Lesson 62: Worst…lesson…ever

Without trying to be over dramatic, I will say that this might very well have been my last flight.

Mac had told me that: (1) either he or John would still fly with me every few lessons just to see how it was going, and (2) if I missed a week due to east coast travel or whatever, that either he or John would fly with me just to help me get the cob webs out.

So I had traveled back east the week before, and John had flown with me on Monday.  No problem.  Now it was Thursday and I was to do my first full solo.  The idea was to just fly to Ramona, do a few take offs and landings, then fly back to Montgomery.

A day or so before flying, though, I got an e-mail from John asking me if I wanted him to do my second supervised solo per the syllabus.  I didn’t understand what he meant by that, since Mac hadn’t mentioned a second solo check ride, so I Googled “supervised solo” or something like that.

I came across an article by a flight instructor that talked about instructors needing to physically be at the hangar when a student solos to oversee plane preparation, review the flight plan, etc.  It said that a mistake many instructors make is thinking they can do it over the phone or something.  It was mainly an insurance thing.

And so I thought John was simply going to be there to physically review my preparations and plans.

That day I was very nervous, because it was still my first full solo.  I got there early and prepared the plane assiduously.  Then I sat down and went over every detail of the flight plan: route, Class B airspace, Class D airspace, etc.  I checked winds aloft and weather at Ramona.  I wrote down every conceivable radio frequency I might need.  I went over all possible contingencies in my mind.  And so on.

John got there and I whipped out the map and went over all the aspects of the flight with him.  No problem.

Then, just before I pulled the plane out of the hangar, I stuck my head in the office and said to Mac, “You’d think there was something wrong with me if I weren’t a little nervous right now, wouldn’t you?”  And he said yes, he would.

Well, I was nervous, no doubt about it.

I pulled the plane out of to the asphalt, got in, and started the pre-flight checklist.

Then from out of nowhere, John got in the plane.

I was like, “What’s up with this?”  And he told me that he was flying with me that day.

I was pissed.  Boy was I pissed.  My adrenaline was pumping so hard at the idea of flying solo up to Ramona and back, and now all of the sudden John’s going with me?

I didn’t get it.  I stared out the window and considered putting the plane back in the hangar.  I continued on with the check list for a few more items and then stopped and stared out the window again.  It was like a bad dream.  When the hell was I ever going to solo?  What had I misunderstood?  How many times did I need to get cleared for this?

After a bit more silent mental gnashing of the teeth, I said screw it and started the plane. But I felt that huge wave of  psychic let down when you’ve fully steeled yourself hard for something…and then had it slip away.

We flew to Ramona, did three dual take offs and landings, and then I did three solo take offs and landings.  It was fine.  In fact, my third landing was totally cool in that I not only flew an near-perfect box, but I hit perfect altitudes at every turn and had perfect airspeed on each leg.  Very nice.

Then we flew back to Montgomery.

We did a straight in approach, and there was a moderate wind from the right.  I had told Mac a while back that I never get enough right cross wind landings, and that they make me a little nervous.  And so this one did.

We were just about to touch down when I realized that I needed some correction.  As I started to move my right foot, John basically took the plane from me.  No, “My airplane,” or anything like that.  He just took it.  I felt the rudder pedal move out from under my foot, and the yoke leave my control.  It was not something he or Mac had ever done before that I could recall.

We got back to the hangar…put the plane away…and then debriefed.  John said a few things about the flight up and back, a few things about the landings at Ramona, and then he barked:

“YOU’RE NOT READY FOR CROSSWIND LANDINGS!”

Not ready for crosswind landings?

You can’t tell someone they’re not ready for crosswind landings without the clear implication that they’re not ready to solo.  My mind reeled a bit.  What was Mac going to do, tell me that he had mistakenly cleared me to solo and now he had to take it back?  Jesus!

At this stage of the game confidence is everything.  You simply shouldn’t be taking off in an airplane alone if you’re not confident you won’t kill yourself.  And with that bark, my confidence had basically just gotten blown away.

I left more or less thinking, well, so much for that.  I couldn’t imagine it anymore.  I had to either turn back the clock and relinquish soloing until all parties concerned were happy, or I could fly solo with the not-so-nagging thought that I might kill myself in a right cross wind.

I had a solo flight planned for Saturday, but I canceled it to mull things over.

On Sunday Ellen and I flew back east, and it wasn’t what I would call pleasant.  Whereas just a week or so before I had flown back east feeling completely bonded with the airplane, the air crew, and the flying, now I felt like the proverbial stranger in a strange land.  I didn’t at all feel like listening to the air traffic controllers on channel nine, and when I looked out the window and saw the wind sock, I felt rather dejected.

So I spent the week in a mild funk.  I tried getting used to the idea of quitting just before the finish line.  I rationalized: I had flown three cross-country flights; I had landed at Long Beach; I had flown and landed at night; I had landed an airplane over 200 times. And I had flown solo.  Was that enough?  Could I hang up the headphones and look at an airplane in the sky without twinges of regret?

By the time we flew back to San Diego, I was thinking that no, I don’t really want to quit.  I’m too close.  One of the problems, though, is that in order to get my license, I still need (among other things) six more night landings and a 100 mile night flight.  Mac does not fly at night because of some personal issues at home, so I would have to fly with John.  And I am in no mood whatsoever to fly with John anymore.

So I’ve been thinking about my future in flying.  It seems to me there are three options:

(1) Just stop flying.

(2) Find another local flight instructor to do my night flights with.

(3) Pick it up back east when Ellen and I move to Norfolk in June.

So that’s where I am.  It’s been almost two weeks, and I think I’ve reached a balanced state of mind about the whole thing.  I have a meeting with a colleague at work tomorrow who got his license not long ago .  He has an instructor at Ramona, and I might call her to see if she would do the night flights with me.  Also, I’m going back east again next week, and I might swing by the local flight club in Norfolk and see how difficult it would be to simply pick it up back there.

That’s where I am.  Expect a break as I sort through things and figure out what to do next.

Lesson 61: Nothing especially new

When Mac cleared me for solo, he told me that either he or John would still fly with me every third or fourth flight just to see how I was doing.  Furthermore, since the coming months will be characterized by me going back east every other week, he said that if I miss a week or so of flying, that either he or John will go up just to help be get the cobwebs out.

So I had gone back east for a week, and was ready to fly, and John came with me.

We only went down to Brown Field and did a handful of take offs and landings, although it reiterated there are still a few things I have to learn.

For example…

Brown Field has two runways, one long and one short.  I took off on the long runway and — upon reaching 500 feet — banked to the right as a prelude to entering the pattern.  Well, unfortunately I had not reached the end of the runway (i.e., the numbers) and the controller did the equivalent of chew my butt over the air.  I mentioned to John that I hadn’t known that you aren’t supposed to do that, and he said yeah, that’s the case.  He let me do it knowing that the controller would chew my butt on the theory that that would drive the lesson home harder.

Other than that, it was all pretty vanilla.

When we got back to Montgomery, John started talking about clearing me to fly solo under Class B airspace (which is how we had to fly to and from Brown Field).  And it drilled home that this solo thing was, in fact, a series of sequentially broader permissions.

And that was that.

Lesson 60: The most important lesson yet…

…and I didn’t even get off the ground.

Having been cleared for solo on a Friday afternoon, I told Mac that I wanted to vanquish the “Second Time Boogie Man” and fly the next day.  The idea was simply to go back to Ramona and do some take offs and landings.  And I wanted to take off at about 7:00 am so that I could be back by 9:00 or so and have the rest of the day to do stuff with Ellen.

At this stage, I need to give either Mac or John my flight plan and get it approved before taking off, and I need to call whoever approved it upon safely returning.

So I put some time in Friday evening developing a flight plan that I thought might address all the issues: stay out of Miramar Class B airspace by staying south of Route 52…stay above Gillespie Class D airspace by flying at 2,500 feet…and so on.  The only missing piece was the weather.

On Friday night, Saturday morning’s weather looked marginal on the web sites I checked, but I got up at 4:00 am  anyway just in case.  Sure enough, it was no dice, although it looked better in the afternoon.  So I went back to bed thinking that I might be able to do it at 3:00 pm or so.

Now, as it happened, when I flew solo on Friday Mac had turned on a video camera in the cockpit without telling me, and all three take offs and landings were captured.  I wanted to get that video and post it on YouTube, so I called Mac late Saturday morning to see if he was going to be at the hangar.  He said yeah, he would be there about about noon.

At this point the weather was still crappy, and Ellen and I were in the midst of chores and whatnot, and I was thinking that perhaps I wouldn’t fly after all (this was the Second Time Boogie Man whispering in my ear).  I asked Ellen if she would mind driving to the hangar with me just to get the video, and she said sure.  So we went.

At the hangar we all sat around watching the video while Mac — a raconteur if ever there was one — regaled Ellen with little stories from the day before’s solo to augment the video.

I opined that perhaps it wasn’t my day to fly — still thinking about going to Ramona — and Mac said nonsense.  Just take the plane and do some take offs and landings at Montgomery.  Ellen and I decided to go grab a quick bite to eat, and then she would hang out for an hour while I did a few laps around Montgomery Field.

We got back and the weather was still overcast, but the ceiling was high enough for me to fly around Montgomery.  I prepped the plane while Ellen chatted with Mac in the office.

And then I was off.

Montgomery Field has two parallel runways that align with the prevailing winds (28 left and 28 right), and one other runway (23) that runs at a 50 degree angle to the main runways for those times when the wind is doing something unusual.  This was one of those days: runway 23 was in use for normal take offs and landings.

Being so used to runways 28 right and left, I always feel a slight twinge when 23 is in play.  I’ve used it enough that I’m not scared of it, but I don’t feel as comfortable or confident using it as I do the others.  But it was what it was, and I taxied to the run up area at runway 23.  When I got there I did my pre-take off stuff…called the tower…and waited…

…and waited…

…and waited…

For some unknown reason, every small plane on the planet Earth decided to fly into Montgomery Field that afternoon.  At one point I looked out and saw four planes on final approach.  The tower knew I was there, but I just had to wait.

The thing about waiting for take off is, it’s not like you can put on the parking brake and relax.  The engine is running and the propeller is turning, and you’ve got to hold the plane there with your feet firmly on the brakes.  And you have to listen…you have to maintain general situational awareness, and you have to be ready for a call from the tower.

So there I was, waiting and listening.  And I didn’t like what I was hearing.  That controller was juggling planes all over the sky.  At one point he told someone to loiter over Qualcomm Stadium.  The plane replied that he couldn’t loiter at whatever altitude he was at under Visual Flight Rules (VFR), and asked if he could descend 1,000 feet.  And I thought, “Man, I wouldn’t even know that was an issue if he told me to do that.”

And meanwhile, the wind was picking up.  Not just picking up, but changing directions frequently.  When he wasn’t directing traffic, the controller was spitting out wind conditions:

“Wind 220 at 16”

“Wind 250 gusting to 18”

“Wind 210 gusting to 20”

When he said that, I thought, “That’s it.  I’m not flying.”  I had been sitting there for 25 minutes, my feet and legs were tired, my mind was tired, and I couldn’t imagine trying to weave in and out of all that traffic and land in those winds.

As soon as I got the chance I called in, “Montgomery Tower, Skyhawk 622CM.  I’m going to cancel this take off and I’d like to taxi back to Marigold.”

The controller came back immediately and said he was going to get me off the ground soon.

“Thanks,” I replied, “but it’s a little too busy, and a little too windy for me today.”

And about 15 minutes later I was pulling up to the hangar.

I felt dejected.  For starters I felt a bit like a wuss to the controllers, and I assumed that Mac had been listening on the radio and had no idea what he thought.

As I was putting the plane away, one of the other pilots who had been doing take offs and landings — and who apparently knew Mac’s plane well enough to have seen it sitting there in the run up area — came bicycling by and asked me, “Did you ever get off the ground?”

I told him that no, it was my very first full solo and that I had decided it was too windy and too busy.

He beamed, “Good call!”  And went on to tell me that good judgment like that was the most important thing a pilot could have.

Hmmm…maybe I wasn’t so much of a wuss.

Then Ellen came out to the hangar and told me that not only had she and Mac been listening, but they had actually followed out to the run up area in his car and watched.

And then she went on to tell me that about 15 minutes into my wait, Mac had told her, “If I were Rick, I’d be thinking about canceling at this point.”  And that when I did cancel, he said, “That’s what I like about military guys…they have good judgment!”

After I got the plane put away we all sat around the office chatting…talking about how crowded the sky was…what everyone was thinking…and so on.  And Mac just kept emphasizing that that had been exactly the right thing to do.

Needless to say, when we finally left the airport I felt great.  Mac had seen that I could definitely make good judgment calls in solo situations; Ellen, too, could rest a bit easier knowing that I was not inclined to push it past what I knew I could do.  And most important, I knew that it was OK to walk away from a bad situation, and that I could do that.

It was a great lesson.

Lesson 59: Jonathan Livingston Jones

So I finally did it…I flew (and got cleared for) solo!

It was interesting.  Neither Mac nor I said anything at the hangar about my solo trial.  Mac simply asked me where I wanted to go.  I had been thinking Ramona for a long time, and so that’s what I said.

We took off, and flew to Ramona.  All the while with no explicit acknowledgment that this was the big day.

About five miles from Ramona I contacted the tower, and they told me to call back two miles out.  And I did.  The controller told me to make a left base entry, and I told Mac that at this point I felt as though this particular controller and I were friends.  Mac said yeah, it’s like that sometimes.

So I was about to make my left base entry when the controller told me to turn east and fall in behind another plane.  That certainly upset my apple cart a bit.  But I did it, and instead of a regular pattern entry, I ended up making a straight in approach. No problem there, but I did put the plane down with a small bit of a bump.  But it was a harbinger of things to come.

I could tell by Mac’s crossed arms that he wasn’t really happy, and sure enough, he wasn’t.  He mildly chided me about not having a proper roll out, and had me taxi back to do another landing.

Again, we had not explicitly talked about me being evaluated for solo, and I was thinking, “Sheesh, I hope this isn’t another day of take offs and landings.”

So we went around again, and did another landing.

After we cleared the runway, the controller asked us what we wanted to do. Mac got on the microphone and said, “Taxi back to 27, but first we’re going to drop the instructor off.”

This was it!

Halfway down the taxi way Mac got out, and I was on my own.

Mac no sooner got out than that particular controller — my friend — left and a strange woman got on the air.  Okay.  No problem.

So I did my first take off and landing without any particular issues.  Mac had told me that without the weight of an extra passenger the plane would take off much quicker, and he was righter than right.  I got the throttle all the way in, and was lifting off the runway before I knew it.  Climbed 500 feet…turned cross wind…climbed to 2,200 feet…turned downwind…leveled off at 2,400 feet…blah blah blah…and landed.  Whew!

And here is the photo of me landing an airplane all by myself for the first time:

First Solo Landing

Now, this is where it gets interesting.

I cleared the runway and started taxiing back.  Mac signaled me to continue on and do it again.  No problem.

I got to the end of the taxi way and called the tower:

“Skyhawk 622CM…holding short 27…left closed traffic…full stop, taxi back.”

“Cessna 622CM…left closed traffic…runway 27 cleared for take off.”

And down I went, and up I went.

There was a lot of chatter on the radio that I wasn’t paying particular attention to.  My bad (more about that later).  At about 300 feet, the controller said:

“Cessna 2CM, right closed traffic.”

“Say again,” I replied.

She was trying to deal with something else, and said, “Say again.”

“Skyhawk 622CM, say again.”

“Cessna 2CM, right closed traffic.”

That’s what I thought she said.  She was telling me to circle the airport in a clockwise manner rather than the usual counter-clockwise manner that I had requested.  OK, I figured this was just some instructor-controller thing that they pull on students to see if they can respond to new stuff.  I could certainly handle that.

So at 500 feet I banked right, and began a right pattern.

The thing about Ramona is that it doesn’t have a radar; the tower actually has to see you.  But in a right pattern, you almost fly over the tower, and there’s no way that the controller can see you.  So when I was mid-field, I called the tower:

“Skyhawk 622CM, abeam mid-field.”

“Cessna 2CM, do a left 360 degree turn.”

WTF !?!?!?!?!

Now I was pissed.  I was sure this was some pre-arranged game Mac had set up with the controllers.  On one level it didn’t make any sense; how could he have known where we were going, or who would be in the tower?  But I couldn’t come up with a rational explanation for it being any other way.

Nonetheless, I did a 360 degree left turn.  And when I finished I called in:

“2CM, finished 360.”

No answer.

A few seconds later I said, “2CM, I’m downwind.”

“Cessna 2CM, you’re going to follow [something] three miles out, blah blah blah…”

Apparently there was another plane making a straight in approach, and I was to follow it.  I had no clue what she was saying (in detail) and so I replied with something I knew couldn’t be faulted:

“2 CM, looking.”

Meaning, I was looking for whatever it was she was saying was ahead of me.

Eventually she told me that, although she couldn’t see me, the traffic ahead of me was practically landed and I should turn base and land.

And I did.

Once more Mac waved me on to do it again.  At this point I was understanding that this was not some game the controller-instructor were playing — that in fact, there was a lot of traffic at Ramona that day — and I was a bit calmer.  As I alluded to earlier, if I had been paying closer attention to the radio chatter, I could have gotten wind of it.  Oh well.

The third loop went OK (mentally), even though there was another small deviation to account for traffic.

And then it ended.  After the third landing the controller asked me what I wanted to do, and before I could answer Mac got on the air and said, “He’s going to pick up his instructor on the taxi way.”

When I got there and opened the door for him, he smiled and shook my hand.  I had passed the test!

Naturally Mac had had a small hand-held radio and had been listening to everything, so he knew exactly what had happened.  That was great, because it showed him I could function under a little bit of stress with some unplanned maneuvers.

Mac also knows how mentally trying a first solo is, and how particularly mentally trying mine had been.  So he took the controls and flew us all the way back to Montgomery while I sat back and reveled in my accomplishment.

Back at the hangar we had some discussion about what being cleared to solo means, and what my limitations are, and so on.  I won’t dwell on that now.

I told him — and he fully understood — that often it is more difficult to do something the second time than it was the first time, and that I wanted to go up immediately the next day and get that Second Time Boogie Man vanquished.  He was completely supportive of that and told me what I had to do to fly solo the next day.

And with that, I went home with a very big smile on my face, had a very nice dinner with Ellen, and slept a very sound sleep.

Lesson 58: Pre-solo brush up

The last time I flew with Mac it was explicit that he’s going to give me a solo check ride and clear me (if all goes well), and I left him my log book to review and sign.  But that was almost two weeks ago, before Ellen and I went to San Francisco for a one-week vacation.  He told me that once I got back I should go up with John at least once to sort of air the cobwebs out and get back into the groove.  So that’s what I did Thursday.

John and I flew up the coast and then went inland a bit to do some steep turns and climbing turns.  Mac and I did these way back when, and now I need to start focusing in them (and a few other things) for my FAA practical exam that will happen at some point in the not-too-distant future.

There were a couple of cool things about the lesson.

First, as we were taking off and at about 300 feet, John asked me what I would do if the engine failed right then.  Keep in mind that at 300 feet, there would be no time to try all that engine-starting stuff I discussed during the last post.  At 300 feet you had better be ready to just land somewhere.

And I was on it.

I had a street already picked out directly ahead of us that was right in line with our direction of flight.  I pointed to it and said, “There.”  And he was OK with that.

Then, we got to 3,500 feet — our planned cruising altitude — and I leveled out and had us flying a direct course right up the coast.  And I remarked to John how different it was from about a year ago, when leveling out was like a roller coaster ride, and maintaining a course was almost impossible.  But now I can do both with no problems and no auto-pilot, just pure flying.  It was nice.

And I was very happy with the turns, too.  When you do a 360 degree steep turn (which is what we were doing), you lose the vertical component of lift and the plane wants to descend.  So you have to pull back hard on the yoke, and sometimes even add thrust.  All the while keeping the ball centered with appropriate rudder control.  I’ve had problems coordinating it all in the past, but I pretty much had it down this time.

So after a bit of that we went to Oceanside to do some landings.  Mac was right…there were cob webs.  My first landing I actually had to do a go-around.  I had turned in too soon, and consequently was a bit too high when I crossed the runway threshold.  I probably could have landed it, but there would have been some fierce braking action to stop the plane before reaching the other end of the runway.  So I just pushed in the throttle…climbed back up…and went around.

The next four landings were all good.  What was really cool was that Mac was out instructing another student in another plane, and as luck would have it they were at Oceanside, too, practicing landings.  I didn’t realize that the other plane had Mac in it, and when I did my fourth and last landing there, they was at the end of the runway waiting to take off.  So I did a really good landing, which Mac got to see from an outsider’s vantage point.  (And he commented on it when we got back.)

So that was that.  And now, with luck, I will be successfully evaluated for solo flying the next time I fly.  Fingers crossed…

Lesson 57: The big “What if…?”

So…what if your engine stops while you’re flying?

Good question, because it’s been known to happen.  Mac told me that he’s had it happen to him four times over the last 30 years.

The last time John and I did a day fight, we were on the way back from Ramona and he reached over and pulled the throttle back to idle and said, “Your engine just stopped.  What do you do?”

I had had to answer that as part of my pre-solo exam, and I knew that before I got cleared for solo I would have to make sure I knew automatically what to do.  But I wasn’t ready for it that day, and I told John that.

In my last lesson with Mac, though, that’s all we did.

There are two essential phases you go through if your engine stops: (1) Try to re-start it, and (2) if it doesn’t re-start, land the plane.

There are probably a dozen things that can go wrong then you’re flying: engine failures, alternator failures, vacuum failures, fires, and so on.  And for each one, there’s a list of things to do.  Early on, Mac had told me that for the minor contingencies I should just keep some 3 x 5 cards in nearby for reference.  But for the major ones — engine failure, spins — you need to know immediately and without thought what to do.

The problem is, they all get kind of muddled in your head when you’re simply trying to memorize sequences of actions.  “Hmmm…engine failure.  Now, do I check “Fuel Tanks Both” and then push the fuel cutoff valve in, or is it the other way around?”

Fortunately, Mac told me that for the most part the exact sequence for engine failure really doesn’t matter.  Just do all the things with the right hand first — “Fuel tanks both”…”Fuel cutoff valve in”…”Mixture lean”…”Throttle in” — then change hands and do the left hand tasks: “Fuel pump on”…”Master switch on”…”Ignition key on”.  And the engine should start.

So we went through that drill a couple of times, and when you don’t have to think about exact sequencing, it’s actually pretty easy.

But notice I said the engine should start.  What if it doesn’t?

This is where you learn the wonderful glide characteristics of a Cessna 172S.

If you’re up there and the engine has failed and you can’t re-start it, the first thing you do is pull the yoke back and trim it to 65 knots of indicated air speed.  This is the Cessna’s maximum glide speed, which produces about a 9:1 glide ratio.  So what that means is that if you’re at, say 5,300 feet (one mile up), you can glide about nine miles at sea level.  Not too shabby…and the reason they say altitude is your friend.

So after Mac and I had done a few drills of my simulating an engine re-start, we practiced forced landings with a simulated engine failure.

We were in upper San Diego county flying at about 3,500 feet, and near some wealthy private rancher’s airfield that was about 500 feet above sea level.  So I had about 3,000 feet of usable airspace, which was about five miles of glide.

Here’s a Google map showing the airfield. (You might have to zoom either in or out to get the proper sense.)

Mac pulled the throttle back to idle, and we began the drill of assuming the engine was indeed dead.

The first thing I did was trim the plane to 65 knots to get best glide speed.  To do this you turn the trim wheel all the way up until it won’t go anymore, and the plane stabilizes at about 65 knots.  At that speed the stall warning indicator is screaming, but you’re not pulling the nose up any more, so you can more or less ignore it.

And s0 there we were, just gliding along.

The idea is to find a place that looks like a decent landing spot, and start slowly spiraling down, all the while making ongoing determinations about the true desirability of the spot and (hopefully) going somewhere else if you see something that spooks you…like power lines.

So we glided over to the private airfield, and once we got there the first thing I did was align myself with the runway and glide a straight line parallel to it.  What I was trying to do was determine if there was any crosswind pushing me left or right.

There wasn’t that I could tell.

So I started slowly spiraling down…looking, looking.

There were some small ponds on the ranch, and I looked to see if there were any ripples indicating a headwind or tailwind. Nope.  I also looked for trees or shrubs moving.  Nothing.

So I was in luck…no wind.

I kept slowly spiraling until I was about 1,500 feet over the runway, all the time trimmed to 65 knots.  Then at about 1,500, I stopped spiraling, untrimmed the plane, and maneuvered into a regular landing pattern.  And from there it was just like a normal landing: I pushed the nose down to pickup speed and get to my downwind speed of 90 knots, then base at 80 knots, and then final at 70 knots.

For a few moments I thought Mac was actually going to have me land, but at about 50 feet above the ground we went full throttle and got back up in the sky.

And then we did it again.

All in all it was a pretty cool ride, and certainly a confidence builder.  I wouldn’t be so stupid as to say that I can deal with an in-flight engine failure with no problem, but I feel a whole lot better now knowing that I’ve got the sequence of actions for re-start genetically coded, and that under reasonable conditions I can get the plane down safely without power and have a fighting chance landing it.

Perspectives

When I did my last night flight with John, I passed 100 hours of flying.

The reason I bring this up is because I recall having read several years ago that when John Kennedy Jr. died in his airplane accident on the way to Martha’s Vineyard, that he had had about 100 hours.

At the time that seemed like a lot of hours to have. Now I’m thinking…”What? 100 hours? What was he thinking?”

At this point 100 hours seems to have not even scratched the surface. At this point 100 hours seems like a license to actually start learning. At this point I can’t even imagine taking a passenger up with me.

Anyway, it’s funny how perspectives change.

Lesson 56: More night flying

I had another night flight with John this week.  In order to be a private pilot, I need 10 night landings and a 100-mile night cross-country flight (with an instructor).  So you can expect a few more posts on night flying.

One of the interesting things about this flight was that John wanted to “hood” me.  I also need three hours of instrument flying for my private pilot license, and one way to do that is put a hood over the student’s head and make him/her fly by instruments.

In John’s view, this is better done at night because he (the instructor) can keep a better watch for other aircraft.  In my view, if I’m going to be flying at night I want to enjoy the night flight, and having a hood over my head is not the way to do that.  So we were a little at odds with one another.

Fortunately, we couldn’t find the hood, so it was moot.

Anyway, we took off OK, and once again I was struck by how cool it is to see all those lights spread out beneath you as you climb.

The last time we flew at night we flew at 1,500 feet, and I was concerned the entire time about having no margin for error.  So this time we climbed to 4,500 feet and hung around that alititude.

Once again we flew up to Oceanside, and once again we flew out to sea once we got there.  And once again I experienced tremendous vertigo at certain points…mainly when we turned back towards the shore.  At one point it was so frightening that I actually said, “John?”  I was just so lost in the universe that I needed to know he was still there.  He knew exactly what I was experiencing, and he replied, “It’s OK.  I’m here.”

It’s really hard to describe what it’s like to be looking at instruments that are telling you one thing, and physically feeling as though you are doing something else entirely, and mentally not being able to process anything.  The one good thing was that because we were at 4,500 feet, I didn’t have that horror of going past a point of no return that I had had at 1,500 feet the last time we flew.

So we did that about five times.  Each time I got a little bit better, but I’m here to tell you that I do not like it.   I think it’s one of those things that you need to either expose yourself to it routinely in order to maintain some sort of control over, or avoid assiduously and pray it doesn’t happen.  And probably staying exposed to it is the saner course of action.  So I guess this is part of my future in flying.

We went back to Montgomery with no problem, and then landed three times.  The landings weren’t quite as good as the last time I did a night landing, although that was more of an approach issue rather than an actual landing issue.  In all three approaches I misjudged the end of the runway by a substantial margin, and had to feather the throttle to reach the threshold.  I think in all three cases I turned on to final at such an off spot that I never cleared my mind enough to look at the VASI lights.  That is to say, I was so low at that point that I became immediately focused on mitigating it.

One reason I had such a problem on the approaches is that Montgomery has what’s called a displaced threshold.  That means that you can’t land at the end of the runway; the threshold (where you can land) is “displaced”, or several hundred yards farther up the runway.

What this means is that when you are approaching the runway on the base leg, you can only see the red lights marking the runway, and you position yourself based on that.  Well, the displaced threshold is marked with green lights, and you can’t really see those until you’re well into the descent.

In any case, it was just something to account for in the future.  And that aside, the actual landings were all pretty good.

And to really top the whole thing off, the almost-full moon was out and it was a gorgeous night to fly!

Lesson 55: Yes, I can land an airplane

Last Friday afternoon, the day after my night flight, I had another lesson with John. As with my last lesson with Mac, I expected that we’d go somewhere and do basics. And as with my last lesson with Mac, John wanted me to do landings.

I think there’s a pattern of thought here.

So we flew to Ramona. Wanting to do more than just landings, I asked John if we could fly to Ramona via a transit over Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. You may recall from a while back that this requires a somewhat convoluted take off from Montgomery in order to reach 2,900 feet as quickly as possible, because that’s the rule for making a civilian transition across Miramar. It’s also interesting (from my point of view) because you request that transition while entering the ground radio chatter at Montgomery. In other words, the first time you contact ground control to request taxiing and runway clearance, you ask for clearance to do a Miramar transition, and then let them tell you what runway to use.

So that’s what we did.  Nothing amazing, just a bit more polish around the edges in terms of refining planning and execution skills.

The landings at Ramona went well.  I did five in all, and I would say that one was acceptable, two were good, and two were very good.

The one that was only acceptable went something like this: I was coming in a bit low, so I feathered the throttle to add some RPMs and give myself a little lift.  But that’s actually misleading.  I didn’t really lift the plane; what I really did was slow the descent.

Then, as I crossed the runway threshold the throttle was still feathered.  I had it in my mind that I needed to land at idle, so once I was over the runway and doing my round out, I pulled the throttle back to idle.

BUMP!

The fact is, I was at a proper airspeed (70 knots) and I was descending smoothly.  I really didn’t need to pull all the way back to idle.  At least not that quickly.  If I had just left it where it was and continued my round out, all would have been well.  It was a learning experience.

And then it was back to Montgomery.

Ramona is a training airport where the FAA trains air traffic controllers.  The controller in the tower while we were landing seemed to be under instruction, and was being very cautious about putting people in the pattern, either for take off or for landing.  As a consequence, John and I sat at the end of the runway for excessive amounts of time every time we wanted to take off.  The geometry and such of Ramona meant that we were facing into the southern exposure of the afternoon sun, and in a glass cockpit of a Cessna, that meant that we were getting baked all afternoon.

The reason I bring that up is because when we went back to Montgomery, I opted to just fly straight back instead of transitioning across Miramar again.   We were both really fagged from the sun and heat, and I didn’t want to be dealing with any sort of unnecessary stress, however mild.

So we flew a vanilla route back, and did a straight in approach.  And the good news there was that I did an absolutely perfect landing in a crosswind.  Perfect!

So…Mac’s evaluated my landings, and now John has evaluated my landings.

Let’s see what happens next…

Lesson 54: Night Flight

Last Thursday I did my first night flight, and it was awesome.

I need to do something like 10 full-stop night landings as part of my training. Mac can’t fly at night for personal reasons, so he told me to ask John about it, which I did. And so Thursday night John and I flew at night for the first time.

By way of context, “night” is defined by the FAA as starting after EECT (end of evening civil twilight – which is about 30 minutes after sunset), and finishing at BMCT (beginning morning civil twilight – about 30 minutes before sunrise).

I will tell you, I was nervous. So nervous that I forgot how to start the engine in the plane! Even looking at the checklist, I couldn’t remember what to do next. LOL!

That aside, it was great.

We did a simple flight up the coast and back at  1,500 feet, just as an introduction to (a) what things on the ground looked like at night, and (b) how utterly horrible it is to turn away from land, into the vastness and void, and lose the horizon and all sense of reality. It was truly a learning experience.

Fortunately I had done a couple of instrument take offs with Mac in inclement weather way back when, so I felt somewhat comfortable taking off.  But I wasn’t prepared for how easy it actually turned out to be, nor for how spectacular it is taking off at night.  It was like that scene in Peter Pan where Peter takes them out the bedroom window for the first time and all of London lies lit up and spread out beneath them.  As the plane left the runway, there was that same sense of the lit up world opening up and spreading out.  Really stunning!

Once I leveled out at 1,500 feet we noticed there was a slight marine layer out over the ocean and along the coastline.  Not thick enough to turn us back, but noticeable and causing a little bit of haziness.

So we flew up the coast, and John had me spot various things on the ground: the Del Mar racetrack, Palomar airport, and so on.  It was just to get my perception shifted over to what things look like at night.  And in particular he had me scouting for airport beacons, because you can never be too sure about where to go if you need to make an emergency landing.

While I wasn’t doing that, I was watching the traffic lights flow and seeing the patterns of humanity outlined in lights.  It was the first time I had that sense of what Antoine de Saint-Exupery was trying to describe in his books about flying.

Anyway, 0nce we got to Oceanside, John had me turn out to sea and turn the cockpit lights down.  He wanted me to experience the disorientation of no horizon.  Despite the low lighting in the cockpit, however, I could still see the altimeter and altitude indicator, and I never felt too disoriented.  Not that I would have wanted to fly for a long period like that, but I could see it was doable.

But then we turned back to shore, and I had a momentary flash of complete and total disorientation.  I didn’t know where I was, which way was up, or what my name was.  It was bad.  Really bad.  And I don’t really know why it happened.  You read about it in books, but to experience it is something else entirely.  And what made it particularly bad was that at 1,500 feet there was really no margin for error.

And then, just as quickly as it had happened, it went away.  I don’t know why; perhaps because the shore lights came into view.  Whatever the cause, it was a reminder that flying is not the same thing as taking a Sunday drive.

The cruise back down the coast was uneventful, but I was very nervous about landing.  I was actually nervous about even finding Montgomery Field.

As it turned out, there was no cause for concern.  Despite the darkness, I could easily find the field and position myself for entering the pattern.  And I easily entered and negotiated the pattern.

The landing itself was a dream.  At Montgomery Field they have these lights (as do all decent airports) called Visual Approach Slope Indicators (VASI) that basically guide you in on the glide slope.  If you see all white, you’re too high; all red, you’re too low.  But if you see an even mixture of red and white, you’re spot on.  (John’s mnemonic is “White over white, flying all night; red over red, gonna be dead”.)

After I turned on to final, I immediately got on the proper glide slope, and we sailed right in.  And it was perfect; we could barely feel the bump of touchdown.

So that was that.  I think flying at night was my last big new thing.  From here on out I believe it’s just going to be extending what I know (e.g., longer cross country flights), refining what I know (e.g., ground reference maneuvers), and repeating what I know (e.g., night flying).

Onward…