In ground school today, we learned how to read a sectional (a pilot map), and spent the majority of class time on Airspace. I can’t think of anything we’re likely to cover that’s going to be both simultaneously as boring yet as important as the federal regulations about airspace. And we’re not finished yet, we’ve got more to cover tomorrow.

Airspace used to be a whole lot simpler. Back in the ’20s, it was all uncontrolled and the FAA has slowly been turning more and more airspace into controlled areas to deal with increased air traffic and make it safer for the airlines. The biggest problem these days, asside from sheer density of planes surrounding busy airports, is that there are planes that routinely fly at over 400 knots, and planes like the ones I fly, which cruise at about 100 knots. As recently as the 80’s, airspace was a lot simpler. These days, with the sole exception of a few areas out west, all airspace between 1,200 and 60,000 feet is controlled airspace. Granted, much of it is only Class E airspace, which is controlled, but not THAT controlled. You don’t have to ask permission to fly inside it, but it is controlled. For everything over 18,000 feet, pretty much the entire continental US is Class A airspace, which means you have to have filed an IFR flight plan to fly inside it. (Chances are that I may never fly a plane capable of 18,000 feet, so that one doesn’t really apply to me yet…) The area surrounding OUN (the field I’m learning to fly at), is surrounded by an area of Class D controlled airspace from the surface to 3,700 feet, and that’s surrounded by Class E airspace from 700 feet up to 18,000… That’s without mentioning that the northern borders of OUN’s airspace are actually in the Class C airspace belonging to OKC and Tinker AFB. It can all be rather confusing, because many different there’s different rules for all 5 classes of controlled airspace, and I have to know them all… Crossing the wrong boundary can cost a fine or an FAA suspension, or if I’m really careless, possibly my life. Some poor prospective student stumbled in to see what ground school was like, and didn’t take him too long to wander back out.

Flying was less of a surprise today than it was yesterday. Now that I’ve had my frustrations with taxiing, I’ve got that down and didn’t have any trouble… Mike made the radio calls again today, though I’m going to start doing it tomorrow. It’s frustrating because the way this particular plane is wired you can’t really hear the other pilot talking over the radio on the intercom, so I don’t have another pilot to listen to so I can get used to the radio calls. While I’m not so much worried about what I’ve got to say, I’m a lot more worried about being able to understand what the controller is saying.

I performed the take off and, well, it’s a whole lot harder to keep the plane going straight down the runway than it looks like. It wasn’t terribly pretty, but I got us off the ground in relative safety. I discovered what the beginnings of an accelerated stall are like while making a climbing turn in the traffic pattern. I didn’t stall, but I did get the beginnings of the warning horn, and when you’re 500 feet off the ground, that’s not a good thing. I knew the plane stalled at higher speeds in a bank, but at 75-80 knots I thought I was quite safe. Accelerated stalls are quite bad because they lead rapidly to spins. After flying out of the vicinity of the airport and climbing a bit, Mike had me work on steep turns. Mike did a rather poor job trying to demonstrate them, losing 250 feet and banking closer to 50 degrees, and then said, “Uh, just do what I tell you instead of what I do.” My first try, I made a circle in a 60 degree bank instead of 45, because I misread the attitude indicator. Whoops. I thought it looked rather steep, but it sure was fun. I also discovered what the beginnings of a spiral dive are like… I let the nose drop too much on roll in, but kept banking while trying to correct. Since I ended up banking to 60 degrees and kept pulling back, that actually kept tightening the turn and increasing my descent rather than helping things out at all. After a couple of tries, I seemed to do okay with steep turns. To the left, they don’t seem to require much rudder at all, but all sorts of rudder is needed to the right. Left turns are also easier since I’m on that side of the plane and have a better view of what’s going on.

After turns, it was time to fly back to the field. While heading toward David Perry, a little airport close to Norman, we were about to call OUN tower and ask for landing clearance when we heard someone, “…over David perry, requesting landing clearance.” We couldn’t see them at all. It was hazy, and spotting traffic was difficult. We requested clearance, and were told to follow the other Cessna in, but we couldn’t see it. So we asked where she was, and she was supposedly right out over the river, which was a bit in front of us. Then tower asked the other Cessna to make S turns to slow down for a Cherokee. The Cherokee had been complaining that he couldn’t find any of the traffic he was supposed to follow in, which wasn’t much of a surprise. Finally, we saw the Cessna on final, asked the tower if the Cessna that jsut landed was the one we were supposed to follow. She affirmed, and repeated that we were clear to land. I had us stabilized in the approach, though a little fast. No problem since I was only at 20 degrees of flaps. Added the last 10, which slowed us down a bit much, so I added some power to compensate. I was in a noticeable crab, since the wind a 6 knot crosswind. I tried to sideslip instead as we got closer, but that then got a little off course. It’s a little plane and a big runway, and Mike wasn’t complaining (He had his hands on the controls since it was my first landing, but I was flying) so I kept at it. I pulled the power and started to level out, but the left wing was coming up. About then Mike could tell I was pretty much in over my head, so he applied judicious amounts of right rudder and flared. The downwind wheel hit the pavement first and bounced off, which actually helped straighten us out and then the plane landed the rest of the way, and I taxied back to the ramp. Considering it was my first landing, it wasn’t half bad. I get to fly the landings from here on out as best I can…

While we were landing, the controller was busy yelling at someone for cutting off another plane, who he couldn’t see either. The weather service kept insisting 10 miles visibility, but it was really hazy. Being a controller at this airport has got to be a rough job. It’s pretty busy during the day, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that something like 90% of the traffic is students. Today, I heard someone request a touch and go, to which she responded, “Denied, the pattern is too full, state your intentions.” A rather hesitant, “uhh… I’ll just hang out here for awhile…” in response.

My butt is really sore from all this bicycling. I’m flying tomorrow at 3pm, which probably means I’ll hang out at the flight school studying for 3 hours rather than bicycle an extra 8 miles…