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.
