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
No comments:
Post a Comment