Flying Lesson #133 - You Want Me To Land Where?

As I'm preflighting and waiting Tiffany for my next lesson, Marcus comes by and says be sure to go to Oakland Troy (KVLL) as the checkride examiner sometimes likes to take students there via dead-reckoning and its a bit of a fun place to land.

No kidding. I remember my last time there, oh just short of two flippin' years ago now for Lesson #3. The approach for Runway 27 takes you right over a flat-topped office building and it looks like you're supposed to land on it and drop down onto the runway.

Not really but it does look that way.

Photo by Jeff Schuster, Photo taken 29-Jun-2014, looking west.

So Tiffany comes by and says I've been to Linden enough, let's go to Oakland Troy - I swear these instructors are rather in sync.

We go over how to dead reckon there, basically to follow a couple roads, and its pretty much a 130 degree course from Pontiac.

So the wind is a right gusting crosswind and I need to do a short field landing coming in over an office building. I think at that moment someone might be paying the instructors so she can collect on my life insurance.

I get it lined up and its not the shortest landing ever - a fair bit of float and I land on the 1,000 foot markers rather than the numbers but given the building is near the numbers.... That would not unfortunately be acceptable for a checkride, but as someone keeps saying I didn't break anything and landed so it must be ok in real life at least, and we did stop with plenty of runway without excessive braking.

Then I do a short field takeoff as there are power lines awaiting off the end and since I can at least do that, it's a fine takeoff.

Then off to the practice area where I get to put on some foggles for some instrument practice and then slow flight, power off and power on stalls and a lot of steep turns.

Then back to Pontiac with an even more gusting crosswind of 10-20 knots out of 300.

1.6 and 2 landings.

Flying Lesson #123 - I'm Back! Solo Again!

It was a very overcast day today, with the cloud base startling in the morning at 1,300 feet which did not look promising.

Happily by 11 the clouds had lifted to 2,200 and I had enough space to do pattern work, alone.

So I checked in and asked the head CFI if I was good to go. Winds were 8-13 kts from 280-310 and since I was using Runway 27R it would be only a minor crosswind at best. He said I was good to go solo if I felt up to it and wanted to but not to go to the practice area due to the clouds being too low. So he's giving me an option to back out if I don't feel comfortable. I said no problem and felt ready to make it happen, time to do this after all..

So I walked out to N1689H and did the pre-flight and got her started up.

It was parked beside a Dakota and a Warrior was right in front and another Archer to the far front left so the most fun was getting it out of the parking space.

I then taxied off to the run-up area and then to Runway 27R.

"N1689H ready to depart for pattern work, student pilot".

I got clearance to takeoff and I was alone in the air again. Damn, but it felt great.

I then started flying the pattern along with another Archer from DCT and N757MK from a certain flight-school-which-must-not-be-named.

Unfortunately 757MK was deciding to fly B52 bomber patterns, think way wide croswwind and bases and really overlong downwinds which is a pain when you're trying to fly a nice crisp standard pattern, but if he's ahead of you and you're told to follow you conform to his pattern. He was also doing touch and goes.

So my first takeoff is darn nice and I'm #3 in the pattern for landing, come in and a darn nice landing - no bounce, everything just right roundout at the right time, flare at the right time, all is grand, and I then exit at Juliet and get to do it again.

Solo and it feels great!

Then on the next pattern I'm again following the N757MK and get permission to land when I turn final and he's touching down, but this time he's rolling on down the runway, and still rolling on down the runway. I'm practically at touchdown and he hasn't taken off yet so I do a go round from what would have been a perfect landing. He then finally takes off - thanks guy. So at this point I'm pretty damn close to him but thankfully he finally goes crosswind and I stay upwind the create more separation and then follow him along creating more distance between us all the while.

Landing #2 is darn good.

Landing #3 even better.

Landing #4 is just plain sweet. This feels as easy as 123 and given its coincidentally Lesson 123 it's kinda fitting.

Might as well call it on a good note, and the tower is reporting the wind is picking up to where it would be technically be past my current solo endorsement, so I declare victory and terminate and head back to DCT and park the plane and shut it down.

I finally feel like I'm really back!

The feeling at the end of today's flight:

.8 and 4 landings solo.

Flying Lesson # 103 - I'm Doing This, Why?

It's a beautiful sunny day out and while the ceiling was dropping when I got to the airport for my 3pm lesson it was still at 3,000 feet would be excellent for flying, except for the winds. The winds were gusting from 13-23 out of 200, making for a crosswind factor of between 12.2 and 21.6...The Archer's crosswind rating is 17.

Of course, the instruments except for the altimeter were all covered yet again. I did the preflight inspection by myself just fine, then the engine start and verily it would not start for some undetermined reason. So we had to change planes. That should have been what we call a clue.

So I switched to N5337F, another Archer II set up the same way so it was easy enough to slide in (the one door on the Archer is a bit of a pain). Startup was fine, and I then taxi'd the plane to the run-up area, did a good run-up and got permission to takeoff. With quite the crosswind correction in, I took off and basically flew semi-sideways along to stay in line with the runway. Lack of instruments was rather annoying when having to deal with the crosswind as I was getting concerned about being cross-controlled and not coordinated in flight. While I understand why they insist on non instruments at this stage of their program I'm still allowed to be annoyed by it. Especially so as you're supposed to add half the gust factor to your airspeed, which is pretty hard when you cannot see your airspeed indicator. So we climbed and I turned crosswind, then downwind. Thence for the difference in procedures with the Archer over the 172 - there's a lot that happens at midfield that isn't done in the Cessna until you're parallel the touchdown point of the runway - carb heat, landing lights, power reduction and first 10 degrees of flaps.

Then at the touchdown point you reduce the throttle just a bit, angle down and begin a slight descent, then turn base once you reach that point and put in the second notch of flaps and then turn final and land with quite a crab until close to touchdown when you transition to a sideslip and down to the runway you go.

I did two landings and while it wasn't feeling great I was doing ok.

Then on for the third landing we had to do a go round as the plane before us was still on the runway.

And in the go round some wind shear got us really nicely once we were past all usable runway but below 500 feet and I was feeling completely out of control to the point where not only was the plane at full throttle not responding to what I was doing, but I told the instructor I was losing it. So he took it over and we were then fine after a bit of time that felt longer than it probably was. He then brought it around the pattern for landing #3 and did it just beautifully, and that was it.

On the upside, I apparently handle the radio like a boss, so there's that.

Yet more steps backwards and not particularly happy-making.

.6 and 3 landings.

Flying Lesson #3 - Getting Up And Around The Point

Lesson 3 started off a little differently.

Again I did the pre-flight completely on my own, with no test at the end this time. I'm reasonably sure he was still watching me though.

The lesson started off differently as two others piled into the back of the plane.

We were taking an instructor and his student to Troy airport, KVLL, to pickup another plane.

So I did the engine start checklist and got the plane started and ready, Then I handled the radio to call ground to taxi, and then taxied to the run up area and did the take-off checklist. I still need a lot of work on taxiing, but at least I remembered not to try to steer with the wheel this time and just to use the pedals.

I called the tower and we were told to hold, which I acknowledged.

Then we got clearance to enter the runway and did a takeoff to the southeast. It was a pretty decent takeoff if I do say so myself.

I flew us to the airport and Sean talked me through observing it and then entering the pattern, on the downwind, as he did the radio calls for a pilot controlled airport, then he handled the base and final turns and the landing.

We dropped off our passengers and I handled the engine start, taxi and takeoff. I still need work on the taxi, but the takeoff was happily quite smooth and was better than my previous 2 so there's progress.

Then Sean demonstrated how to do a turn around a point and I practiced that and did pretty well.

Then he demonstrated S-turns across a road, or in our case electrical power pylons. This was a fair bit more difficult than going around a point and I'm going to need a lot more work on that, especially in picking out spots and knowing where the wind is coming from.

I certainly got a lot of banking practice in, but need more. You can bank on that.

Then we flew back to the airport and I handled the radios and we ended up getting another straight in approach on runway 27R.

That's 1.8 more hours of flight time.