Thursday, May 12, 2016

Flying Lesson #50 - Breaking In A New Instructor, Or Is He Breaking Me In?

So I got to fly with Ray for the first time today.

I had done the preflight and the airplane was looking good. N757MK had just had its left fuel tank repaired after leaking fuel and had test flighted ok, but this was the first real flight since the repair. So the pre-flight brief was that if fuel started spurting out of the vent or if we saw any leaks it was his airplane and we would be getting it on the ground ASAP.

We had a bit of a crosswind of 8 knots from 130 for runway 9, so we did cross wind practice to hep me get over my not so happy experience of the last lesson.

So we briefed the flight and got going. It's always interesting switching instructors, while the curriculum may be the same they always have different personalities and items they consider more or less important and they don't know you yet.

I handled the calls and got clearance for the takeoff form 9L, and Ray talked me through the first landing and we did a couple more and I had the hang of it ok, I just need to practice more and make it even better. He considers that I'm safe and capable at landings and has no problem signing me off on the long cross country.

Then Ray wanted to show me some power on turning stalls to show why we don't want to do greater than 30 degree banks in the pattern and the issue that pilots have if they overshoot the turn from base to final. So we left the pattern and cleared KPTK's airspace and climbed to a safe altitude and he demonstrated how the stall will occur at a higher airspeed in both 45 and 60 degree banked turns. Very good stuff to actually see and experience. He also showed some power off stalls and wanted to make sure I knew you did not need to dive the plane down at the ground to break the stall but instead get the power on and the nose down enough to break the stall without overdoing it and losing too much altitude.

We headed back to the pattern and I did a few more cross-wind landings with no problems. This was good.

Ray definitely is very precision oriented and noted I'm good but wants me to get better. This is what I will need in order to pass the checkride and be a safe pilot, so that's a very good thing. He will sign off on the long cross country assuming the weather is suitable Saturday and then comes the work to make sure everything meets or beats the private pilot test standards.

That's 1.3 Hours and 8 cross-wind landings and a very good lesson with a new instructor.

1 comment:

Home on the Range said...

He showed you some EXCELLENT points - it's pretty surprising how much the stall speed goes up as the bank angle increases which has been the cause of a number of stall spins on final. He sounds like a good instructor.