“The time,” of course, being that moment when I’m sitting in a running airplane with just an empty seat beside me. A time that I suspect will be some strange combination of “most excellent” and”wrong somehow.” “Most excellent” should be pretty self-explanatory- after all, the whole reason I’m doing this is for the privilege to fly alone. But the thought of glancing over at an empty seat just seems incorrect somehow. Sort of like how I felt when I first got my motorcycle… when I was out riding, I always had this sort of gut feeling that I was getting away with something. It was like some odd species of guilt over enjoying myself so much.
But I digress… today was pretty straightforward in the air. Scott and I briefly discussed the impending solo flight, with a substantial portion of my willpower going towards keeping from grinning like an idiot at the thought. The plan is for me to solo at D73 in Monrow, GA, about 30 miles east of PDK. The benefits of D73 include being an uncontrolled field, not being too busy, and having a fairly long runway. (5000′) In keeping with this decision, our flight for today took us out to D73 for some pattern work, plus some ground reference work along the way.
Side note: PDK was hopping today. I got the feeling there was some kind of holiday or something that had a lot of people leaving town… but really, there was a bit more activity than I’m used to seeing out there. We were third in line for takeoff on 20R after arriving at the runup area. In the air, we proceeded east, skirting Stone Mountain, and then began searching for a suitable ground feature for flying a rectangular course. The pickings were sort of slim, but eventually a future subdivision was chosen, and I flew a few circuits around it. There were a few bobbles- notably a couple of early turns from one leg to another- but the reference wasn’t exactly the best in the world either. Side note: I found that the best way to control my turns was to pick a “corner” point on the ground and treat it as 1/4 of a turn around a point. Speaking of turns around a point, that was the next order of the day- a nearby water tower provided an excellent reference for this. I learned that the smaller the circle flown, the tougher it is to maintain distance, though on wider circles it was also easier to cover the water tower with the wingtip and thus lose my reference.
Departing the tower, we pointed the nose toward D73, which was pretty close by this point. Approaching the field, Scott spoke on the radio with a C172 which was also about to enter the pattern, and we coordinated on using the same runway. My first pattern was sort of ugly. I seem to be having trouble correctly judging my pattern entry; if I’m remaining in the pattern, with defined upwind/crosswind/base/final legs, I do OK, but that entry needs work. Still, I rolled out on final a bit high, but not unmanageably so. The tough thing here for me was the lack of a visual glide slope indicator. All the other landings I’d done had involved a VASI or PAPI to refer to, and despite my attempts to fly of my sight picture, I’d been depending heavily on the indicators. Here, I was forced to do it the right way. This, of course, is why there’s an instructor in that right seat; Scott gave me good continuous feedback on how I was doing slope-wise.
Back to that first landing… it was a great opportunity for me to demonstrate my favorite vice: starting the flare too early. This landing was a blue-ribbon winner in that department, but Scott was on top of things and stopped my madness. Better yet, once the throttle came back up, I got way behind the airplane with the right rudder, resulting in some severe veering as I tried to get things back in line.
Second time around the pattern was better- I overdid my turn to downwind, and had to work to keep from drifting towards the runway. As such, I ended up with a pretty short base, and started my approach high again. This time, though, I controlled my early flare tendency, and made a decent touchdown. (though I suspected that some assistance was coming from my right) I also better anticipated getting on the rudder once the power came back in, and kept things pretty straight.
The next few times got progressively better- I got a good ground reference for my downwind, and got to flying a pretty good parallel. I even had a pretty good greaser at one point. Then things got interesting. I had just hit pattern altitude on downwind and pulled the power back when a very noticeable vibration developed, seemingly from the engine. It remained until I pulled back further power to start my descent, and Scott decreed a full-stop landing this time to check things out. Which brings me to another issue of mine: controlling the aircraft on rollout. My full-stop looked great until I got on the brakes, and then I performed a rather impressive slalom maneuver down the runway- the kind of thing that you hope very few people were watching. Eesh.
On the ramp, we shut down and walked around the plane. Nothing was visibly out of place, nothing looked strange, nothing to indicate the source of the vibration. Hmm. Well, the engine had run OK for the landing, so we cranked back up and did a careful runup; everything seemed OK. So I taxied down, took off, did one more touch & go, and then we headed back west to PDK. Along the way, that vibration made another appearance at one point when I adjusted the power; not as noticeable as the first time, but still there. Still, the plane flew OK all the way back to PDK, where things had heated up even more while we were gone. One tower controller in particular was spitting out instructions like some sort of mad auctioneer. But I did make sense of our instructions, which included what seems to be a PDK standard- your first landing instructions rarely survive until you get to the airport. This time we initially got left traffic for 20L, but then it became right traffic for 20R, plus the later addition to extend our downwind… par for the course at PDK. That’s why I won’t do my first solo here. Flying the pattern is enough to worry about without the complications. On landing, I performed yet another zigzag maneuver on rollout… got to work on that. At least I don’t look like a drunkard when I taxi any more.
All in all, I can see myself improving. I’m flying pretty good patterns now, though I still tend to get a little funky on the entry, and I also have a tendency not to let the nose drop at the tail end of my downwind and during my turn to base. Airspeed control on final is good, though it needs a little work on downwind and base. Flaring is getting better, but I still don’t think I really have a “feel” for it. Ground handling during takeoff rolls is decent, but landing rollouts are horrid. I’m thinking that some pattern work doing full-stops is going to be in order before I’m ready to solo- everything else, I feel, just needs some refinement and repetition, but the rollouts need serious work.
Next flight is Sunday; this time we’ll be taking the Eclipse from LZU instead of 546DC. Given that odd vibration, this seems a good plan until someone can check out the plane to make sure everything is kosher. Here’s hoping Sunday sees me get my ground handling problems reined in.
