Getting Back Into It

It has been a while since I've written, and as you might expect, it's been a while since I've flown. A strange combination of events, or in some cases, non-events, put me in kind of a strange place with respect to flying. After my last practice session, I'd planned to take a plane out to Mather Field near Sacramento for a gig. But when I got to San Carlos, I could not see the Sunol hills. It wasn't cloudy, just really hazy, and certainly seemed like less than the reported 10SM visibility. In any case, if I didn't really have to be at a gig, I probably would've gone up, checked it out, and turned around if I got uncomfortable, but without the luxury of time, I got in my car and drove as fast as I could.

That, combined with a couple of other aborted flights due to what I considered to be marginal weather, combined with my reading of "The Killing Zone," basically caused me to become a little less comfortable with the entire concept of flight in a small craft. I've spent 90 hours piloting these planes, but somehow it started just feeling like there's so much I don't know and I put myself in so much danger.

So I didn't fly for a while, which is both good and bad. I finally went out last Thursday, and decided I should do my standard 5-landing practice. I went out to PAO and flew 751SP. The session actually went way better than expected. I'd ducked out from work, so I felt some time pressure, which caused me to not think so much about my radio calls. And guess what? They were fine! And my landings were quite good -- my nose (meaning, the plane's nose) is still a little unstable on my approaches in the wind, but the touchdowns are consistently good.

So today I went out again, and decided I need to get used to going to other airports. Why? Because the 11-day-in-a-row gig in Turlock is coming up, and I'm really hoping to fly to at least some of these shows. I needed a bit more landing practice, preferably trying out the soft-field landings too (since I need that for the night landings), and also to go to a different airport. So today I flew to Livermore and did 4 landings there, two soft-field and two normal. They were pretty good -- again, my touchdowns were great, but my approaches were high. Stable, but high. My last landing at PAO was better, so I think it's just getting used to a 1000 foot pattern altitude.

There were some trippy clouds, and a touch of pretty nasty turbulence on the way back, but all in all everything went really smoothly. So I may try to get a night flight in before Thursday; otherwise, I'll just go and hope for the best!

One thing is sure -- my confidence is returning, and I think one of the good side-effects of my little bout with myself is that now that I've thought about all that I don't know, hopefully I'll be better at preparation, and more motivated to take the next steps in my learning.

Practice

It took me a while, but I finally came to the conclusion that even though I now have my private pilot's license, I still need to keep doing what I was doing before and go out and practice. Prior to today's flight, I hadn't flown in two weeks. And guess what? The same thing happens now after a long layoff as before I got the license. The piece of paper does not keep me from getting rusty and losing my feel for the plane and for landing.

So I went out and practiced today. I want to fly to Sacramento on July 4 (my band has a show), but I would not have been comfortable just getting in a plane after 2.5 weeks off. My goal today was to do 5 landings in a 172SP, at Palo Alto. Pretty much my standard pre-license drill.

So I went out in 751MF, a 2000 172SP. When I got to PAO, it was a beautiful day, but much windier than I'd thought. The METAR report said the wind was from 340 at 12 knots but the windsock said that it was gusty and shifting a little, but mostly right down the runway. Good practice day!

Starting up the plane went totally smoothly! That was gratifying, since the last time I had some trouble. I paused for a long time prior to giving my radio call; when I haven't done it in a while I feel the need to make sure I know exactly what I'll be saying. Of course, someone wound up stepping on my transmission so I had to say it 3 times anyway.

The first couple of laps were a little frustrating in that everyone and their brother was leaving Palo Alto for the long weekend. There were eight planes in line to take off at one point! I was #4. Another time I was #5 to land. So I was not able to make normal patterns; everything was getting extended out, and that combined with my lack of practice and the wind conditions pretty much made my first two landings sub-ideal. They were not bad; I touched down gently, and both times rather extremely on the upwind wheel. I'm not sure if that was really necessary, because the sock was saying the wind was almost directly down the runway, but on the other hand I was just reacting to what the plane was doing, so maybe it was OK.

The third landing attempt was bad, and I wound up pushing the power full and going around. I executed the go-around OK, except that I lost pitch control of the plane for a few seconds upon adding power. Pretty scary so close to the ground. Now this might sound a little overconfident or cocky, but it's not and I'll explain why in a sec: I'm very glad that my reflexes tend to compensate for my lack of experience. In this case, I put myself in a little bit of a scary situation and was pitching up and down very close to the ground, but my instincts said "Level the plane!" and that's what I did, which was the right thing. The reason I say it's not cocky is that even though this has happened a few times, I still cannot and do not ever expect it to happen, and use that as an excuse to either stop learning or stop doing everything I can in the planning phase.

Anyway, so I went around, and my third landing was pretty decent. By this time I was thinking about just terminating, but the amount of traffic dropped off dramatically, so I stayed and did landings #4 and #5, both of which were quite good.

So, all in all, I'm very glad I went. It was exhausting, and I made a few small mistakes (I forgot to turn on my beacon on the first lap, and I couldn't understand what I assume was a "position and hold" call at one point), but all in all it was really good, and I handled the wind pretty well. I think I'll be ready for Tuesday, but just in case, I have time scheduled on Sunday and Monday too. I need to do at least one of those, because they're both in San Carlos, which is where I'll be flying from on Tuesday.

Bay Tour

Today Nirmala and I went up for a little trip up over SFO, the City, and the north coast. It was a beautiful sunny day, which was part of the motivation, but the other part of the story is that we have to go to a wedding in Lodi tomorrow, and before we can do that I need to get my night currency up, which means I need three takeoffs and landings at least one hour after sunset, before I can fly with a passenger at night (and we'll be coming back at night tomorrow). Also, I hadn't flown in nearly two weeks, so I didn't want my first flight to be at night. So, we went for a daytime flight. Originally I was just going to do pattern work, but Nirmala wanted to come with me, and I was pretty sure she'd be bored of the pattern pretty quickly!

So we went to SQL -- as we drove up, I saw N236SP (the plane I'd reserved) in its parking spot, with the flaps extended! Very strange, I thought, but we went into the club and checked out the book. It turns out that the battery has a draining problem, and the plane would not start for a renter last night -- and nothing had been done since the squawk (I guess nobody even went out and looked at it to put the flaps back in!). The only other 172 (SP or otherwise) available was 4849D, an older 172N, old enough to have the 40 degrees of flaps.

We had to sit for a while as I convinced myself that I was indeed ready to try a Class B transition. After a while, I figured, what's the worst that can happen? What I'm nervous about is not a piloting issue, nor a weather issue, nor anything that is really all that hazardous; what I was worried about was just the workload and whether I could handle it. And the workload was pretty much making sure I could hear my clearances, altitudes and routing, and frequencies. So we went for it.

Things didn't start out so well; I actually had to ask my passenger what SQL ground said! Turned out it was "squawk code on request." That was mildly embarrassing, and I'm sure it didn't inspire confidence. But whatever. We went out to the 12 runup, ran up, and took off on a left downwind. I wasn't sure what altitude to go to, so I went to 1200'. SQL Tower handed me off to SFO Tower, and I stated my request. I had to circle over Bay Meadows once before entering Class B, but no big deal -- Nirmala said she saw Whole Foods.

So up north we went! It was totally smooth, I got handed off to Norcal Approach, who eventually asked me if I was going to stay in the north bay for a while. After an affirmative response, he let me go and we flew up the coast up to Point Reyes, where we'd been hiking the previous weekend. The weather was beautiful! Only a little turbulence going over the hills, but otherwise it was totally smooth.

We took an inland route back, over 101 and the Golden Gate. I used the wrong frequency first to contact approach, but no big deal. I called the right frequency and they cleared me into Class B, so we went back down over the City, and followed 101 down. I had not gotten the SQL ATIS weather, so approach gave me the numbers -- by this time, the winds had shifted and SQL was using runway 30 instead of 12 that we took off on. So I crossed over at 1200', entered a right pattern a little high, entered final right on target, and....what a crappy landing. Flat, too fast, a little bounce, and a nearly skidding halt.

So tonight I might go out and take care of my night currency requirements, but we'll see how I feel. Otherwise we'll just drive to Lodi tomorrow!

$100 Sandwiches in Salinas!

I'm writing this nearly two weeks after the fact, but I wanted to document that it had happened. This was my first cross country flight post-license, and first with a passenger! Nirmala and I flew down to Salinas for lunch. I had landed at Salinas twice before during my training, so I was pretty comfortable with the airport.

We went to SQL to pick up N54JA, but when we got there, I overheard the receptionist (that's not the right word, but I'm going with it) on the phone with someone, saying that they were stuck in Half Moon Bay after the fog had rolled in. Which airplane? 54JA. She was saying, "Well, someone else has the plane, and I can't really cancel..." Meanwhile, I was outside thinking, hopefully these crosswinds don't get worse! So upon hearing this, I went in, and cancelled it.

It turned out that 222MF was available at Palo Alto, so we drove down to PAO, got 222MF, and after a little trouble starting her up, we took off toward Salinas!

This flight reminded me of my long solo cross country, in that there were patchy clouds out there that I had to avoid. But this time my comfort level was much higher, given that I'd done it before. We flew down at 5500', and everything went great. I remembered everything, including the leaning on the way down. My landing was a little bit hard due to a high flare, but not so bad.

The lunch was quite good! The sandwiches were big, and the curly fries were delicious. And the price (not counting the flight itself, of course) was very reasonable. Recommended!

So we headed back for Palo Alto, this time at 4500'. Some more cloud avoidance on the way back, but again, nothing too bad. We reported over SLAC, entered a left pattern for runway 31 at PAO, landed, and went home!

Hopefully the first of many!

Crosswind Practice

Yesterday I completed my checkout in the 172SP, which is great since West Valley Flying Club has about 10 SPs between San Carlos and Palo Alto, and only two regular 172s that I'm willing to fly. Plus the SPs are newer and more comfortable, especially for passengers. Now I can start flying people around!

Steve and I then took an hour and tried to get my crosswind landing technique to be better. My previous attempts were all messed up; I'd get blown all over the place, and let the wind get up under my upwind wing, which is really a dangerous thing to do -- a great way to lose control of the plane and potentially get flipped over.

I'd been taught to do the whole approach crabbing into the wind (i.e. like a boat crossing a river points several degrees upstream to go across in a straight line, the classic trigonometry problem), and then at the end, straighten the nose with the rudder and drop the upwind wing. But that was getting too challenging, too many things happening at once, since I also had to think about the landing flare. So this time we did the whole approach aligned with the runway and with the upwind wing low. We did a couple of rounds splitting the controls; first I controlled the ailerons for alignment and he controlled the rudders, and then we traded. Then I tried to put it together. By the end, I had it kind of working, but not smoothly. I'm still overcontrolling with the yoke, deflecting too far instead of just making small corrections, and controlling too little with the rudders. But I'm getting it; I think one more lesson and I'll have it!

In the meantime I can fly SPs out of the more wind-friendly Palo Alto!

First 172SP Flight

I took my first flight in a 172SP, N236SP out of San Carlos, last Wednesday. It was a little crazy; I was supposed to meet Steve (the instructor) at 4:00. I had a meeting at work from 3:00 to 3:30, and at 3:30 the CEO walked in and the meeting then got extended. At 3:55, I walked out of the meeting and got to the airport by 4:15.

Steve and I started by going over the major differences between a 172 and a 172SP. There are 13 fuel drains instead of 3 -- they tried to reduce fuel sloshing by contouring the bottom of the tanks, but that resulted in fuel, and possibly impurities, getting stuck in certain spots. So they drilled holes in those spots and installed drains that now must be checked during preflight. Brilliant.

The SP is fuel injected, so no more worrying about carburetor heat! Also, the fuel selector switch has no "off" position; instead there is a separate cutoff control. The startup procedure is bizarre: Priming is no longer manual, but instead, the auxiliary fuel pump is used. So: Throttle 1/4" forward, mixture full rich, turn on the fuel pump, wait for the slightest bit of movement on the fuel flow meter (it calls for 5GPH, but that's a tiny bump the way the gauge is set up), then pull the mixture full lean and kill the pump. Then, start the ignition, and advance the mixture to full rich when it fires, and immediately adjust the throttle for 1000RPM.

Crazy, huh?

After that, things are pretty normal. I got dinged a couple of times for advancing the throttle too quickly, which apparently is never good practice but fuel injected engines particularly hate. We did a Bay Meadows departure, and did a steep turn, slow flight and stall out over Crystal Springs Reservoir. The plane handled so well! Once I got it trimmed, it would just stay there! Amazing. The old 172s are so loose, that this just felt great.

We came back in and did some pattern work. My first approach and landing were all over the place, and Steve told me so. He demonstrated one, and then I did one. The last one was good except I flared high.

And that was it! So hopefully sometime this week I will complete the checkout, and be able to take passengers up in style!

First Passenger

Two weekends ago, I took my first passenger in the air! What a rush. We were in 6521J, my trusty old training plane. I felt like an airline captain! I gave a safety briefing, demonstrated the use of the safety belts, and showed how to latch doors open in the event of an emergency. How cool was that!

We had a bit of a limited timeframe. My passenger Nirmala was not the least bit scared; she was cool as a cucumber. We had a little bit of trouble getting her headset to work; the first time the headset was just broken. The second time, the headset would not pick up her voice and transmit, so I had to talk first and then she could answer. Not a bad arrangement!

So we decided to fly out over Half Moon Bay and try to fly over the coast for a while. I asked for a left Dumbarton departure out of PAO and got clearance to taxi. Nirmala said, "I didn't understand a word of that!" We taxied over to 31, did a run-up, and got clearance to take off. I started the roll, and we lifted off. Nirmala told me later that at that point, she got scared.

The rest of the flight was pretty smooth. We flew over Half Moon Bay, but clouds were coming in, so we turned around, transitioned back through Palo Alto airspace and out toward Sunol, and then around and back in with a pretty smooth landing.

Now I'm training in the 172SP so that my next passenger will be more comfortable.