right amount of left/right input to keep the nose centered.  Rolling the plane like a pendulum is always fun, but rocking back and forth in your seat not so much.  This is a difficult maneuver to master (so I read) and will vary from plane to plane.  Someday I’d like to get enough practice in a specific plane to master it, even if only in that one bird.  After all the rolling, we turned back to BJC and had time for three touch and goes before a full stop.  There was only one landing that we touched down rather hard and that I got a little help on, which isn’t bad considering I haven’t been up in the skies for almost six weeks.  We had time to get in one more touch and go, but a 10 knot tailwind was present.  BJC is on top of a mesa, which tends to bring updrafts and down drafts following the contour of the land.  For quite awhile after our last take off we had almost a zero climb rate, and decided to call it quits while we were still happy with our performance.  While taxiing back to the school they were changing runways, so we hit our timing just right.  Until I get the thumbs up from my hand surgeon, I’m going to stick to one flight a week.  That should keep me from getting rusty and not tax my healing in any way shape or form.  Now I just have to fight the urge to hop on the Triumph seeing as I can almost fit my brace around the grip and squeeze the clutch at the same time.

The last time I got up was still the stage check, and other than reading blogs, news feeds and daydreaming I’ve kind of called a time out on aviation stuff.  I had one flight booked for Father’s Day, but it was scrubbed due to a faulty starter, and my surgery was a few days later.  Dad’s day we had brunch at the Runway Grill though, and got to watch all the traffic taking off and landing (not to mention a fantastic view of the flatirons).  My nephew and grandfather-in-law had a blast watching everything.  Next time I get up, it sounds like we will probably do some air work with my instructor on the throttle, and my right hand on the yoke.  I’m sure that will be a faster transition than me not flying at all for eight weeks.  We’ve got a vacation coming up and there’s so much to do it’ll be at least another week and a half before I can get up in the air.  I’ve ordered the Second Edition of Rod Machado’s book (now in hard cover), and am eager to see what he has to say about GPS and some other new stuff that’s available.  Even though it’s big and heavy I’ll probably lug it with us on vacation and call it time in on the aviation study.  If I consider it leisure time during the working weeks, I can still call it the same on off weeks, right?

(More…)

As you can see, it still bleeds a little after showers and stuff.  The other incision is much smaller, and completely healed now.  It’s hiding up top, and presumably is where they got to my radius for the extra bone tissue.  The brace I’m in is at an entirely different angle than the bandages, and I’m still conforming to it.  Once the bleeding stops during washings I’ll probably switch to ibuprofen.  That should help the swelling and maybe get my wrist a little more free to move.

Saturday was BJC’s open house and air show.  I got to introduce my wife and son to the people I fly with every week, and see lots and lots of planes.  There were a couple of Bonanzas to oogle then Jack and I finally got a tour of the inside of a Cirrus SR-20.  They’ve been sitting on the line next to the 172s I’ve been flying for almost a year, but since they’re twice the price I think I can wait until after I get my ticket.  We had my little hand held so were able to listen to the tower between airspace closures, and the air boss during.  Jack had a blast, and even spent ten minutes watching Patty Wagstaff fly.  She was dumping smoke and moving around so much that he just sat and watched her for almost her whole routine.  I got to play with my wife’s fancy camera, which can pump out three or four frames a second, and ended up with almost 500 frames before I decided I was likely to full up her memory card and called it quits.  We decided to head home between the F-18 and F-16 flights.  Jack was exhausted and slept through most of the F-18, though the fly-bys startled him.

Sunday I went back over to the airport with my wife’s grandfather to check out the B-17. We got there in time to see it take off, so hung out for a half hour or so listening to the tour waiting for her to come back.  We heard lots of smaller planes brave the crosswinds, and some divert over to Erie.  We also got to take a tour of the B-17, which he said still has some of the original radio gear in it, though it wasn’t hooked up.  All in all it was a very busy week and weekend, and I’m almost looking forward to some downtime next week, even if it’s surgery induced.

On another front, it looks like I will indeed be getting a screw put in to my wrist.  That means in about two weeks I’ll be taking at least three weeks off from flying.  With any luck if I end up in an old fashioned cast I’ll have enough mobility to operate the flight controls.  If not these posts may end up shifting in focus a little.

In other news it appears I have what’s called a Scaphoid nonunion in my left wrist.  About four years ago I was in a pretty serious motorcycle wreck, and apprently a broken wrist doesn’t get noticed when a compound femoral fracture is involved.  Over the years it hadn’t felt like more than a sprain, and only when aggravated (usually via the clutch of a bike).  This season however it’s been quite painful after only two or three days of riding.  I went to see a hand specialist on Thursday to finally figure out what’s going on, and he found this very quickly.  It seems the best option if I want to keep riding motorcycles or fly with any finesse in my old age is going to be surgery.  They’re talking about a bone graft from my radius, putting it in the scaphoid and securing everything with a screw.  I’m going to get some more details during the week, but I may be taking a break from flying soon depending on what kind of cast and meds I’m stuck with.  Stay tuned, as I’ll probably keep blogging on my efforts to not get too rusty if have to take an extended leave from my lessons.

NOTE: I accidentally made this a page, so the post is WAY late.

That’s how lightly we’re supposed to settle on to the runway during a soft field landing.  I didn’t.  I’ll practice, but my stifled laugh isn’t what it used to be.  Soft field technique is used for un/under improved runways.  Places where the ground is soft or muddy, gravel, riverbeds, etc.  During takeoff, everything is the same as normal except you use 10° flaps and you’re applying full back pressure on the yoke, easing it forward once the front gear pops off the runway.  Not too far forward as you don’t want it to settle back on to the ground try to keep in that pitch attitude as long as you can.  During this I was surprised at how quickly the nose came off the ground, and was certainly not expecting the plane to pop up not long after (I tried to keep the nose off and the mains on as long as I could).  Coaxing the plane to hang out in ground effect while it built up speed was quite fun though, once I got over the initial surprise of being fully off the ground.  You really only get one real shot to practice the takeoff during touch and goes (and that’s when you first get started), as you hardly slow down enough during an “and go” to get it done.  My soft field landings didn’t go as smoothly as the take off, but that may have a lot to do with being in a plane I’m not terribly familiar with.  Most of the Cessnas I fly in have 160 horsepower, and this one pushes 180.  It also has a shorter throttle travel which takes some warming up to.  During a soft field landing you approach at full flaps, and try to touch down as light as possible.  Normally when you come in you’ve got very little or no power, and you’re simply trying to bleed off airspeed while holding the plane just barely off the ground.  With a soft field landing you add a touch of power to slow your descent rate (but not enough to arrest it) and try to just barely settle on to the ground.  Then kill the power and hold the nose off as long as you can.  Once it’s back on the ground, keep that yoke all the way in the pit of your stomach, so that the front gear is as light on the ground as possible while you taxi.  Get that stuck in the mud while you’re rolling forward and you’re asking for a prop strike.  Delicious.

Anyway, I’ve noticed I have a tendency to not get to these for a day or two after I fly.  I’m going to try and make a point to be better about that.  I like having some time to reflect, but having the flight fresher in memory would be helpful as well.