Aileron

This past week was my first time on an airliner after starting flight lessons and what hit me was how fast these planes can climb, fancy jet engines and all; the ground just falls away. Traveling this week also leads to my sixth misconception dispelled:

An airliner is really flying at 32,000 ft when the captain says it's flying at 32,000 ft.

It's probably not and the captain doesn't really care.

To explain, a brief something about altimeters: As altitude increases, air pressure decreases. Altimeters are just sensitive barometers that read in feet above mean sea level (MSL) instead of in mmHg or Pa. But in addition to altitude, weather systems also affect air pressure so that, when flying, a pilot must regularly get reports of the air pressure on the ground and use that to re-zero his altimeter and keep it reading accurately.

Above 18,000 ft though, where airliners cruise, pilots kind of give up on accuracy. They simply set their altimeters to standard pressure (29.92 mmHg) and leave it there for the entire cruise regardless of what the actual sea level pressure is below them. This means that for most of that time, their altimeters read incorrectly. The reasoning is that at that altitude, the only thing you're concerned about hitting is other airplanes. As long as all airplanes are incorrect about their altitudes by the same amount, then the vertical spacing between airplanes will be correct. And you get the bonus of not having to adjust your altimeter every thirty to sixty minutes.

This standard pressure convention is the idea behind flight levels. Below 18,000 ft, airplanes are assigned and report altitudes in feet MSL, their actual height above mean sea level. Above 18,000 ft, they use flight levels, e.g. FL240 means whatever altitude I end up at if I set my altimeter to standard pressure and I make it read 24,000 ft. FL240 corresponds to the idea of 24,000 ft MSL, but they're not equivalent. In fact, an airliner maintaining a constant FL240 is always changing it's actual altitude MSL as it flies through different pressure systems. But that's okay because all of the other airplanes in that area are doing the same thing, so our plane at FL240 will always really be 2,000 ft below a plane at FL260.

You may point out that a handful of mountains exceed 18,000 ft, which is a very good thing to know if you're a pilot without accurate altitude. Airplanes tend to give such bits of terrain a wide berth both horizontally and vertically.

Every pilot secretly dreams of the short-field takeoff that really matters, with people watching, skills on the line, jubilation upon success, crashing and burning upon failure. It's the takeoff pilots should say no to in real life, but this is fiction, so balls to the wall and let's see what happens. Let's also throw in some firearms, a loyal dog, a mysterious global pandemic, and it's kind of guaranteed to be a good time.

The Dog Stars is set in a post-apocalyptic world where most of the human population has died out and what's left of society has reverted to a kill or be killed mentality. Our hero (a pilot) and his friend (a weapons nut), have staked out a small airport as their home and are doing well for themselves, but one day a broken radio transmission during a patrol flight tempts our hero into the unknown.

It's a quick, entertaining read, but not much beyond that. The plot gives opportunities to say something about human behavior and existence, but they're not taken. There's also the obvious chance to completely nerd out on the aviation and/or firearms front, but that's not taken either, understandably in the interest of selling the book to more than a handful of nerds. The tempo is a bit uneven. The punctuation style takes some getting used to, but it makes sense in the end. Regardless, any adventure story that stars a Cessna 182 is required reading for a pilot's certificate.

Labels: Book Reviews

Enroute from EWR to SFO on a B737 at FL320, I think somewhere over Pennsylvania.

Labels: Cloudscapes

I took Thursday and Friday off from work this week to focus on wedding preparations, but I also snuck a flying lesson in last night.

I got to the airport before my instructor, and Lorraine, the airport owner, suggested I try the preflight myself. The preflight is basically walking around the plane and inspecting all the important parts to satisfy yourself that nothing will fall off or explode or otherwise make for an exciting time while flying. Preflight is easy enough since every airplane model publishes a checklist on what to do during the preflight. I just go down the checklist. Pilots love checklists. Right about the time I finished, my instructor arrived, we hopped in, and we were on our way.

I did a mighty sloppy job taxiing from parking to the hold-short line. I feel like taxi to departure is difficult because that's the first time I'm handling the plane after being away for however many days and it takes me a bit to regain the feel of it, though that sounds like an excuse more than anything else. A part of me also has this mentality that my skills in the air are more important than my skills on the ground (if I can just get away from this silly ground-thing I'll be fine), but that too isn't the best thought to encourage. More realistically, I was excited to get in the air and taxied faster than I should have, so there was a lot of overcompensating with the nose wheel. And I still haven't gotten the hang of applying equal pressure to both brakes, so I tend to turn a bit when braking. My poor CFI. I always wonder afterwards if anyone was watching, because the plane doesn't always look quite right when I'm flying. My takeoffs are getting better, but they still need work in staying perfectly straight through the entire roll (again with the pesky earthy meddling with my awesome flying).

It was another clear evening, no wind, no turbulence, just the big round sun growing big and red on its way behind the hills. There was a little bit of haze, but I noticed for the first time I can see both Philadelphia and New York from the practice area, at about 2500 ft over Round Valley. Indeed, we used the skyscrapers of Philly as a heading reference during our maneuvers.

First up was steep turns. They felt really good. I could better estimate bank angle from the outside sight picture whereas last time I relied more on the attitude indicator. I also anticipated the necessary back elevator much better, which meant my altitude was kept within tighter bounds during the 360°.

A couple hot air balloons were launching as I pulled into the airport, off for an evening float. This one is just getting inflated. The way they start on their sides during inflation makes them look like big, fluffy giants waking up from a nap.

Next was slow flight and stalls. These also felt better, but they still make me nervous. The plane becomes unstable during slow flight, where small disturbances can quickly become large ones if left unchecked. My CFI had me fly around 45 kts, just above stall speed, with the stall warning horn going the whole time ("why are we doing this? wahhhh," it said). The plane felt mushy and heavy but I had more control over it than the last time we tried it. Actual stalls also felt much better. I was able to recover much faster and kept in mind all the things that need attention during recovery – throttle, carb heat, flaps, all while recovering and establishing climb. My CFI gave a helpful tip that since the carb heat and throttle both get pushed in during recovery, and the levers are right next to each other, I can combine them into one step, just shove both all the way in at once and be done with it. I got a little too confident with my recoveries and for the first time, I did a secondary stall, where the recovery is premature and a second stall is induced, which then needs to be recovered from; embarrassment, altitude loss, etc. I didn't realize what was going on until after the full recovery and my instructor described it. That's not the way to recover, but I'm glad I know what it feels like now.

After stalls, we tried another simulated engine-out. I had gotten us pretty high up by this point, around 3500 ft, with all the climbing that follows a stall recovery, so there was a lot within gliding range. We picked a field that was fairly close, and I had to do descending 360°s to set up a landing approach. If I was in the house below the plane, heard the engine lose power and start spiraling down, I would be worried, but maybe people are used to it in that area since they are below the practice area. As with last time, it was good to physically feel the plane remain controllable without power.

At that point it was getting quite dark so we brought the power back up and headed for the airport. I like my instructor's strategy of having me fly the landing pattern and then taking over to complete the landing. He never tells me beforehand when he will take over and it's always later and later in the process as I progress. Last night I flew it all the way down, over the runway threshold, and he took over to do the flare. Landing no longer seems like an impossible thing. It wouldn't be pretty, but I feel like if I really really had to land it, I could.

I'll be traveling for work starting tomorrow so unfortunately, flight training will suffer a two-week hiatus. I expect to lose some of the muscle memory over that time, but hopefully it's like riding a bike and the loss won't be significant. I went almost three weeks between my first and second lessons because of weather, and I don't feel like I forgot much in that interim, but that early in the training there wasn't much to forget either. We'll see. Of course I'll have my study materials along with me, so at least I'll have that to keep my head mulling.

• Flight Hours: 6.6
• METAR N51 132300Z AUTO 34007 10SM CLR 26/9 A3006

The 152 we flew. Doing the preflight by myself means I have more time to do things like take pictures and watch the model airplane that usually flies around on the other side of the field at N51.

Labels: Flight Lessons

Walking home from the bus stop tonight. It was muggy last night and this morning, but finally some high pressure moved in this afternoon.

Labels: Cloudscapes

Right around sunset today, a couple hours after some thunderstorms passed through.

Labels: Cloudscapes

I got out to the airport this morning for a 0900 start time and it felt good because I feel like it's been a while since I flew in full daylight. The lesson did seem a bit more rushed than usual because both my instructor and the plane were due back for another flight at 1045, but I suppose that's how it works on weekend mornings.

The sky after we landed. Puffy cumulus. A little turbulence, but perfect flying weather.

We did steep turns, ground reference maneuvers, and a simulated engine-out today.

Steep turns are turns with a bank angle of 45° or greater. The thing to keep in mind during turns is that the lifting force of the wings is what's being used to turn the plane. What was used in level flight only to hold the plane up is asked to do two things in a turn: hold the plane up and change its course, so total lift must be increased to keep the vertical component equal to the weight. This is done by bringing the yoke back during the bank, increasing the angle of attack. The increase in lift can be felt by the people inside as well as by the plane's structure. A 45° turn requires a force of 1.4 G to stay level, which is very noticeable and fun if you like Gs.

For ground reference maneuvers, we did a circle around a point and s-turns across a road. There was some light wind, around 5 kts, which was good practice for wind compensation. To keep the circle radius constant, the turn has to be steepened on the downwind leg because the wind causes the plane to cover ground faster, and similarly, the turn is more shallow on the upwind leg as groundspeed is less.

Finally, at around 2500 ft we brought the engine to idle to simulate an engine-out. The emergency procedure is to first set up a glide at the best glide speed, which is a speed specific to the aircraft at which the plane will cover the most ground per altitude loss. In the Cessna 152, this is 60 kts. While slowing to best glide, we scanned the area for possible landing sites, mostly farmland in that area. Once we picked a spot, I headed the plane for it and we talked about whether we would make the field given our glide. We ended up making it easily and were quite high, so we discussed either using full flaps to steepen our descent or spiraling down to lose altitude before overshooting the field.

It's reassuring that the glide attitude is nothing crazy; it's the same as a landing approach, so now I know that yes, the plane can fly and maintain 60 kts without an engine, it just has to give up altitude to do that. I'd like to get in the habit of casing emergency landing spots the whole time I'm flying; another mental load to cycle through as I fly.

Just as with previous lessons, the main thing I'd like to improve on is the mental juggling. It's easy to become fixated on one aspect when I learn it for the first time and consequently, I let other aspects slide out of attention, for example focusing on maintaining a constant radius while circling but losing altitude in the process. Pilots often talk about a scan, a habit of cycling through the flight instruments, other air traffic, the relation of the wingtips to the horizon, front cowling to the horizon, etc, and how this scan is continuous and smooth. It even sounds like it gives people time to think, but I'm still a ways off from there.

These past two lessons, I've caught myself thinking, it would be nice to take a break and just fly straight and level for a couple minutes, or maybe even a couple hours. The nature of flight training is, as soon as I'm comfortable, to add something new so that I'm always slightly to moderately uncomfortable. I understand this is how things are learned and people improve, and I would be wasting my money if I took my CFI up just to fly straight and level to look at the scenery, but it's something I look forward to. When I finally do get my PPL, I will plan a destination that is hours away and I will enjoy the scenery enroute.

Next lesson is Thursday. Also, my instructor pointed me to digiwx.com which provides live weather from the field at N51, so I'll start using that for lesson-time METARs instead of the more public one at KSMQ.

• Flight Hours: 5.5
• METAR N51 091330Z AUTO 35006 10SM CLR 24/16 A3003

The 152 we flew today.

Labels: Flight Lessons

I think the strategy for training first-time pilots is to get them able to solo as soon as possible, which means going through the things that might go wrong while you're up there by yourself and how to deal with them.

Friday's lesson focused entirely on stalls. Stalls in an airplane don't refer to the engine (though engines too are capable of stalling, we just say they quit or fail or go out if it happens in an airplane), but to the airflow over the wings. When too much is asked of the wings by exceeding a critical angle of attack, the wings lose lift and the plane drops, which exacerbates the situation because the drop increases the AoA still further.

Stall practice involves producing a stall in various configurations, thereby learning how not to produce a stall, and then recovering once the stall occurs with minimal altitude loss. We did stalls in approach configuration (low power, no flaps), landing configuration (low power, flaps extended), and takeoff configuration (high power, no flaps). It's a little funny how much effort is spent learning how to get into a stall, since that's not something you'd want to do normally, but it's part of the final test and how else would you learn to recover? I have to say the Cessna 152 can get into some whacky attitudes and still not stall, and even when it does, it's usually neither violent nor dramatic, but more like, meh, I think I'll nose down now. It's comforting to know the plane is so forgiving. Several times I wasn't fast enough pulling the yoke back and the plane hadn't stalled by the time I got it all the way back. This effectively counts as a stall, although the wings wouldn't say so.

The lesson was one of those information overload lessons, where there are several new things I have to process and I have to do them at the same time. I would forget one thing and then if I focused on remembering that, I would miss something else the next time. Also Friday evening at the end of a long work week isn't the most conducive time to learning, but that's how the schedule worked out. But I remind myself I've been through this before, learning skills that require practice; it's uncomfortable when skills are going in, that's just how it works. My head is pretty dense and they have to be rammed in.

Finally, I made my first radio calls Friday, dramatic transmissions such as, "Cessna 152, departing runway 4, Solberg traffic" and "Cessna 152 entering left crosswind for runway 22, Solberg". Just like Maverick.

I've another lesson scheduled for tomorrow, the shortest inter-lesson interval yet. We'll work on either ground reference maneuvers or the landing pattern, depending on the wind.

• Flight Hours: 4.6
• METAR KSMQ 072253Z AUTO 14005KT 8SM BKN075 26/13 A2987 RMK AO2 SLP114 T02560133

This balloon was launching as I arrived at the airport. I love hot air balloons.

Labels: Flight Lessons

Some more cirrostratus on the bus ride home today.

Labels: Cloudscapes

Sky this morning. Cirrostratus?

Labels: Cloudscapes

METAR code: CBMAM

Latin for "giant thundercloud with tits", these are generally seen in the aftermath of very severe thunderstorms, although can also act as harbingers before the storm. The lobes are typically 1–3 km in diameter and can consist of both ice and water. Unclear exactly how they form, but they're not something you want to see while flying as severe wind shear and tornadic activity may be nearby.

Photo: Craig Lindsay

I had my fourth lesson Friday evening at N51, but with a different CFI from the last time I flew there. I'll describe the lesson a bit and then go into the result of my airport/instructor decision.

✈

We began with a fairly detailed review of basic maneuvers and how the control surfaces act upon the plane, followed by a preflight inspection of the 1977 Cessna 152. I flew a takeoff for the second time, this time with much improvement since I was able to anticipate the plane's left-turning tendency, but it was still not quite a straight takeoff run since I had to experiment a bit to get a feel for the required rudder pressure. We then climbed to about 2000 ft. as we headed to the Round Valley practice area. It was a perfect evening for flying. The air was absolutely calm and evening was settling in. I saw a hot air balloon as we left the airport and one other small plane at the practice area. We practiced turns, climbs, and slow flight.

I'm feeling better about my level turns because, again, I'm more able to anticipate how the plane will react. I also learned that the attitude indicator has convenient tick marks for a 30° turn, 45° turn, etc. (smart people, these aeronautical engineers), and this made holding a 30° bank much easier because I didn't have to memorize a sight picture. I also learned to pick a reference point on the engine cowling directly in front of me instead of on the centerline of the plane so that the reference point remains the same distance from the horizon regardless of the turn direction. And I made a 360° turn that was level enough to hit my own wake for the first time, which was pretty cool; it meant that I arrived back at exactly the same spot where I started the turn.

I also tried controlling the plane in slow flight for the first time, which is where the plane is flown level very near the stall speed, maybe 40–45 kts for the 152, by using a high angle of attack. This is what's known as mushing, when the wings are not so much riding on the air anymore but are rather plowing through it. It's an inefficient, brute-force way to generate lift. And the plane is much harder to control at this speed; there's a strong tendency to roll to one side and I needed large aileron inputs to hold a bank.

Finally, bracketed by the sun dipping below the horizon and the rising full moon rising, I flew most of the landing pattern back at N51 until about 30 ft above ground (AGL) at which point my CFI took over for the actual landing.

✈

So at this point I have flown at three airports with four instructors in two models of aircraft. In picking an airport/instructor, I considered the (a) distance from my house, (b) aircraft rental rate, (c) instructor rate, (d) available aircraft, (e) schedule flexibility, (f) runway length and obstructions, and (g) instructor teaching style, where teaching style was given the most weight.

All of the instructors recognized that I've already done a lot of reading on my own and suggested training would be accelerated because of that, which was good because I wanted to capitalize on the time I've already put in.

I found I prefer the high-wing 152 over the Cherokee because it gives an unobstructed view when I look down. Also when I've fantasized about flight training before, it was a Cessna that flew around my head, so that unfortunately ruled out Somerset (KSMQ), even though all the people there were extremely friendly. KSMQ also has a shorter runway at 2739 ft. (vs. 3510 ft. at 47N and 3735 ft. at N51). One should not plan on overrunning a runway, but I do make mistakes and it's probably a good idea to build in some padding. KSMQ also seemed reluctant to schedule evening lessons after 1700.

For the remaining two airports, both 47N and N51 have Cessna 152s, although N51 is cheaper. N51 also has the longest runway surrounded by open ground (i.e. no trees). Finally, the CFI I flew with Friday placed the most emphasis of the four instructors on theory. He constantly quizzed me and didn't hesitate to point out my mistakes during flight. N51 it is. I've scheduled two more lessons there for this week, Friday and Sunday. I am now, dare I say, a student pilot.

I'm pretty excited the selection process is done with, since each flight so far more or less started over from the beginning. I feel like having the same instructor will allow me to actually build upon what I already know and make progress in my flight abilities. My goal is to schedule two or three lessons per week moving forward, although that's easier said than done, because of work travel, planning for my wedding, i.e. life, but we will see.

• Flight Hours: 3.5
• METAR KSMQ 312353Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM CLR 26/14 A2979 RMK AO2 SLP086 T02610144 10322 20261 56007

Labels: Flight Lessons