Tonight's plan was to fly to the Fremont practice area to play more with slips and ground reference maneuvers. After pre-flight, my CFI and I got into the little C172S and started the engine. I handled the radio comms during taxi and takeoff again, and am starting to get more comfortable with that. Going from an uncontrolled airport in rural New Jersey to KPAO, with a tower and more traffic, there's an increase in workload trying to remember protocol for how to say what I want to say over the radio, and also in maintaining my mental model of other traffic within the airspace. I think getting comfortable amounts to just listening more to experience the different scenarios.
9968F before the flight.
"Cessna niner niner six eight foxtrot, cleared for takeoff runway three one."
"Cleared for takeoff, three one, six eight foxtrot." With that, I pushed the throttle in and took off runway 31, with decent crosswinds from the left, for a right Dumbarton departure. During the climb out, we used ForeFlight on my CFI's iPad to view where we were on the sectional relative to the KSFO bravo, which was super convenient. I'm pretty much sold on an iPad mini at this point; I'm not sure what else I would do with it, but it'd be worth it even if my only use for it was flying. Reducing cockpit clutter and reducing the time it takes to reference information en route makes flying safer and more pleasant.
KPAO sits just outside the 15-mile circle of KSFO, and for 31 departures we fly right into that circle, forcing us to stay under that sector of the bravo airspace that starts at 2500 ft and extends up to 10,000 ft. Our procedure has been to climb to 2000 ft, turn east, and then on the other side of the bay where, over Fremont, the bravo comes down to only 4000 or 6000 ft, we have more altitude to play with for practice maneuvers.
Tonight, however, as we were crossing the bay we noticed a bank of clouds around 3000 ft over Fremont and had to change plans. When starting out, a pilot first operates under Visual Flight Rules (VFR), meaning I have to avoid flying into clouds where I'd have to rely on controllers to keep me from flying into things. I definitely plan on getting a rating to allow for that later on, but for now, I run away from clouds.
We flew back a bit to practice over Leslie Salts instead, an interesting operation where they're extracting salt out of the bay, and helpful to pilots because the large piles of white salt serve as a recognizable landmark and reporting point.
Turns around a point involve picking some poor guy's house and flying low circles around it. The objective is to recognize which direction the wind is blowing and how that affects ground speed at different parts of the circle. The pilot then adjusts bank angle accordingly so the plane stays a constant distance from the house. As mentioned earlier, there was a decent wind tonight, and our upwind segments were a good 40 kts slower than our downwind segments. My circles were kind of eggy-shaped.
The next maneuver was S-turns over a road, which is the same idea as turns around a point, paying attention to ground speed and bank angle, although is a bit more fun because I get to quickly go from bank left to the bank right.
Slips are a strange maneuver where the plane is banked, as if in a turn, but the nose is held straight ahead with the rudder. The result is the plane continues to fly forward while side-stepping in the direction of the bank, very useful for staying lined up with a runway during landing. Slips also present the side of the plane to the oncoming air, which help it lose altitude without gaining speed during landing.
After our fun over the salts, we headed back to KPAO for one low pass over the runway and then a final landing. I tried to fly most of the landing, but the strong crosswinds made it difficult.
Finally, back inside, we submitted my application for a student pilot certificate, which should hopefully arrive in a couple weeks. I'm really excited about this, partly because certificates are fun, but mostly because it means my instructor thinks I'll be ready to solo soon. A student certificate allows a student pilot to take a plane up by himself, given that a CFI signs off on each flight plan beforehand. The first solo is a huge milestone towards the PPL, and in my mind is a bigger milestone than the PPL itself, since it will be the first time where it really will be up to me to get the darned thing home.
- Flight Hours: Δ1.0 Σ16.2
- METAR KPAO 260247Z 29010KT 10SM SCT030 BKN070 16/11 A3010
I'm pretty happy with tonight's flight. There are flights where I feel stupid and clumsy and seriously doubtful of my learning abilities, and then there are flights where things go pretty smoothly and I think hey, I might just get this yet, and tonight was one of the latter. The nose wasn't wandering all over the place, I could hold a heading, I could hold an altitude; I was flying.
I also tried talking on the radio, though that was less graceful. Radios are fun because you get to sound all pilot-like, but some transmissions can be very information-dense so you have to be on your toes to process it all. I definitely need to work on getting more comfortable with radio comms.
We practiced some steep turns and slow flight over Fremont before deciding on the spur of the moment that it would be fun to go visit my instructor's plane at KRHV. I entered the right downwind from the east and flew the landing with a lot of instruction from my CFI, but more or less by myself. And it was a good landing, centered all the way down, and a light touch on the ground.
After a brief stop, we took off from KRHV and headed back to KPAO. Our route took us directly over the runways at KSJC and KNUQ, which firstly was awesome because we got to see these big airports from not that high above (1400 ft). And it was fun to see the airliners at KSJC holding short for the little Cessna puttering overhead.
I again more or less flew the landing at KPAO, which also felt good, while we discussed sideslips a bit.
On the ground, I had a bit of an epiphany while my instructor was explaining sideslips. All of the training material I've read introduces the rudder in coordination with the ailerons. I think the motivation is to prevent people from trying to turn the plane with rudder alone, which can result in a spin. But thinking of the rudder purely as the thing that corrects aileron yaw forces you to identify exception cases, cases where rudder use is opposite from normal use, for example in a slip or picking up a wing in slow flight. I was a bit worried about this, having a very important control that sometimes works backwards, and relying on me to remember when it works which way.
The epiphany was when my instructor said, "Your feet have to act independently of your hands. Your feet have to do whatever it takes to control the yaw." Feet control yaw. Obviously I knew that before, but I didn't think in terms of that. I thought in terms of cases: left roll needs left rudder, right roll needs right rudder, pitch up needs right rudder. Thinking of the controls independently of each other simplifies things greatly. Feet control yaw, always, no special cases.
784SP
Today we made a right Dumbarton departure, meaning we flew runway 31 out and turned right at the Dumbarton Bridge to head east across the bay. Over the east hills, we practiced slow flight and stalls. Stalls are when the wings ask for too much lift, the air stops flowing smoothly over the wings, and the plane drops. They feel pretty benign in the 172 and it's good knowing I have to pitch the plane up a lot to get a stall to happen, since I'd rather not one catch me by surprise.
At some point, my CFI noticed a little flashing light and that the ammeter was reading negative. For some reason the battery wasn't charging. It was discharging. Our alternator had failed mid-flight and soon we would drain the battery, losing electrical power completely.
On the 172, the lights, avionics, and flaps are electrical. Thankfully it was daytime, and thankfully all the flight controls are connected with physical cables instead of fly-by-wire. If we lost the radios, it would be annoying landing in controlled airspace, but there are standard procedures for that and we had plenty of fuel to circle around or divert if we had to. We were likely to lose the flaps first, since they require the most power, but it's perfectly possible to land without flaps and, again, there are procedures for that.
We immediately set a course to return to KPAO and let tower know that we'd lost our alternator and that we might not be able to transmit soon. Tower asked if we wanted to declare an emergency, but my instructor declined. There was no imminent danger, just an annoyance. It felt good to at least get that message out, so that when we did lose the radios, tower would know why we were coming in without talking. We shut down the GPS units to conserve power but otherwise flew a normal pattern. On final we tried the flaps and they were still happy to extend, so we made a normal, uneventful landing.
I'm back! After a year and a half since my last lesson, I've gotten back to flying. Different model plane, different side of the country, same student, same mistakes. It feels great to be back. I'm now flying out of Palo Alto (KPAO), quite different from N51 in terms of traffic volume and airspace, but super convenient in distance from home and work.
Today's lesson was just an introductory flight for my instructor and me to gauge where I am in my training. I'm a bit rusty. My old problems of juggling airspeed, altitude, attitude, and power returned; I would focus on one and the others would drift. Coordinated turns were not quite there. No landings today.
I need to run today's flight through my head a couple times, reread about maneuvers, and hope that I'll get things under control in the next lesson or two. The overarching takeaway from today is that flying is about precision. I approached today with the goal of making the plane more or less do what I want and sure, I accomplished that, but continuous exact control is what I need to move forward. This will be my theme for the next couple flights.
Curious that the lesson that started the long hiatus back in 2015 was #13. I'm glad we've moved off that number. Should be smooth sailing from here.
- Flight Hours: 13.4
- METAR KPAO 142347Z 30012KT 10SM FEW045 17/03 A3016