mouser.log

I am so surprised I didn't get weathered out on this one.

Last night I was at a dinner party and checked the ADDS weather website, the forecast looked abysmal and weather.gov said snow all day every day this week for Santa Fe. When I woke up at 6 this morning, I couldn't see the mountains across the valley and it looked like the ceiling was really low. So I went back to bed for awhile. Then Michael sends me a text at 7 saying that the current weather was great and the radar looked good, despite the forecast still looking horrid. I looked back out the window to find that there was quite a bit of blue sky; whatever was obstructing my visibility before was gone. By 8 there no sign that it was going to be worse, so I drove down to Santa Fe for my 9 AM flight. On the drive down, some snow virga moved in from the south and it started looking worse again. When I arrived, it was overcast at about 6,000' AGL. But it was good enough that we felt confident in taking off and at least starting to do some work; if the precipitation started coming down or the ceilings dropped, we'd just fly back and land.

The good news is that below overcast skies the air tends to be quite calm. Such was the case this morning; no winds to speak of and no turbulence. We took off on runway 20 and headed out to the SW practice area. Did a quick refresher on some of the basic maneuvers including clearing turns, steep turns, slow flight, and power-off stalls. Had no problems other than a regular hesitancy to bring the aircraft down to below 40 knots for the slow flight.

With the maneuvering out of the way, I put the foggles on and we did a bit more instrument. A couple of basic turns, climbs, descents, and a few unusual attitude recoveries. Then we flew back to SAF with me still wearing the foggles, and simulated the ILS-2 approach. When I ripped the glasses off at minimums, I was displaced laterally from the runway by about 100', but it was easy to recover that in time and make a successful landing. We did a touch and go then made a right turn to join right traffic for runway 33. Here we practiced all of the specialty landings that I had worked on during my solo on Friday. Maybe its just because of the lack of any crosswind, but I nailed all of the landings. Put the soft field down nice and soft, kept the nose wheel off, etc. The precision landing was right on the stripes. We did a couple no-flaps landings with big slips on final, which were a bit ugly; haven't really every spent any time practicing that.

Next we made a quick jaunt up to Los Alamos (only about a 10 minute flight) so that I could get some more practice landing there. No wind there as well, so the landing was trivial. Turned around at the end of the runway and took right back off, flew back to Santa Fe, and did a final short-field landing on 20 for the day. For this one, rather than try to land the plane on the 1000' stripes, Michael had me land on the numbers right at the front of the runway. This meant targeting my final descent into the dirt preceding the runway, then flaring out over the pavement and setting it down right at the beginning. I missed the numbers by about 20 feet, but I'm happy with that considering it was my first try.

The weather was actually perfect; no wind and very smooth air. Overcast, but whatever. It always looked like it could start hailing at any moment, but it stayed very hospitable the entire time we were up.

After parking the plane and pushing it back into the hangar, we did a bit of quizzing regarding the oral exam. I didn't do great, but not horribly either. We'll be doing more of that next weekend after my next flight. Michael said he was very happy with my skills in the plane and said we should be wrapping up the training very shortly. Today's 0.4 hours of instrument time complete my requirement for 3.0 hours total, leaving only 0.7 hours of solo flight remaining in my requirements list. I have a solo flight scheduled for next Saturday morning, where I'll complete that requirement and practice those slip landings a bit more. Then a flight the following morning with Michael where we'll do a simulated checkride. I'm going to try to take my written exam a week from this coming Friday, possibly flying down to Double Eagle to take it. Once that's done, all that remains is to schedule my oral and checkride, possibly for the following weekend (if I'm not in Kazakhstan).

Posted by mouser at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today was an interesting day. I had the day off, but Michael was out of town, so I decided to do a solo flight just staying in the pattern working on the same soft/short field takeoffs and landings that we did last time. Unlike last time, the winds were up in the 12 knot range and the active runway was 33. Larry described this runway as "not the best" for doing precision landings. I also had to use N80790, the oldest of the three plans and the one I have the least time in.

Taking off just before me was Larry and a student of his, a Japanese national who's English was not the best, in N64962. They flew off to the practice area while I started doing my touch and gos. The tower told me to make left closed traffic... and somehow I went right. No idea why, left is always easier so he gave me what I wanted... and I just spaced it. Luckily I was the only person in the pattern so it didn't make a difference.

After a short while, 962 returned, did one circuit of the pattern, then landed full stop. Apparently the Japanese guy was doing a solo and Larry was just checking him out to make sure he was capable, because as soon as they taxied to parking, he called on the radio indicating he was going to come back to take off again. Up to this point, his radio work, taxiing, landings, and flying had been perfect.

So I'm flying downwind for 33 and I hear the tower tell 962 to turn onto taxiway Charlie for runway 33. This is all normal. But then as I'm turning base, I hear him inform 962 that he's turned onto the wrong taxiway and that he is now on Delta (a taxiway that intersects the runway I'm lining up for). He tells me to exercise caution then instructs 962 to turn around and head back the way he came. I'm on final at this point, and I can see 962 still taxiing towards my runway. The tower starts getting pretty agitated as the guy is heading towards the hold line and a runway incursion. He's yelling into the radio, "962 stop. Stop moving right now. Stop now 962!" Meanwhile I'm getting pretty close to landing and have to decide what I'm going to do. Because of all the nonsense going on with 962, I was coming in a bit high, anticipating a go-around. When he finally did stop, just short of the hold line, I went ahead and did a touch-and-go without incident.

Behind me, the tower is now instructing 962 to make a left turn onto runway 15/33 and back taxi to the end for a departure from 33. As I'm climbing out away, I hear tower say, "962 where are you going?" and I look back to see him still on Delta, having crossed 15/33. Tower is totally annoyed at this point and sets him up for a departure on runway 2. I volunteer to go out to the VOR and orbit while he gets the mess taken care of, but he says it probably wouldn't help. I felt sorta bad for the Japanese guy, I think this was clearly just a language barrier problem; his flying seemed very solid. The tower was being really helpful as well, speaking very slowly and repeating instructions. It turns out this was the guy's second solo ever, so I imagine he was feeling the pressure and it was just too much when combined with the language barrier.

Anyway that was the end of 962's exciting taxi antics; he took off from 2 and went back out to the practice area and I didn't see him again while I was up. I got 14 total circuits of the pattern in, every time trying to do either a precision landing or a soft-field landing or both. I did a few soft-field takeoffs, but there's not really much to them. I wasn't very happy with my landings; doing tricky landings turns out to be hard with a bit of crosswind in an unfamiliar plane and the weird sloped runway of 33. I made some progress but wasn't totally happy with it. I'll need more work on this, I imagine Michael and I will work on it some more when I fly again on Sunday (weather permitting).

Just to add to the excitement for today, I started losing my radio reception towards the end. At the takeoff end of 33, I couldn't really hear what the tower was saying and he was really choppy. Apparently he could hear my just fine, but over the course of my last three circuits, the problem seemed to get worse. Couldn't find a cause on board, so I decided to switch to my backup radio... only to find that the small tuning knob was being wonky and I was unable to tune in the tower frequency. Great. I actually had to call for a light signal for permission to land. At that point, I was done.

Taxied back, which was fun because the plows hadn't done a great job on the ramp; there were significant ice chunks and berms of snow to navigate through. Pushing the plane back into its parking space was a real chore; I couldn't push very effectively because of the ice, I had no help, and occasionally I'd get a wheel chocked on some ice and have to either kick it free or back up and maneuver around it. Not easy with the tow bar. Eventually Larry saw me struggling through the window and came out to give me a push. I told him about the issues with his student (who was still out flying) and with my radio. He powered the plane up and tested the radios and couldn't replicate the reception problem. He told me that the knob on that second radio had always been touchy and showed me how to work past it. He also said he'd take the plane up later today and try to replicate the reception problem.

Quite an off-nominal day. Wow.

Posted by mouser at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning found Santa Fe blanketed in low clouds which prevented me from doing what I was planning on, specifically flying to Los Alamos and starting to get a feeling for takeoff and landing ops there. The LAM METAR indicated overcast at 100', freezing fog, and less than 1/4 mile visibility... so that wasn't going to happen.

Instead, we just stuck around in the pattern and worked on special takeoffs and landings at Santa Fe. Specifically, short field and soft field takeoffs and landings. The precision target landings of short field are a lot of fun, and I was able to hit the stripes dead center every time, but often at the expense of...gentleness. I'd sorta get into the flare, float out over the stripes while rapidly losing speed, then idle the engine and nose it up, causing me to essentially fall out of the air exactly where I wanted to land, but roughly. The soft field landings, which need to be gentle and also require keeping the nose wheel off the ground as long as possible, essentially riding a wheelie down the runway, were more difficult. I could either grease the mains but then have the nose touch down shortly afterward, or have a harder mains landing and then ride the wheelie out as long as possible. Both landing styles need work, and this is probably what I'll spend my 2.3 remaining hours of required solo working on. The takeoffs are pretty straightforward and probably don't require as much practice. They are more interesting than regular takeoffs, particularly the soft field takeoff, in which you pop the aircraft into the air as soon as possible, then keep it really low in ground effect while accelerating up to Vy, then rocket off into the sky^*. Being that low makes the speed seem all the more intense.

The one thing that spiced up what is otherwise 13 boring circuits of the pattern was that there were two L-39 jet trainers sharing the pattern with me. They're quite a bit faster than me, somehow.

^* It's a 172. Hyperbole may exist here.

Posted by mouser at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Time for more simulated instrument conditions! After just over a month since my last flight, I was expecting to be a bit rusty. Because we were just doing instrument stuff, it didn't matter if we flew at night, so I was able to work in a weekday flight. I had a bit of apprehension about doing a night landing after a month of not flying at all, but the entire flight—including the landing—was incredibly smooth.

The weather was perfect; totally clear, almost no wind, bright moon, and snow on the ground so that the ground was easy to see. The plan was to fly out to the southeast practice area, do some instrument maneuvers, unusual attitude recoveries, then fly an instrument approach into SAF just for fun.

As soon as I got us about 500' above runway 20, I put on the Foggles and they wouldn't come off until I was at minimums on the approach to land. I was surprised at how well I was able to handle the instrument maneuvers and recoveries; it went much better than my last two instrument flights. One key thing on the unusual attitude recoveries was looking first at the artificial horizon to gauge the "am I going up or down?" question that must first be answered before knowing the proper sequence of recovery procedures. In the past I think I was using the altimeter for this, which is a bit slower to grok. Anyway, this time it went really well. We did quite a few recoveries, then headed in for the instrument approach.

We did the VOR/DME-A approach starting from the wrong side of the airport, so I got to work on some VOR navigation to get from wherever I was (had no idea, since I'd been under the hood since we started and had no GPS) to the MITUM intersection north of SAF. From there, we did a [very ugly, see GPS track. It was my first one, give me a break, jerk.] procedure turn onto the SAF 158° radial which took me right in to the airport. Michael acted as second pilot, handling the radio work and chart understanding. He just told me what distances to look for on the DME, what VOR radials to use, etc. So I concentrated on the instrument maneuvers portion of the show. When we got down to 4.3 nm from the VOR and 7,000', which was our designated minimum, he told me to rip off the foggles and take a look. We were right over the airport, couldn't miss it! Instrument approaches are hereby declared to be very cool.

I'm really looking forward to doing instrument training.

The landing was a bit odd because instrument minimums put you a bit lower than pattern altitude, and it was nighttime, so I ended up being a bit fast and high on final, but overall it went well. A bit flat, but totally acceptable. After we got the plane tied down, we talked for awhile about the remainder of my flight training which is now in the home stretch, and what will come after that.

:-D

Posted by mouser at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

2009 was the first year in which I did any actual piloting, and I didn't start until July, so it's really just a half year in flight. But here are some statistics.

• Hours total: 47.0
  
• Hours solo: 7.7
  
• Hours at night: 5.1
  
• Hours single engine: 45.1
  
• Hours multi engine: 1.9
  
• Distance Traveled: 3395 nm
  
• Landings: 171
  
• Landings at night: 12
  
• Hours by type:
  
•     Cessna 172 (44.5 hours)
  
•     DHC-6 Twin Otter (1.9 hours)
  
•     Cirrus SR-22 (0.6 hours)
  
• Total cost for aircraft rentals and instructors: $6,601.02
  

Posted by mouser at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)