Squawk1200

So ends another flightless period, and with a bang to boot. (more on that later)  Despite my expressed desire last time around to try to get back to flying more often, events continued to conspire against me.  It started with the repairs to 546 being more extensive than expected; originally, the left side rudder pedal assembly was scheduled to be replaced, but it turned out that the rudder cable had to be swapped as well.  This pretty much requires stripping the airplane behind the seats, so the maintenance downtime increased quite a bit.

Meanwhile, with 391 having been sold a few weeks ago, there was but one remaining DA-20, and as you might imagine, it was in high demand.  Between the plane being booked solid and a miniature rainy season striking metro Atlanta, today was the first time I got to fly again.  I had previously tried for last Friday morning- a rainy day- and yesterday- which featured low clouds from Sunday’s heavy rains and gusty conditions to boot.

But this morning dawned clear, if a bit cold.  I cocooned myself, mounted the bike, and headed out to scenic Lawrenceville to meet Scott.  We had already discussed the plan of the day, which was for me to fly solo out of LZU, head to the practice area, and pretty much do as I pleased.  Concerns for the day, on the other hand, were that the winds were forecast to pick up starting at about 9 AM or so- so my window of flight wasn’t that big.  Scott inquired if I wanted to go around the pattern a few times with him, but I felt confident working in the pattern at LZU, so this ended up being my first “all me” flight.

In many ways, it was a sort of emotional rehash of my first solo.  You just get used to doing things with someone else; preflighting the airplane, climbing in… just all the little things seem vastly different when you’re alone.  The plane took a few tries to start thanks to the temperature, but soon enough I was idling on the ramp, willing the heat to start working and the oil temp to come up.  Then I switched to willing myself to push the talk button and call ground.  As I taxied down to the runup area, it seemed as if someone had taken sandpaper to my senses.  Evey noise the plane made was amplified in my ears.  Every bump felt like an earthquake.  On the roll, I was again reminded of the vast difference in performance caused by a missing passenger.  Up, up, and away, turn to the north, got the lake in sight, keep an eye out for the tall tower to the east, boy, did 3500′ ever come up fast.

There I was, over the lake.  What to do now?  Well, I could just poke holes in the sky, but it *has* been a bit since I practiced my maneuvers, and I *am* in the practice area.  So I tooled about over water, doing steep turns, discovering that slow flight looks different with less load, throwing in a few power-off stalls for good measure.  OK, what now?  I did a few more steep turns, focusing on trying to better coordinate rudder with aileron on the roll-in and roll-out.  Still need to practice that some more.  I still wasn’t quite ready to head back to Gwinnett, and ATIS hadn’t been updated with the latest wind info, so I just flew around the perimeter of the lake a bit, taking in the sights on the ground.

Then it really was time to head back.  ATIS had now been updated, and winds were reported out of 250 at 15.  Stiff, but straight down the runway; should be OK.  I decided to stick with my Plan A and squeeze in a few touch & gos before parking the plane.  Got instructions from the tower to enter right base for 25.  I made a slight miscalculation here and started my descent too late, and ended up having to work to get down to pattern altitude, but I gt it done.  Meanwhile, I could feel that the winds were picking up, moving the plane around a bit.  I made a mental note to keep some extra speed on final to compensate.  Once I got on final, I realized I was in deeper waters than I had expected; the wind made it challenging to maintain a good glide slope.  Still, I managed to stay more or less on slope and in line, but in the flare, things got ugly.  Seemed as if I caught a gust just after leveling off, as the plane suddenly decided to climb up about five feet or so.  As I corrected for that, the wind dropped again and I ended up taking a really hard bounce.  There was no saving this at all, so I came up with the power and got back in the air.

Clearly, this was not a time for solo pattern work.  I requested a full-stop the next time around.  I was really rattled by the abortive touch & go, and it showed in a really ugly traffic pattern.  My confidence in my abilities had taken a big hit, and I was really concerned about getting the airplane safely on the ground.  But I was flying solo- nothing to do but quit worrying, concentrate that much harder, and get the plane down.  The wind continued to give me trouble- at one point on my base leg, I went from an 80-knot descent to hearing the stall horn blaring in an instant.  Stick the power, keep the plane flying, get it on the ground.  Final was the same story as the last time: varying winds keeping my descent rate changing.  I tried to keep extra speed, but the twitching airspeed needle made it difficult.  Then it was time to flare, and as if my magic, the wind seemed to stabilize, and I settled down for a rather gentle landing.

Taxiing back to the ramp was tough.  Apparently the adrenaline dump was affecting me; my legs were shaking and didn’t want to stop.  With the airplane parked and the engine killed, I breathed a sigh of relief.  On the one hand, I’d gotten rattled like never before in the air… but on the other hand, I’d worked through that, flown the plane, and come back safely.  All told, it was a bit of a sobering realization- soloing is great, but with the great feeling comes the undeniable fact that there’s no longer a security blanket riding along.  The buck really and truly stops with me, no dancing around it any more.

Back in the hangar with Scott, we debriefed my experience and then headed over to look at the many pieces of 546.  Since I’m a sucker for seeing how things worked, this was fascinating for me, following the cables from the pedals back towards the tails, seeing the pushrods from the stick, picking out all the familiar parts under the cowling… great educational finish to the day.

I know I already said this one time, but hopefully now I can get back to flying more frequently and get back on track.  Next scheduled flight is this Sunday afternoon.

Ah, quite a week and another dry spell… Last weekend was a sort of perfect storm of aircraft issues, with 546 down with a rudder cable issue and 393 down with a nicked prop.  After hearing of the issues on Sunday, I waited to hear about the status of the aircraft through the week, until Scott asked if I was up for a Friday afternoon flight.  Well, I’m pretty much up for flying any time, so I agreed.  Prior to this particular flight, I’d amassed nearly 19 hours of time.  Time-wise, I still need 40 hours minimum overall time.  Additional requirements to be met are 10 hours of solo (I have .6 so far), of which 5 have to be cross-country, 3 hours of simulated instrument (I have a meager .3), and 3 hours of night.  As far as airmanship goes, one major point is soft- and short-field operations.  So the general idea in the short-term is to get soloed at PDK so I can go out and work on my solo time, and also work on those soft/short-field ops.

Friday afternoon, the weather was lovely.  Light wind, clear sky, just a haze layer to deal with.  It would have been a great day to solo, but unfortunately the airplane wasn’t up for it.  We were flying 546, which still was awaiting replacement of the pilot’s rudder pedal assembly.  The rudders were still functional, though they couldn’t be adjusted fore and aft. (Luckily for me, they were stuck in the Green Giant position)  The mechanic had OK’d the plane to fly for the time being, but recommended against soling from the left seat, just in case there was a failure.  So that pretty much put the kibosh on soling, but there was still the opportunity to do some short/soft-field work, as well as for me to redeem myself after last week’s spotty pattern work.

Since PDK was getting a bit busy, we elected to head over to FTY for the pattern work. We had previously briefed short/soft-field work, so we reviewed soft-field takeoff techniques as we taxied and ran the plane up.  Even better for me, AOPA’s Flight Training magazine had a nice article this month on soft-field ops, so I was feeling ready to give it a whirl.  The basic idea with soft-field ops is to limit drag on the airplane from the soft surface.  As such, general principles to follow on the ground are to keep the stick full back to reduce weight on the nosewheel, and not to stop unnecessarily.  For the takeoff, one taxis onto the runway without stopping and begins the takeoff roll with the stick still full back.  On a normal takeoff, one waits for 45 knots to begin rotating the airplane and then proceeds into the desired climb attitude.  But since we want to reduce drag on the soft-field takeoff, the objective is to get in the air as quickly as possible- so the stick is kept back through the roll until the nose comes up and the airplane starts flying.  All well and good, but we’re going too slow to climb out of ground effect, so the next step is to push the stick forward, level out a few feet above the runway, and accelerate to a good climb speed.  This is actually pretty fun- if I were less focused, I might have imagined I was a Blue Angel performing a low transition.  Heh.

So the soft-field takeoff went well, and the short stint over to FTY was over in no time.  The aforementioned haze made it difficult to pick out the airport, but we got there and got in the pattern.  Landing #1 was to be my first soft-field landing.  The objective here is to land as gently as possible- digging the gear into a soft surface would be uncomfortable at best.  So the approach goes fairly normally until just before touchdown, when a smidge of power is added and the stick kept back to keep the nosewheel up as long as possible.  I found this to be a fairly straightforward operation, though I don’t quite have the feel yet for holding the nose up- but that’s what more practice is for.

After a few soft-field landings, we moved on to short-field work.  Here, the idea is to clear an obstacle on final, touch down at a predetermined point, and get stopped quickly and safely.  Carrying too much speed into the flare and floating down the runway is, shall we say, undesirable when there’s not much runway to work with.  We need that space to get stopped.  I found short-field landings more challenging- correct practice calls for starting the approach higher than normal and then steepening after clearing the imaginary obstacle.  I found myself overdoing the “higher than normal” part, to the point where it was difficult to get rid of all that energy and still hit my touchdown point on-speed.  This would have been a good time for a forward slip, but it’s been some time since I practiced those, and I’m reluctant to refresh myself whilst on short final.  And while I never quite conquered that too-high tendency, I got to the point of doing pretty well at hitting my touchdown point, but some more practice is definitely in order.

After several more landings, the afternoon was still young.  Scott inquired as to whether I wanted to go back to PDK or maybe do some maneuvering.  Since it had been some time since I practiced any maneuvers, I took the second option.  We exited the pattern and proceeded northwest, initially skirting the nearby Dobbins ARB  airspace.  After a bit, Scott called up Dobbins and asked if we could transit their airspace.  We got permission, and I got the interesting experience of flying right over the base.  Got to see some C-130s, C-5s, and UH-60s on the ramp… was hoping to spot a freshly minted Raptor from the Lockheed plant, but no such luck there.

Clear of the airspace, I performed slow flight, power-off stalls, and steep turns at Scott’s request.  Power-off stalls were a bit subpar- I was pitching over too far on the recovery.  In retrospect, I think this is because I never retrimmed the airplane from a 110-knot cruise down to 40-knot stalls, so there was a lot of nose-down tendency.  I’m used to needing some forward pressure on the stick in the recovery, but in this case, a simple reduction of backpressure was sufficient.  Steep turns went well, though I threw in a bit of a climb at the beginning of my first one and wasn’t quite getting banked enough.  These are the kind of things I can get out and practice solo once we get that knocked out.

The flight back to and landing at PDK were uneventful.  Back at the ramp, I was beginning to pack up my stuff when Scott made a proposal: he had to take 546 back to LZU anyway for the repair, so why didn’t I tag along and get some more time plus a bit of a night introduction, and he’d drop me off at PDK afterwards?  I was agreeable, provided I could make a pit stop first, so that’s what we did.  So I was opened to a whole new world of flying… it might seem obvious to say that things look very different at night, but… well… they do!  We were on course to LZU, and Scott kept asking if I had the airport, while I kept looking in the direction it should be, trying to pick up the beacon… all I succeeded in doing was catching some departing traffic.  We were instructed to follow another aircraft on downwind, and I was stunned when I finally picked up the airport… almost off my right wing.  Jeez, that snuck up on me.  Pattern and approach went well… on short final, Scott reminded me to be aware of night illusions making it difficult to judge my height off the runway.  This was verified when I touched down about five seconds sooner than I expected- it was a genuine surprise to me when we hit the tarmac.  Taxiing proved to be challenging as well… that little taxi light on the left wing doesn’t do a whole lot.  In fact, I may never complain about the dim headlight on my motorcycle again.

So ended a good, productive day of flying.  I didn’t get my PDK solo in, but I did get lots of practice for techniques I’ll need for the exam, plus a night intro to boot.  We definitely did more than just make holes in the sky.  546 should be fixed early this week, so hopefully I can get in my solo either one afternoon this week or next weekend, and then head out to the practice area sometime to do some solo maneuvering and navigation.  Won’t be too long before I’m doing solo cross-country… for that matter, won’t be too long before I’m sweating inches away from an FAA examiner.  The pace has been a  bit slow the last few weeks due to the holidays and maintenance issues, but I’m hoping we can get back into a good groove now and get this thing knocked out.

The big hope for today’s flight was to get in a solo at PDK, but alas, that didn’t happen.  Conditions weren’t all that great to begin with- winds had been gusty in the morning, and were originally forecast to calm down in the afternoon.  But come 4:00 and my arrival at PDK, they were still gusting decently.  Still, thanks to PDK’s runway 34, it was still possible to fly in this and at least give it a college try.

Before heading out into the brisk January chill, Scott and I discussed generally the state of my training, things we had to cover, so forth and so on.  High on the list are short/soft-field takeoffs and landings; I’ve become fairly proficient at the standard variety, so it’s time to be thinking about and practicing the variations.  We moved to the whiteboard and briefly discussed the reasons and procedures for short/soft-field operations.   Most of this I was at least passingly familiar with, so it was in a way a review for me.  I just need to go put in into practice.

Out on the ramp, I ran my preflight, hopped in, and 546 fired up surprisingly easily considering the temperature.  After a brief battle between my headset cable and the seatbelt, plus some additional time to get the oil temp up, we were taxiing over to 34.  First order of the day: perform a short-field takeoff.  No problem- get lined up, come to a full stop, go up with the throttle while holding the brakes, brakes off, rotate about 10 knots later, and immediately get stuck on Vx.  Scott had already gotten me in the habit of climbing at Vx initially, so this was in my comfort zone.

Unfortunately, immediately after this, things got squirrelly and stayed that way.  On the climbout, I was twitching the plane all over the place; too much right rudder, let it off, unintentional left turn, level the wings, not enough right rudder… so on through the climb.  Continuing the theme, I cut my crosswind leg short and then drifted a bit towards the runway on downwind.  My pattern didn’t really have a base leg- just one continuous turn to final.  Then my speed control was iffy on final, and as I recall, I took a big bounce on landing.  Whatever it was, it was not pretty.  On the climb back up, I silently cursed my regression.  I’d essentially spent the entire pattern way behind the airplane.  Not good.

Things did get better from there, but never really great.  I had a few more bouncers, plenty more trouble with speed control in the pattern, and I topped it off by mostly clamming up on the radio- a really essential part to flying at PDK, given the frequent special instructions in the pattern.  While I don’t think I really crossed the boundary into unsafe territory, nobody needed to tell me that this wasn’t a pre-solo performance by any means.  In the end, it was just an hour or so of pattern work… which, in fairness, I could have used.  I hadn’t done any since mid-December, several weeks ago.

Once the plane was tied down, I had time to evaluate myself.  The primary problem, really, was a mental one.  From the moment I started overcontrolling the airplane in that first climbout, I was behind the airplane either a little or a lot.  That’s a tough hole to dig out of in the air, especially when you start on a low note.  I simply wasn’t mentally prepared before going in the air.  I can’t point to any particular source of distraction, but there was definitely something.  Perhaps I had visions of coming out, sticking three landings, tossing Scott out, sticking three more, returning to the ramp amid cheering onlookers, scoring a date with the supermodel who’d just happened to be watching from the observation park… you know, the usual perks that student pilots enjoy. 

In any case, it gives me something personally to work on in the future- mental preparation.  I actually used to do this before going to work on busy weekend nights- spend a few minutes clearing my mind and getting things lined up- and I found then that it made a marked difference in my performance.  Seems like this is a habit I ought to get into again.

In the meantime, I’m focused on surviving the blizzard conditions forecast for tomorrow night, and then getting back in the swing of things with a good flight this weekend.

I’ll give you all a moment to hum some Aerosmith and get that out of the way.

Yesterday I broke a horrendous 2+week no-flying streak.  Was out of town for Christmas, and then my first scheduled flight last Wednesday got canceled because the city of Atlanta decided to enforce the area I’d been parking for work for, oh, eight months.  Since they towed my vehicle, that made it a bit difficult to get out to PDK to fly.  But I had already scheduled a larger block for Saturday afternoon, a time to do my first cross-country flight.  This flight would also have a second purpose; to go up to Chattanooga, TN and deliver some Christmas presents for my niece, since my brother wasn’t home for Christmas.

First things first, it was COLD Saturday.  Below freezing all day long, and here I am with just my motorcycle to get around on.  Arrived at PDK a bit late, with some preliminary flight planning in hand.  I had planned a direct route to CHA, which was made easy since PDK has a VOR on-site and CHA has one nearby.  Simple matter of planning to fly a radial from Point A to Point B.  My plan still needed some tuneup- most notably, I’d neglected to account for magnetic variation.  Still, after 45 minutes or so, we had a presentable plan.  Scott then called while I listened in to file the flight plan and get a weather briefing.

Out on the ramp, I preflighted the airplane and then called my brother to let him know what time to expect us in CHA.  In the cockpit, 546 let it be known that she wasn’t a fan of the cold weather, but after a few tries, she fired up.  A quick taxi out, runup complete… well, oil temp is still low.  So we sat for a few minutes until the engine had warmed up sufficiently.  On takeoff, the stiff headwind made for an impressive climb rate, but a less-than-impressive groundspeed.  At my planned cruise altitude of 4500′, the air was substantially bumpy.  I fought it for some time, but eventually surrendered to Scott’s recommendation to climb to 6500′.  Up there, the air was far smoother, and the airplane much less work to fly.

Along the way, I also got an introduction to en route radar service.  Once we’d got clear of the PDK class D, we dialed up the Atlanta center frequency and requested flight following.  This is an elementary level of radar service- we still fly under VFR and navigate on our own, but the controller gives us traffic advisories.

The next new challenge for this flight was working in the class C airspace around Chattanooga.  Rules for entering are similar to class D- two-way radio comms are sufficient.  However, the size of the airspace is larger, and there’s an additional step between you and the tower- the Approach controller.  If we hadn’t been utilizing flight following, it would have been our responsibility to dial up Approach inside the outer area.  However, in this case, the Center controller simply gave us instructions to change to the Approach frequency at the proper time.

Approaching CHA, I was set up well to fly a nearly straight-in approach, and since there wasn’t any other traffic around, that was what I got.  It’s a bit challenging to know where to drop flaps for the straight-in; in a normal pattern, I start my descent abeam my touchdown point, but that reference is of course lost if I don’t fly a downwind leg.  But I flew the pattern fairly well, and made a nice landing.

My brother was waiting in the parking lot, so I let him in, introduced him to Scott, and we walked out to the plane to retrieve the gifts.  Back inside, after a short discussion, we elected to visit the nearby Rib & Loin for a small lunch.  This was good for me, as I’ve not yet found a decent BBQ place in Atlanta. (though I have some recommendations to check out)  Back at CHA, I paid for the top-off and ramp fee, we did a quick weather brief and some planning, and hopped back in the plane.

Here was another crash course- when I contacted ground, the instructions I got back were phrased differently from what I’d heard at PDK or LZU, and the controller admonished me for not reading them back correctly.  Scott informed me that this was because CHA did modified IFR clearances for departure, and thus the readback requirements were more stringent.  I then proceeded to get on the wrong taxiway, but we made it to the runway OK, and before long, we were headed home.

This time, the stiff headwind that slowed us down became a lovely tailwind, and once we were at altitude, we worked up to nearly 150 knots groundspeed.  As such, the trip home went quickly.  Along the way, Scott had me get out a sectional and attempt to figure out our location based on landmarks.  It took me a few minutes, but I got it narrowed down to a general area.  We proceeded on course to PDK- again, made easy thanks to the on-location VOR- and before long I was in the pattern for 34.  Here the wind got me, and I ended up way below slope at the end of my base turn, and I actually had to level out for a bit on final, but once I got back on slope, I came down for another decent landing.

Back in the (WARM) office, we debriefed the flight.  I still have to solo at PDK… maybe later this week will be the right time for this.  We’ll just have to see!