When I showed up for my lesson yesterday, D. said, “Today is the day for operation Landing.” We stayed in the pattern, doing touch and go’s for what seemed like an eternity. It doesn’t really bother me since I’m the sort of person who can do something a few hundred times in the effort to perfect it without being terribly bothered. In fact, I find the repetition almost calming. Flying in circles (or rectangles to be precise) can get somewhat dizzying, though.

About 200 feet AGL on approach, I heard a THUD and caught something dark out of the corner of my eye. “Bird-strike” said D., somewhat unconcerned. I asked D. if we should look it over. He sort of shrugged, and didn’t seem to care. Since I was the one flying, I went ahead and told tower it was going to be a full stop, we had a bird strike and wanted to check it out. We taxied back to the ramp, and D. said he thought it hit the leading edge of the right wing. No indication of a bird strike there, but the right flap (which was at 20 degrees at the time) appeared to be suffering from something of a depression. D. agreed, but said he didn’t think it was enough to stick the plane in maintenance. These planes suffer from a rather large number of airframe abnormalities, none of which seem to make much difference in airflow characteristics have any structural significance. Satisfied that nothing appeared amiss, we called tower, who kindly offered to let us take off on runway 21 (crosswind) and transition to 17 (the active) to save us taxi time. I thanked him, and performed another 10 landings without much incident.

While there was a lot of wind, most of it was down the runway, so it didn’t concern me too much…. until I realized that EVERY TIME the airplane seemed to be side-loaded as I touched down. Looking down the runway, it LOOKED like the plane was going straight– and in fact it would be pointed straight down the runway, but it happened to be moving sideways as well as forward. It took awhile for me to be able to actually pick up on the visual cues that this was happening. While I know that you’re supposed to apply aileron deflection into the wind and opposite rudder in order to keep the plane flying straight (though wing-low) and touch down on the upwind wheel, this is all much easier said than done. Establishing a slip is pretty easy, even though the plane doesn’t like being cross-controlled. The hard part is applying the inevitably necessary corrections.

At one point, D. chastised me for lowering the nose and unnecessarily increasing airspeed. Since I was a little high, it wasn’t THAT big a deal, since I WAS going to be simultaneously apply flaps, which tends to make the nose pitch up. Certainly, this should have been done simultaneously, so the plane remains in the same attitude, with an increased descent rate and airspeed maintained. I was slow getting to the flaps, and then I got distracted because D. was yakking at me, telling me what I already knew, and kept me from adding flaps, since I was convinced something was actually wrong. “I know, I WAS going to add flaps until you distracted me!” I protested. “Okay, fine, I’m not saying another word,” and he started humming. I got the plane a bit sideways 50 feet over the runway, and had trouble getting stabilized again, when I said, “Ack, what do I do???” D. maintained his silence. I thought I could sense a snicker. So I fought with it a little bit, and was just about to initiate a go around, when suddenly everything lined up and looked good. Shocked, I put the plane down quite nicely. D. was suitably impressed, though I knew that luck had more to do with it than anything.

Yesterday, the only plane available was N75958, which I hadn’t flown before. It’s a C-172N, instead of a 172P like the one I had been flying. (As for just what the difference is, I’m not entirely sure… The engine is subtly different, it only takes 6 quarts of oil instead of 7, and all the P’s we’ve got are certified in the Normal category, whereas all the N’s are certified in th Utility Category, and are rated for spins…) I complained that the control pressures were much lighter on 75958, and finally someone explained that was because 94AV had an installed (though deactivated) autopilot… For whatever reason, (partially due to it’s new paint, lack of a rear seat, and endless other minor variations) 75958 is widely known as the fastest of the 172’s, where as 94AV is definitely the slowest. 94AV hardly ever seemed interested in cruising over 85KTs, but 75958 will top 100 no problem. It also flies much straighter, which is nice.

The biggest difference, though, is the throttle. Most of the 172’s have a push-pull type control mechanism for the throttle. All you have to do is push it in for more, pull it out for less. For whatever reason, 75958 has a very non-standard sort of throttle. Its throttle is identical to the mixture control, only it’s coloured black instead of red. This is frustrating. The mixture control is set up so you can make fine adjustments, and expect the adjustments to stay put unless you go out of your way to change them. You have to push a button in the middle of the knob and push or pull. You can also twist it to make fine adjustments. When you’re used to being able to just push or pull on a lever, but have to push a button to activate this one, that seems rather dangerous to me. I find it hard to believe that this is an FAA-approved configuration for an airplane, but apparently it is. In addition to the weird knob type, it’s also very finicky. Making an adjustment of 100 rpm is all but impossible, even when twisting instead of pushing/pulling.

On one of my approaches today, I tried to reduce power while on downwind, only to have the engine slow down to a sputtering idle, when all I wanted was a reduction to about 50% power. Severely annoyed, I pushed it in until the engine started running back up, but then it just went all the way back up to 100% power. After repeating this escapade 3 times in probably just as many seconds, D., rather frustrated and sputtering, said, “What the hell are you doing?” “This throttle sucks!” I protested. “That’s because you’ve got the mixture control!!” Oh. Right. But, see, in a NORMAL airplane, this wouldn’t be a problem, because the throttle is supposed to FEEL very different from the mixture control. So, there’s yet another reason why it’s a dangerous configuration. I suspect this won’t be the only time I make that mistake flying this plane. And I’m sure I’m not the first one to do it, either. D. fussed at me for not slowing down to think about what I was doing, but I maintain that while it was pilot error, it had a severe contributing factor of an improperly configured airplane. Sure, I probably should have slowed down, but I shouldn’t have to LOOK to see that I’ve got the throttle control. It didn’t happen because I was going too fast, it happened because of non-intuitive controls. Fortunately, provided you simply push it back in, pulling the mixture in flight isn’t really that big a deal. I mean, if you look at a jet-liner, there’s a reason the throttles are shaped quite differently from the gear handle which is very different from the flaps lever, which is very different from the spoilers, and so on–in spite of the fact that all of these things are simply glorified electronic switches these days.

Today, we spent most of the hour doing slow flight, ground reference maneuvers and engine-out procedures. I did one touch and go before the final landing. The first touch and go was okay, the second was even better. The wind was 21 knots gusting to 27 knots 10 degrees off the runway. It makes landing easier, although it’s weird looking since your ground speed is so much slower. The second landing, I actually almost the right amount of wind correction in… Admittedly, it was only a small crosswind component, but the fact that I didn’t land too side-loaded was nice….

Having Joanna back is nice, but Bob Edwards is still gone…