Aileron

I'm still keeping up my determination to get to solo this week. They shouldn't, but the extra little papers in my logbook make me feel like I have more flying power. Even if no one else believes I can fly, those little papers do, and student pilots can't be picky whom their allies are. With that, I came to today's lesson all set on smoothing out my flares.

As my luck would have it, there was wind. There's wind every afternoon at KPAO. It's not like it surprises me, but I spend most of my time going around thinking, gee, wouldn't it be nice if I stumbled upon a pool of good luck? Wouldn't it be nice if I didn't have to work at this, but just by virtue of sleeping and getting out of bed, I could get some new skills? Could that be today?

No, it would not be today. And it probably wouldn't be that nice either. It'd be pretty boring.

6 kts crosswind component is right near the club limit for solo student pilots, but it is within limits and I should be able to deal with this stuff.

The first landing I bounced and ended up pointing leeward. Oof. Not dealing. The second landing I drifted way off centerline and went around. Third one, Rimas demonstrated. Fourth and fifth, we tried a continuous base to final turn which felt way more stable, but staying straight still had a lot of over correction. Sixth landing I started to really get a feel for it. Seventh one was perfect and I decided to end on a high note.

I felt more progress this lesson than in a long time. I think things are clicking as far as handling crosswinds. The old points I still need to remind myself of during landing:

• Look down the runway during the flare.
• Small crosswind corrections. Input, then wait.
• Look through my side of the nose, all the way through rollout.
• Rudder swings the nose, ailerons side step the plane.
• Elevator continually back during flare.

We fly again tomorrow. Hopefully today's progress sticks. If tomorrow's a good lesson, I'd feel ready for the phase check.

• Flight Hours: Δ0.9   Σ39.4
• KPAO 012347Z 34012KT 10SM SKC 23/15 A2995

I am endorsed… as far as the FAA is concerned, as a solo student pilot. We met up for a three hour ground session to review the student knowledge test and all the necessary papers are signed and pasted into my logbook. Still remaining to actually solo is a phase check with the club's chief pilot and Rimas's final thumbs up. I don't feel quite ready for either, but I now honestly think that both are within two or three more lessons. Maybe even more important, it's finally settling into my head that yeah, I can handle a plane by myself.

I learned a new term today. Engineer's Syndrome: where the student feels the need to try out all the wrong things for himself instead of just listening to his instructor.

Rimas got himself some extra instructing time this week so I jumped on it and booked a bunch of time with the intention of getting me to solo this week. I think I'm losing ground during the off weeks, so one concerted push to get my landings smoothed out should be all that's needed to get me solo.

I had never been to KOAK so we decided to go there. KOAK is a cool airport in that it's really two airports in one: the international/commercial side and a general aviation side. There were a lot of comms getting into KOAK and Rimas had to pick up slack when I simply didn't understand half the instructions. At the last minute, the tower offered us the commercial runway. The big, 10,520 ft. runway. We had to slow down and descend pretty rapidly to get down, but we accepted the clearance because chance to land on freaking two-miles of runway. Unfortunately, it wasn't a good landing. I got fooled by the huge size, flared too high, and dropped the plane in.

More pattern work on the GA side, then depart to KSQL.

KSQL was a circus. We could barely get the tower to respond to us and when they did, they just told us to hold doing three-sixties. Everyone was being told to do three-sixties. Tower was simply task-saturated. We eventually got in there, did our one full-stop, and got the hell out of there.

KPAO was almost just as busy and we came very close to their delta without a response from the tower. Thankfully we were acknowledged before having to do more holding. My landing was crappy. The ol' big runway to little runway trick, I flared too late on KPAO's small runway and landed hard.

• Flight Hours: Δ1.1   Σ38.5
• KPAO 291747Z 35007KT 10SM FEW012 SCT020 18/14 A3003
• KOAK 291719Z 26006KT 10SM FEW008 SCT010 BKN200 16/12 A3004 RMK AO2 T01560122
• KSQL 291747Z 02007KT 10SM FEW008 SCT200 17/14 A3003

• Flight Hours: Δ0.4   Σ37.4
• METAR KPAO 212347Z 33010G20KT 10SM SKC 23/17 A2996

We started out with some airwork over the Fremont hills and I'm feeling really solid with that. Have to remember to start the flaps up for recovery from approach stalls. Pitch, power, flaps. Then we did a really prolonged engine out simulation. We started from around 3500 ft, picked a landing site, did a slow, circling descent, and went all the way down to short final before bringing the power back and getting out of there. I feel a lot better afterwards, having experienced how much time the plane can glide for. Getting better at reacting to engine out. Airspeed, best landing, checklist.

Then some landings at KRHV, which still need work.

• Flight Hours: Δ1.5   Σ35.2

Rimas's schedule opened up at the last minute so we were able to squeeze in a morning lesson again. I like morning flying because (1) I'm a morning person, (2) I'm not tired from work, (3) the winds are calmer, and (4) traffic both on the roads and in the air is less. The downside is I have to choose between having coffee before the flight and needing to pee or delaying coffee and being stupid. I've been going with the latter. Adrenaline is more than happy to step up in place of caffeine when the situation arises.

We had a short calm flight over to Hayward where we did touch-n-goes. Some inbound traffic, but we were the only aircraft doing pattern work. When air traffic is light like that, I can tell the tower controller is bored because he gives me my landing clearance when I'm exactly midfield on the downwind every time, as if his only task is following my little radar blip on his screen. I feel good about doing pattern work at times like those because if I wasn't there, then he'd be really bored.

I'm feeling better about my centerline control. I still don't have the flare down. I'm either pitching up too fast and ballooning or not fast enough and landing hard with a lot of elevator left. Better than yesterday, but still not awesome.

I finally got some no-flap landings down. The plane is really slippery without flaps and I floated a long way, but the reason we came to Hayward was for the long runway, so I just held it above the runway and tried to be patient. Asymmetrical flap failure scares me.

• Flight Hours: Δ1.0   Σ33.7
• METAR KPAO 121447Z VRB04KT 10SM SKC 18/14 A2986
• METAR KHWD 121454Z 00000KT 10SM CLR 18/13 A2986

I was getting cozy with N9968F and wanted to book her until soloing so that I'd be familiar with the aircraft, but I found out at the last minute she just got a new engine and club rules say no students while breaking in a new engine. So we grabbed an older, carburated, Skyhawk. During the first descent, I pulled off one of the display dimmer knobs thinking it was carb heat. Whoops. Never good when the pilot is inspecting a knob that's no longer attached to the control panel.

We stayed in the KPAO pattern and did full-stop landings. I wanted to try lessons before work so this was early, around 0800. Winds were calm. More bird activity in the morning. I still need to (1) make sure I don't look through the nose for directional reference, (2) hold back elevator during rollout, (3) smooth out my flares. We also tried no-flap landings but those didn't work to the point of being funny because I just came in too fast and high for the short runway at KPAO that I went around both times.

• Flight Hours: Δ1.0   Σ32.7
• METAR KPAO 111447Z VRB06KT 10SM SKC 15/10 A2998

Same route as the previous lesson: we headed west past Stanford and did airwork near the Stanford Dish. Another simulated engine failure, which I felt better about. I picked up the acronym (A)irspeed – pitch/trim for best glide, (B)est landing spot – find one, go there, (C)hecklist – read it. Somewhere after (B), I run through my mental checklist of fuel, mixture, mags. A mayday call should be in there somewhere too, but the ABC acronym is handy if that's all I have mental bandwidth for.

Another handy mnemonic, one for squawk codes: 75 taken alive (hijacking), 76 radio glitch (radio malfunction), 77 going to heaven (emergency). Kind of morbid but it gets the job done. I've also heard that if switching your transponder to 7600 because your radio failed, you should avoid passing through 7500 because that will make your radar return all sorts of interesting colors on everyone's radar screens, but that sounds like something I'd forget and accidentally do.

Stalls and slow flight are feeling really good. Steep turns could use work, but I think I'm within limits right now.

Landings I need work. I need to stop being passive about the approach and commit to fighting the wind all the way to the ground as soon as I start my descent.

• Flight Hours: Δ1.3   Σ31.7
• METAR KPAO 072247Z 31016KT 10SM SKC 21/09 A3004

We went to Hayward for pattern work today. This was the first flight where we started assuming I'd handle all comms. Rimas is still happy to fix my mistakes, but now I'm the default. As mentioned before, I started flight training at an untowered airport in rural New Jersey where it was often the case that I was the only aircraft in the pattern and just made position reports to hear myself talk. Transitioning from that to one of the busiest airspaces in the country was intimidating, but my comfort preferences have switched now. I'd much rather be talking (making mistakes, feeling embarrassed) with a controller than bear the entire burden of traffic avoidance myself. In controlled airspace, help is always one button away, but outside, in the wastelands who knows if some crazy with no radio is trying to land on top of you where you can't see him.

I had a nice moment while in the pattern, where it hit me that I'm actually having fun doing this. I was looking forward to my next chance to talk to the controller, to my next chance to make my approach better, every leg of my pattern better. I like flying. That sounds obvious, but because lessons are always at the point of task saturation, it really is hard work, and it's easy to forget that I'm doing this voluntarily as a leisure activity. There've been multiple times driving home exhausted after a lesson thinking how I have a strange concept of leisure and, yeah, probably can't argue that, but it's not completely illogical. There are benefits to this.

• Flight Hours: Δ1.0   Σ28.1

I had my medical today. This amounts to a ten minute physical and then paying a doctor $165 for a piece of paper saying yeah, this guy probably won't have a heart attack while flying. A third class certificate, which is what I got, is good for non-commercial flying and lasts five years. This medical certificate coupled with my student pilot certificate is all the legal documentation I need to fly solo as a student. The only thing left is the go-ahead from my CFI.

Interesting thing of note, I am red-green colorblind, which means my certificate is restricted to daytime flying with a radio. I haven't thought too much about how this would hamper my plans with flying. I imagine it'll be easy enough to plan trips during daylight hours, and I can't imagine why I'd want to go up without a radio. I have the option to contest the restriction though, by going up with an examiner and demonstrating I can see the color signals from a control tower. Colorblindness varies widely from one colorblind person to another, and so do the actual colors used for things like traffic signals and navigation lights. One of these nights, I'll hang out at an airport to see if I can tell the difference between the colors being used because I've never tried it.

Landings. Let's do this.

My response to screwing up is usually to have at it again, and have at it again soon. I've found that if I give myself time to dwell on my mistakes, my self-confidence drops and drags my motivation down with it, which begets more mistakes, and that's never good. Though I'm not sure I would call landing practice on Friday a screw-up, it wasn't successful and it felt frustrating.

Citing tiredness late in the day as a contributing factor to said frustration, I scheduled an early afternoon flight for today. We flew a right Dumbarton departure over the bay and headed over to Hayward Executive (KHWD) for practice. This was nice in that it gave me a couple minutes to get used to the plane in straight level flight before the more precise landing maneuvers, and also because Hayward has a bigger runway than KPAO, which makes all airplane occupants breathe a little easier.

KPAO tends to be the busiest little airport around on the weekends and landing practice there can be a chore because planes end up waiting in long sequences for takeoff and landing clearances. I don't know why the other airports nearby like Hayward have so much less traffic, but if it means I can circle around and do my thing unmolested, that's fine with me.

We did six or seven touch-n-gos at KHWD before heading back for a full stop landing at KPAO. Although not quite there yet, the landings felt much better than Friday. It will take me some while more for the concept of sideslips to sink into my muscle memory, but it's getting there. I still find myself thinking, okay now the rudder works backwards, sometimes during slips, but if I concentrate there are some brief moments where I can decouple the rudder from the ailerons and understand what each needs to do independently.

• Flight Hours: Δ1.2   Σ18.9
• KHWD 211954Z AUTO 27007KT 10SM CLR 28/07 A2991 RMK AO2 SLP138 T02780072

Everything was squirrely tonight. And by everything, I mean me; and by squirrely, I mean imagine a squirrel flying a plane through a hailstorm but instead of hailstones it's raining nuts. But enough self-pity, let's try to debrief a bit.

Tonight was my first lesson of landing practice since restarting flying. Landing practice amounts to landing and then immediately taking off again without losing much speed on the ground roll. This is called a touch-n-go and lets pilots bang out multiple landings efficiently. We did about seven of these (I wasn't really counting) at KPAO.

I didn't feel like I was on top of things at any point during the lesson. Trying to juggle the radio while maintaining my bearings in the pattern kept me task-saturated. There was also a decent crosswind from the right, and I'm still very clumsy with sideslips, either swinging the nose too much or noticing too late when the wind has changed and finding myself with the wrong amount of correction.

A couple specific factors come to mind:

Briefing. I should've asked at the beginning of the flight what landmarks we were looking for for our turns in the pattern. Instead, it look me a couple circuits to figure out how to define our legs. This was exacerbated a bit by the number of other planes in the pattern, which is common at KPAO, but can result in the controller telling us to extend our downwind until he's ready for us to turn. In other words, every circuit was slightly different. It also took me a while to realize that pattern altitude is at 800 ft east of the airport (it's 1000 ft west of it). All of these confusion points could've benefited from some quick research beforehand. I kind of went into the lesson already behind, not ready to lead the events, but just waiting to see what would happen. That can begin a psychological snowball where not feeling in control creates stress which loses more control, and I need to guard against that.

Precision. I mentioned this in an earlier post, but didn't adhere to it tonight. Flying is about precision: holding an altitude, holding an airspeed, holding the centerline – somewhere kind of near the target isn't good enough. Imprecision should be shown no mercy.

Energy. Today was a long day at the end of a long week at work. The flight lesson was delayed so it didn't start until almost 1900. Skipping dinner to go flying when I'm tired doesn't yield good results. I forget what the IMSAFE acronym stands for, but I'm pretty sure being awake and fed are both in there.

• Flight Hours: Δ0.9   Σ17.7

It occurred to me that I should probably find out how Joanna reacts to small planes since, if for some reason she was terrifically frightened or sickened by them, that would change how much energy I should invest in flying. Aviation opens a lot of exciting opportunities, from camping at secluded backcountry airstrips, to acrobatics, to the Civil Air Patrol, but one of the primary "missions" I had in mind was simply taking the family from point A to point B.

So I asked Joanna about doing a discovery flight, a first lesson that flight schools sell for cheap to try to get someone hooked on flying. She sounded excited. My flight instructor suggested the three of us go together and make an afternoon of it: we would fly from Palo Alto to Half Moon Bay (KHAF), with me having a lesson on the way there, Joanna having her discovery flight on the way back, and a nice lunch in the middle at Half Moon Bay.

When the day came, clouds were threatening to sock in KHAF so we decided to go to San Carlos (KSQL) instead. A minor bummer since that route wouldn't include flying over the hills and along the ocean, but adapting plans in response to weather is a big part of flying, so might as well drive that point home from start. I took off on a left Dumbarton departure out of KPAO to do some maneuvers before heading over to KSQL. Once we got up to 2000 ft though, we could see that KHAF was actually clear. It's easy to forget how close the ocean is to us in the south bay. The only roads leading there are small twisty ones that go over the hills to the west so driving always takes at least 90 minutes. And the hills block the view, so the illusion is that the ocean is this far away place. But in a plane as soon as you have enough altitude to see over the hills, the ocean is right there, a deep flat blue with white surf where it meets the land.

Seeing it and not going was too much to bear. Also my instructor was taking his job as aviation salesperson very seriously and scenery scores mucho sales points, so I pointed the little plane towards the ocean and we began to climb over the hills. Half Moon Bay is pretty easy to spot with its distinctive hook of land. The airport is untowered and almost right on the ocean. We landed and walked to Mezza Luna, an Italian restaurant right next to the airport.

As planned, Joanna flew her discovery flight on the way back. She loved it and my instructor and I breathed a sign of relief – no one's hobbies were being grounded any time soon. People are always surprised how much control a person with no experience can be given on a discovery flight. But in the air, there are not that many things to hit and a lot of room to correct yourself if you get into something funny. Joanna's flying was fairly smooth and lacked the over-controlling over-adjustments of my first flights, but the video later showed she had a pretty mean death grip on the yoke, the natural response to realizing that for the first time you're in control of an airplane.

The weather had used the lunch hour to increase the updrafts at the hills and there was now a cloud bank solidifying rapidly. If we couldn't find a clearing in the clouds to get over the hills, we would have to continue south along the coast, out from under the 4000 ft bravo shelf, before we could climb to get over the clouds. But we found an opening and were soon back in our familiar valley, crossing the particle accelerator (SLAC), overflying the Stanford campus, and into the KPAO airspace. Joanna continued flying all the way to the runway threshold, then my instructor took over and landed.

For the record, Joanna logged 0.5 hrs PIC time.

• Flight Hours: Δ0.6   Σ16.8

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

• Flight Hours: Δ1.0   Σ15.2

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.

• Flight Hours: Δ0.8   Σ14.2

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

The Solar Impulse 2 is a long-range solar-powered fixed-wing aircraft currently attempting to circumnavigate the world under solar power alone. Built in 2014, it began its attempt in March 2015 from Abu Dhabi, headed east across Asia, to Hawaii, and then eventually hopes to cross the United States, the Atlantic, and back to Abu Dhabi. The plane has a wingspan of 236 ft (compare to 196 ft of a B747), weighs 5100 lbs, and has a cruise speed of 49 kts. Four electric 17.4 hp motors are powered by batteries and solar panels on the wings. It charges its batteries and climbs during the day and then runs off batteries and descends at night.

I had the privilege of visiting the plane at the end of its ninth leg where it flew across the Pacific from Kalaeloa, Hawaii, to Mountain View, California. After passing security at Moffett Federal Airfield (KNUQ) and then being treated to a pair of F-18s taking off, we were welcome into the Solar Impulse's custom inflatable hangar. The plane looks delicate, like something from the future where people live in the sky. Its wings and empennage are fabric stretched over a thin frame. Its dimensions are that of a large glider, with long thin wings and a glide ratio of 40:1.

The crew in the hangar was busy preparing for the plane's next leg to middle-America, but they were also very interested in showing their guests around and answering questions. The team is passionate about demonstrating the possibilities of transport without fossil fuels and indeed, if it weren't for the human on board, the SI2 could remain in perpetual flight. But what fun is an airplane if we're all watching from the ground?

More seriously, it is a big point they're trying to drive home. The technology for emission-free transport is already here; it's just a matter of scaling it.

Solar Impulse 2 empennage

Solar Impulse 2 fuselage from under left wing

Lenticular cloud! After the wind travels over the mountains on the right, it forms a standing wave on the lee side, where we are. The crest of this wave is just high enough to cool below the dew point so a cloud forms there. As the air continues along the wave and drops into the next trough, it warms up again and the cloud evaporates.

Labels: Cloudscapes

It's been a while since my last cloudscape! Here's N51 after my lesson today, just as an overcast sky was breaking up. Looks like a low layer of cumulus with a broken stratus layer higher up and then some wispy cirrus way higher up. In the foreground is the fuel tank where planes go to drink and be merry.

Labels: Cloudscapes

Calling out the points I needed to work on after lesson № 11 really helped – the act of putting into words what I was missing in my flying made the mistakes easy to fix, basically shaping the obstacles into tangible things. It also made it handy to have a written record I could look back at when I happened to be mentally flying. It took me maybe thirty seconds to reread the list and I was able to reenforce corrections.

With that in mind, I'm going to try it again. Here are the improvement points my instructor pointed out today:

Rudder correction on takeoff. I don't know if it's only the 152 or all single engine tricycle planes, but above maybe 40 kts on takeoff roll, the nose wheel starts to shimmy. It's the plane's not too subtle "I don't like traveling on the ground, damnit." This is easy to correct by taking weight off the nose with a little bit of back elevator. What had previously escaped me was that taking weight off the nose wheel renders it less effective. What used to happen in my takeoffs was roll straight, correct shimmy, swerve to the left, overcorrect to the right, thankfully leave the ground and try to get back on runway heading. But I learned today if I just anticipate the loss of nose wheel authority with extra right rudder, I can keep it straight the whole time and no one panics.

Energy management on final. Landing an airplane is a great time to understand the basics of thermodynamics. You can gain altitude at the cost of losing speed, and you can gain speed at the cost of losing altitude. If you really want to, you can get both by adding energy with the engine, and you can lose both by throttling the engine back or adding drag with flaps. Landing is an exercise in bleeding off energy without going top slow nor too fast and ideally having spent your energy just as you touch the ground. We experimented a bit today with waiting until almost over the runway to put in the last 10° of flaps and it was helpful to really see how that steepened the glide and be mindful of how fast that that drag will eat away energy. Airspeed, glide slope, power, and flaps, all have to do a little dance together to get the plane down correctly.

Flare attitude. Flare is the part in landing where the plane is near the ground and lifts its nose to convert what speed it has left into extra lift to cushion the touchdown. I had been a little too exuberant in my flares, where instead of slowing my descent to zero, I actually started lifting away from the ground, which is not good since I risk finding myself pretty high up at the point the plane runs out of flying energy. My new objective during flare is to not bring the nose above level attitude. "Try to fly level" is what my instructor said. The plane won't actually be able to maintain altitude (again, energy is just about expended), and I have to continually bring the yoke back in my attempt, but the result is a very slow, gentle descent to the ground.

We did five landings today. The first one I was slow on final and didn't have much energy to flare (rough landing). Second one was okay, I did my exuberant flare and so it was a bit of porpoising before actually getting to the ground. Third one a gust hit us during the flare and we lifted away and my instructor had to correct it. Last two I was very happy with; I got us down to where I wanted, controlled my flare, and set down gently.

I've been doing pattern work (no higher than 1000 ft AGL, circling the airport) for the past six flight-hours but am still enjoying it a lot. It's just fun getting to operate planes. I would enjoy sitting in the plane while it's tied to the ground, but I don't want to seem too nuts until I at least get my PPL.

• Flight Hours: 12.5
• METAR N51 011630Z 26007KT 10SM OVC045 16/11 A2993

Plane today, N94247

Labels: Flight Lessons

Now that the sun sets earlier, evening lessons after work are less attractive since I would be in the dark the entire time. It's beautiful and peaceful in the dark, and other traffic is actually easier to see (assuming they remembered to turn on their strobes), but it's more difficult to judge the runway centerline and the instrument lighting in these old 152s is almost nonexistent. I tried a 0900 lesson yesterday, getting back home to work remotely before 1100, and that worked out alright.

Weekday mornings are great because no one else is really flying and I had the airport to myself. The cooler air also makes for happier engines and wings.

In the feeling stuck aftermath of my previous lesson, I made a point to review the techniques I needed to focus on and mentally run through the takeoff and landing sequences. When I first started flying, I had a tendency to over-control the airplane and I had to consciously tell myself to back off and let the plane fly itself, which it does quite well if you let it; but pattern work isn't the same as flying at altitude. The name of the game when you're low and slow is precision flying, by which I mean airspeed, engine speed, and airplane position all have exact places they should be during all phases of takeoff and landing, and any deviation needs to be corrected immediately. Over-control in the pattern isn't the best phrase, but a vigilant nursing of everything the plane is doing is required.

This attitude paid off. I felt more like I could keep at least a step ahead of what I was doing. Remembering to use the trim wheel really does help relieve workload. I remembered to make radio position reports at all the reporting points, I remembered to set the flaps on each leg, and I did better at a stable final approach.

On the first landing we did, my instructor called for a go-around (for practice, my approach was actually spot on). A go-around is an aborted landing, where the engine is brought to full power, flaps are progressively brought back up, and the plane climbs away from the runway, presumably to try the landing again. These are good to practice in case your approach ends up being really bad by the time you get down, or another airplane doesn't see you and taxis onto the runway, or there's wildlife on the runway, etc. The go-around went well except I forgot to turn off carb heat during climb-out.

We also did a no-flap landing, where because flaps aren't used, we come in faster and flatter on final. It also means we flare longer and land longer down the runway because we need to bleed off the excess speed. It's interesting how a little extra speed (70 kts vs. 65 kts) has such a noticeable effect. No-flap landings are useful if your electrical system fails and you can't extend flaps.

I feel like I've gone over a hump in the training, but more likely it's just proof I need to put more effort into reviewing technique in between lessons.

• Flight Hours: 11.4
• METAR N51 271400Z 04005KT 10SM CLR 07/02 A3058

What planes look like when they're sleeping.

Labels: Flight Lessons

While I was starting my research into flight training mid-2014, it was a rare and valuable find to come across a frank discussion of costs, so I'd like to post a clear and simple account of my expenses so far, near the 10 flight-hour mark, taxes and all.

The books cost includes only those that I think are necessary for training. I've bought a whole bunch of aviation related books that are more for entertainment than learning, and those are not included here.

I can't say how this would factor in, but N51 is in suburban New Jersey, within 15 minutes of two other airports with their own flight schools. Air traffic is fairly light, even on beautiful Saturdays, so there is not much time burned sitting on the taxiway waiting to use the runway.

The lesson fees include instructor time for ground school (the 10–20 minutes before and after each lesson when we brief/debrief the flight), but I haven't been logging how much time ground school takes exactly. I don't think it's a bad assumption that the proportion of ground school to flight time will stay the same up to the final exam, so we can assume my flight training operating costs will remain $140.14/hr moving forward, which includes aircraft rental, flight training, ground school, and fuel burned driving to and from the airport.

Assuming I am average and take 65 flight hours to get to a passing final exam, the remaining 54.2 hours will cost me $7595.59, resulting in a total PPL cost of $9341.88. The numbers are much larger and scarier here compared to when I just go in and pay $150 a pop, but that's the purpose of this exercise, and $9300 is what I'm looking at realistically. Most flight schools will advertise $6000 to get a PPL but that assumes your last name is Skywalker and you only take 40 hours to learn it. Most pilots will tell you a wide range, $6000–$12,000, which is more accurate but not very helpful in financial planning.

Whether it's a worthy objective to minimize the cost of a PPL, and consequently learn as quickly as possible, is questionable, and that certainly isn't my goal. It would be nice to finish earlier, and thereby have spent less money, but with the PPL in hand I would continue flying anyway which means burning cash at a comparable rate, so the savings are phantom. I really like the idea of learning the material completely.

It took me almost exactly four months to get 10.8 flight hours behind me (2.7 hrs/mon), which is much slower than the 8 hrs/mon that I'd originally anticipated. Hopefully I can increase this rate, but I don't think it's a huge deal if I can't. Extrapolating the current lesson rate, I will get to my final exam in 20 months (this number sounds dismal).

So there is the ten-hour financial report. I think it'd be good to check back in at 20 hours, 40 hours, and when I have my PPL in hand.

I had another flight lesson Saturday to work in the pattern practicing landings. I feel like I've plateaued in my training, where my landings and pattern work hasn't improved over the past couple of lessons. I'm getting the plane down sure enough, and almost all the landings are decently gentle, but I don't always feel in complete control and have to be reminded of some things. Pattern work is certainly not boring (as I feared it'd be), and being stuck is not frustrating yet, but I'm not happy with the state of things either.

I can identify a couple reasons for the stagnation, the largest of which are lesson spacing and homework. Because of non-airplane related things going on, the past couple of lessons have been spaced several weeks apart, and I end up using at least one takeoff/landing circuit to reacquaint myself with how to fly the airplane and all the little subpar points in my technique that I forgot about. This uses up time but also puts a dent in my confidence, although I've been pretty good at shrugging that off when the plane lines up on the runway again. It hasn't been the best strategy to space lessons farther apart just as I got into the trickiest part of flight training, but here we are. Anyway: redoubled effort to increase lesson frequency.

Perhaps because the lessons have gotten farther apart, I haven't been doing my homework between lessons. I don't have homework in the traditional sense of assignments that get graded, but I'm always reading through some training material (there's no end yet to stuff to read, thankfully) and I've found that just taking a couple minutes to mentally visualize all the steps to, say, descend and land, helps ingrain things. These activities seem less pressing when lessons are farther apart so they get dropped, which is not good. So back on the homework, kid.

Cessna 152 Instrument Panel; maybe it'll help to stare at this photo more.

Added to that, my instructor helped pinpoint several elements that I should focus on:

Maintain center line on takeoff and landing rolls. This has slowly been improving but I'm far enough in my training that this should really be perfect. The nose wheel should ride the line like a track.

Use trim to help maintain pitch. Pilots can adjust elevator deflection (and therefore pitch attitude) by pushing and pulling the yoke, but they can also recenter the neutral position of the yoke with the trim wheel. This wheel adjusts little trim tabs on the trailing edge of the elevator, kind of like an elevator of the elevator (if you like historical tidbits, search for "buckminster fuller trim tabs"). I've been mostly ignoring the trim wheel and controlling pitch with yoke alone since I thought it'd be easier with one less thing to worry about, but my instructor says it's not. Setting pitch with the yoke and then holding it there using trim leads to steadier flying and less workload on the pilot since he doesn't have to constantly micro-adjust the yoke.

Knowing when to turn in the pattern, especially base to final, has been tricky. I think I just need to get more experience visualizing things.

Intercepting and maintaining center line on final approach. This is similar to maintaining center line on ground roll. I need to be more aggressive about this.

• Flight Hours: 10.8
• METAR KSMQ 241553Z AUTO 10SM CLR 13/04 A3036 RMK AO2 SLP281 T01280044

North American T6 Texan. There was a flight of three Texans at the field while I was flying, doing formation maneuvers and doing photos on the ground. They are large and loud and very pretty.

Labels: Flight Lessons

No, not my crash. We went hiking in the Catskills this weekend and found the wreckage of one of the plane crashes there on Kaaterskill Peak. We also found a piece of wing from another crash further up the mountain but didn't bother looking for the rest.

Apparently there are a lot of small crash sites scattered throughout the Catskills, mostly as a result of controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), where the pilot had complete control of the aircraft up until impact, but just didn't expect the ground to be where it was, either because he was lost or had no visibility or was disorientated (or all three). There's even a B-25 bomber on the east side of Balsam Cap from a training mission that got lost at night.

This particular plane was a Piper Cherokee Six, tail № N7146C, and on its last flight on 25 June 1987, it took off from Quakertown, PA bound for Tannersville, NY. At the time of the crash (2115), there was thick overcast just above the mountain tops, civil twilight had just ended, and the moon had not yet risen, so it would have been pretty dark. The pilot wouldn't have seen the mountains, especially if he was descending out of the clouds. It would have just been black on black. Tannersville is only three miles from the crash site, so the pilot was likely beginning his descent into the airport pattern (both landing gear were down), misjudged his position, and found a mountain where he didn't expect one. The pilot and his one passenger were both killed. They probably didn't have time to process what happened.

The Catskills are not high at all, the peaks are around 3500 ft, and the fact that this is high enough to catch planes is scary. Losing visual references on a VFR flight is one of the scariest things I can think of.

The starboard wing is on the right here, seen with the landing gear extended out of the wheel well. There's a fuselage section on the left, and the engine is further out of view to the left.

Waiting for the bus this morning.

Labels: Cloudscapes

It's been about a month since my last flight lesson, but I got back to it tonight and it was good to be back flying. As usual, I forgot less in the hiatus than I feared and was pleasantly surprised how much of this stuff sticks. I also had a different instructor tonight. My previous one is away on training of some sort. It's unfortunate that it takes some time to build up a relationship with a new person, but it's not that bad and I think it's helpful to get perspectives from different instructors.

Tonight, like most lessons between now and solo will be, focused on landings. We did four circuits in the pattern at N51, but one of which was demoed completely by the instructor. There was a bit of wind, almost directly abeam the runway, which meant that I had to be careful to keep my pattern the shape I wanted and that I had to do a slip on final for crosswind correction. The first landing was surprisingly gentle, the second one I misjudged our height and we hit the ground hard and bounced, and the last one was not that bad.

I continue to be haunted by my failures in X-Plane, thinking in my flares that it's not going to end well, but flying in real life is much easier; I wish I had never played the game.

• Flight Hours: 9.2
• METAR N51 082130Z 14005KT 10SM FEW060 20/13 A3009

Labels: Flight Lessons

A drizzly kind of day this Saturday.

Labels: Cloudscapes

Another one from last night at the airport, but this one viewing a receding storm.

Labels: Cloudscapes

At one point I thought it would be a great job to be a flight instructor – flying all the time, building hours, all while getting paid – but after tonight's lesson, I am reconsidering. The job description amounts to "wait until the student does something catastrophic, then try to fix it before you crash".

Okay, tonight's lesson was not that bad. It was one of the more difficult lessons, but difficult as in indicative of progress. First, let me get some excuses out of the way, and then maybe I'll say something constructive:

• It was damn-humid (I'm certain there's a METAR code for that). A lot of the lesson was either flying slow or taxiing on the ground and the air vents don't scoop much air into the cockpit those times.
• I hadn't really eaten anything today. Sometimes when I work from home, I forget.
• The plane we were assigned had a problem with its left seat positioning so my feet didn't reach the pedals as well as they usually do. I had to slouch a bit and my site picture was off and things were slightly in the wrong place.
• Crosswinds (more on that later).
• It was dark. I know most of my other lessons have had a portion in the dark and I consciously decided a while ago that this was a good thing since I'm required to have night-flying experience anyway, and flying in daylight will then seem easier (kind of a Batman thing going here), but tonight I wished it wasn't dark so that I could see the landmarks and read my instruments better because I wanted something that wasn't fighting against me.

Anyway, enough of that. Get on with it.

It's been really hot and humid here the past couple of days and today a cold front finally started making its way through, generating small, but strong thunderstorms here and there. We didn't get any direct hits at N51 and all that cloud action makes for really nice sunsets, but it also means there is wind, both horizontal and vertical. I've never really experienced crosswinds before, where the wind tends to push the plane sideways off the runway, and tonight we were doing more landing training, where keeping the plane smooth and straight is critical.

I did three landings. The first one I didn't quite have a feel for how much crosswind correction was needed and I was all over the place. The tricky bit is that the wind isn't constant; it gusts and also changes as you descend into where ground obstructions begin to factor in. A continual feel of the wind and flight control adjustment is required. The second landing, I was set up better and had the plane lined up until the last couple of feet where a gust blew me off to the right and I got kind of nervous correcting so low to the ground because correcting means banking the wings. My third landing was decent; I held the correction all the way down and put the plane down without my CFI having to save it. It feels so good to put the wheels on the ground and remain right-side up.

At that point I figured that I'd crossed a personal threshold of diminishing returns, where my nerves had gotten so high and my energy levels so low, that further practice wouldn't benefit me much, so I called it quits and we parked the plane. In retrospect, I kind of wish I'd tried another one to see if I would've continued improving. Also in retrospect, from the comfort of my home, I think crosswind days really are an opportunity to put my skills through their paces, and I should fly them as much as possible, but one thing at a time.

• Flight Hours: 8.3
• METAR N51 092330Z 16007KT 10SM CLR 27/22 A2983

Sunset at the airport: sweet. If you live in populated areas and want unobstructed views of the sky for cloud pictures (or meteor showers or whatever), you can't beat your local airport.

Labels: Flight Lessons

If you've ever been highly tempted to make a scene on an airliner when the person next to you asks you to close your window shade and ignore the magnificent, prolonged sunset that's occurring as you're traveling six miles above the snow-capped Rockies at three-fourths the speed of sound so that he can better enjoy the sitcom rerun that's playing on the five-inch screen in front of him, there are others who share your sentiment. One of them wrote a book!

Vanhoenacker is also a 747 pilot and so is able to pepper his romantic musings on sunsets, auroras, shooting stars, and flying (flying for the sake of flying) with fun aviation facts and the accounts of the trips he flew.

There is a quiet, implicit plea to look out the window more, but he doesn't press it. Not everyone is in love with aviation; or natural phenomena. And although he thinks long and hard about announcing to his passengers that a once in a lifetime viewing of the northern lights, from miles in the air, is occurring right outside their windows, he is in the end a commercial pilot who understands that people are trying to sleep and, even if they're not, may not care (this is why captains don't announce nice things, people).

The book does not have much structure, and it doesn't seem like any research was done beyond what you would expect an airline pilot to already know. It's more like if you met at a party a pilot who's also given to writing poems, this is what he would say for the next couple hours.

Labels: Book Reviews

Last September we were still living on our sailboat across from New York. It's sunrise, and this is what I saw when I stepped out into the cockpit, sleepy-eyed. I think a storm is skirting us to the north (left) with a stratus layer higher up.

Labels: Cloudscapes

When I went traveling for work last week, I was afraid of aviation withdrawal and so took some precautions to be safe (symptoms include attempting to pull back on your car steering wheel, and running around your office making propellor noises). In addition to taking along my study materials and a pretty good flying related book (Vanhoenacker, Skyfaring), I found myself a GA airport with a museum to visit. The museum was decent fun for maybe forty minutes. I wish I had had more time for the gift shop, but I had to be somewhere else. I also booked a hotel at that same airport so I could see the runway from my room. Watching the little planes putter around was comforting.

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The view of the aviation museum from my room. Atop the roof, they have a Rutan Long-EZ, a kit plane that you can build yourself at home. For trivia, this was the model of aircraft John Denver was flying when he fatally crashed (not a jet plane).

Stanley Hiller, at the age of seventeen, founded Hiller Industries in Berkeley, California in 1942 to develop his coaxial XH-44 "Hiller Copter" for the U.S. Army. He had to teach himself to fly while it was being built so he could test pilot it (some people get the aviation bug bad). Hiller Industries eventually became Hiller Aircraft Co., now in Firebaugh, CA, and is still owned by the Hiller family. The family also endowed the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, CA at the San Carlos Airport (KSQL).

The exhibits focus mainly on the less conventional helicopters by Hiller, like the Hiller Flying Platform, coaxial designs, and tilt-rotor designs; but also on aviation history in general in the bay area, which was quite active since the beginning of powered flight. There were some neat photos of the flying field that was to become San Francisco International.

The museum has some large fixed-wings like a Grumman Albatross flying boat and a huge Boeing Condor spanning the building. Outside, they have the entire front section of a Boeing 747 (with complete cockpit) and a Pratt and Whitney JT9D with the panels off to go along with it. I really wanted to play with the simulators they have scattered about, but so did all the kids running around and I'm not quite mean enough to kick them out of the way.

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The San Carlos Flying Field was established during World War I, but that more or less sank into the swamp so they built another one in another spot in the 1950s and that eventually became San Carlos Airport. It currently has one runway 12/30, at 2600 x 75 ft asphalt. It's about ten miles southeast of KSFO and is listed as a reliever airport for it. The traffic pattern for both runways flies over some swampy bits of South SF Bay. If you're staying nearby and go for a run towards the bay trail, you can run right by the threshold of runway 12, which is good fun when planes are landing.

Grumman Albatross, used primarily for search and rescue over water, but this one was tricked out as a luxury passenger plane.

A Pratt and Whitney JT9D, kind of looking from the back into the fan. Just inside the blue cowling, you can see the ring of thrust reverser petals partially closed. These close completely after landing to redirect the fan thrust out and forward. It was a bit scary standing directly behind the jet nozzle, because yeah, there's no fuel and no starter, but what if we misunderstood something, like in all those movies where they thought the monster was dead but it woke up anyway? It's a good rule in life to not stand behind jet engines.

After Tuesday's lesson, I jotted down some specific things to work on in addition to landings, so I might as well publish them here.

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I don't know the compass rose as well as I thought. Sure, I know that 90° is east and 180° is south, but for me to picture, for example, where 115° heads, I have to go through several steps in my head: (1) well, I know it's between east and south, (2) directly SE is 90° + 45° (3) so 135°, (4) ah, so 115° is 20° north of SE. Or, to turn from 280° to 95°, is it faster to turn left or right (again, arithmetic gears whirring in my head)? Sure, I can arrive at the correct answer eventually, but not quickly enough.

And things happen quickly in the traffic pattern. A common question is something like, "What heading should we fly to be perpendicular to runway 30 on our left?".

And so I step through, "Hm, well runway 30 means its heading is 300°, which is kind of northwest. To have it on my left I need to add 90° (subtract if I want it on my right); 300 + 90 is… 390, but crap, that's bigger than 360, so need to subtract 360… Fly 030°!" And by this time we are rather far from the runway or we've already passed 030 in the turn.

I think the answer is to eschew arithmetic altogether and burn into my head a really solid picture of the compass rose. It is a bit sad, though, because there are simple arithmetic problems, and then there are arithmetic word problems, and then there is doing arithmetic in order to fly an airplane (fly an airplane), and while I thought I finally have a very good reason for passing the third grade, I'm just too slow at it (apologies, younger self). But arithmetic will always be there to check my answers, so there's that.

I'm guessing that other pilots are not too fast at it either, because almost every aircraft has a heading indicator (HI) or, if you like older terms, a directional gyroscope (DG). This is an awesome little instrument because it tells magnetic heading without using a magnet, and so is immune to the lead/lag/dip/acceleration errors that a magnetic compass is prone to in an aircraft. Instead, you sync the DG with the compass when you're confident of the compass, and the DG then uses a gyroscope to fix its orientation in space as the aircraft turns around it, telling accurate heading without outside information. The top of the DG will read the current heading of the aircraft, but it can simplify other problems too. With the above example of runway 30, it doesn't matter what 300 + 90 is, just turn the plane until 300 is under the left tick mark on the DG. I need to become more proficient at using the DG.

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I can't adjust the flaps by feel. I think the flap lever is supposed to have little notches so you can feel when it's exactly at 10° and 20°, but they may be too worn in these old planes. Without looking at the lever, I can reliably select zero flaps, full flaps, and somewhere-in-between flaps, but that's as precise as I go.

✈

Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Range (VOR). VOR is a nifty radio navigation system that lets planes home into navigation stations. I kind of glossed over this topic in my readings because I figured it would be a while before I would be flying far enough away from my home airport to need homing signals, but hey look at that, it was hazy and dark and I was suddenly interested in getting home from an airport I've never been to. This is easy enough to correct; just read the material.

I got back to flying last night after two weeks away. I was worried that I had forgotten all of the procedures and the feel of the plane but all the memories were still there. I think I did my best takeoff yet, a nice, straight roll down the runway; and it was my first short-field takeoff, where a bit of flaps are used and we go for best angle of climb (altitude gain with respect to horizontal distance) instead of best climb (altitude gain with respect to time).

And it was a good thing I didn't forget much because we were going to work on something big! We were going to start training for landings!

The first thing to do in training for landings is to find a nice, big runway so that when I screw up, there's still plenty of runway left to fix it and no one dies. We headed southwest to Trenton-Mercer Airport (KTTN) for this purpose, which has two asphalt runways: 06/24 at 6006 × 150 ft (over a mile of runway!) and 16/34 at 4800 × 150 ft. Compared to my home airport's 3735 × 50 ft, this was quite nice.

Landings are usually practiced by doing touch-and-go's, where once a plane touches down, it immediately comes back on the power and takes off again without losing much speed on the ground. This allows for getting in a lot of landings in one session.

Last night's aircraft.

So first time practicing landings, first time to another airport, and also first time at a controlled airport where there is a tower that tells planes what to do. I asked my instructor to handle the comms this first time since I figured I'd have my hands full with the landings, but it was good to at least listen to how the conversations go and imagine how that will factor into my workload.

A small plane lands by descending towards the end of the runway and then flaring to ideally bring its vertical speed to zero just as it touches the ground. From the cockpit, the approach descent looks very much like flying directly into the ground, but my instructor assures me this is how it's done. There are definitely some primal instincts (David, ground, plane, bad) that need to be overruled during approach. The landing flare amounts to slowly pitching the nose up near the ground to bleed off speed, arrest the descent, and ultimately stop the wings from lifting. Sounds easy. Actually, not really; it's much easier to watch than it is to describe, but hopefully I made some sense.

My first landing (ever!) was pretty smooth. Not quite a continuous motion in the flare, but a reasonably gentle touchdown. Though at that point I had forgotten we were doing touch-and-go's and instead of celebrating, my instructor was frantically calling out how to get back in the air. Flaps, throttle, carb heat, etc. (quickly now).

We got back in the pattern and did three more landings before heading back to N51. Some were better than others, but none were horrific. Again, I stress that no one died. Sometimes I flared too much too soon and the plane dropped when I was done with my flare and the ground had not met the wheels yet. Once I didn't flare enough and we met the ground before I was ready. But overall, I know I can improve and I know how to improve (simply a lot of practice).

I always feel less nervous about flying after a lesson than before it because it's never as difficult as I imagine it might be, but I felt this relief especially after last night's lesson because in a way, all the cards are on the table now. Flying is some combination of climbing, turning, and descending, with a takeoff and a landing at each end. Roughly speaking, if I can do these things, then I can fly. There isn't anything major left to be introduced to, it's just a matter of honing what I've already done.

• Flight Hours: 7.7
• METAR KTTN 012353Z 17006KT 9SM CLR 27/19 A3002
• METAR N51 020030Z 16003KT 10SM CLR 26/19 A3005

A blimp at the airport today. At night it's lit from the inside like a giant lantern, but surprisingly, I didn't notice it until after we landed and were taxiing. My CFI said they're smaller than you think when you're flying. Also, I think it's so cool that the things they attach to on the ground are called moorings. And that rocket ships also have moorings. Boats can't fly through outer-space but we can damn-well pretend.

Labels: Flight Lessons

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