…updating the blog, that is. I went on a solo flight Sunday afternoon, and yeah, I’m just now getting around to writing about it.
Plan A for Sunday had been to knock out my long cross-country. I also had a bit of an ulterior motive with this; my parents were in town in Chattanooga and my dad had just had a birthday, so I figured on making a long stop and taking him out to lunch. Alas, but the weather did not work out for me. Saturday saw possible rain in the forecast for Atlanta, and near-certain rain and snow in Chattanooga. I elected to postpone the cross-country another week… but since I had the plane reserved, I figured I’d at least go out and get some maneuver practice.
Things got a bit more interesting when I heard from Scott Saturday evening… seems 546 was still over at LZU. I volunteered half-jokingly to finish my solo flight at PDK and get the airplane repositioned, but that was actually what happened. Bruce was going to be at PDK anyway and was willing to run me back to LZU for my car after the flight. Sounded like a plan to me.
Sunday morning, I showed up, got the airplane, had a relatively normal preflight and takeoff, and proceeded on up to Lake Lanier to work on some of my maneuvers. I started off with a few steep turns, and ended up a bit dismayed… my turns to the left probably would have passed, but I wasn’t at all satisfied. I kept letting the nose drop during my roll-in, with the result that I spent the rest of the turn chasing the nose in an attempt to stay within 100′ of my starting altitude. Oddly enough, turns to the right were spot-on every time.
Another little detail that I wanted to work on was coordinating my turns. I was pretty well into the habit of generally forgetting that the rudder pedals existed unless I was on the ground- passable for gentle turns, not so good to more aggressive entries and exits to my steep turns. Without rudder input, there was a noticeable yaw at the beginning and end of my rollout. So I spent a few minutes just working on constantly changing my bank angle and adding rudder such that I got rid of adverse yaw during the transitions. It actually turned out to be much easier than I thought, and made my steep turns much friendlier as well.
I tossed in a few power-off stalls and turns around a point before pointing the nose towards PDK. This would actually be my first time soloing into PDK- all my previous flights were out of LZU. But I’d flown in and out enough to know what to do and expect, so it was no big deal at all. I called up the tower about 8 miles out, asked to do some pattern work, and was vectored into a straight-in to 20R. As I was setting up, I saw a large plane over in the vicinity of Stone Mountain, and remembered that the B-17 Liberty Belle was at PDK for the weekend. Sure enough, that was her, taking some lucky folks for a nice flight. (side note: I wish I could use “Fortress” as my type when calling ATC. Fortress 34R sounds way cooler than Diamond 6DC)
There was a bit of confusion in the pattern, as a Cirrus was in the vicinity with a similar callsign, ending in 6DC. The tower controller accounted for this by referring to us by our type. I probably would have gone for full callsigns instead… but hey, it got the job done. Soon enough, I was on short final for my first solo landing at PDK… and it was a squeaker. Nice way to get started. Number 2 was another good one, but things got interesting as I was climbing out again… just off the end of 20R, I observed a white balloon up ahead and below; I passed about 50 feet above it before making my crosswind turn. I didn’t think much of it, and thought even less as I was on my downwind. A bit earlier, I’d heard someone call in and request an initial for 20L, and as I turned downwind, I realized that the calling airplane was none other than the B-17. She was just making her break into the pattern as I made my turn to final, and as much as I wanted to watch her, I did have an airplane of my own to land.
Remember the balloons? Yeah, that wasn’t the end of that story. As I climbed out from the next touch & go, I saw two more red balloons, this time right at my altitude and dead ahead. While I didn’t have any specific scenarios in mind, it seemed prudent to avoid colliding with them, so I turned a bit to ensure a miss. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that the other folks flying around ought to know about the balloons. I had no idea if it was appropriate or not, but I went ahead and called the tower and let them know about the balloons, and they promised to send someone out to stop the madness.
Two more times around the pattern, and I felt it was time to wrap the day up. Back up at the old familiar Clairemont ramp, I wedged in between a C152 and a Piper which was infringing on my space. Good thing the DA-20’s low wing tucks under the Cessna’s eye-level airfoil. Inside, I turned the plane over to Bruce, notified him that I’d found a nonfunctional nav light during my preflight, and then we headed back over to Lawrenceville.
My big conclusion for the day was that I definitely needed to get up with Scott and get a second set of eyes on my air work, particularly those left steep turns. For that matter, I need to get in more short- and soft-field practice, in addition to a few other time requirements. Tomorrow should see me wrap up my night and simulated instrument requirements, and then we can move on to test prep and refining my maneuvers.
