Our Dumb Blog

The oral portion of my practical flight test will supposely be tomorrow morning with the chief flight instructor, which means I get to study, study, study. I think I should be able to do the flight tomorrow as well. It would be wonderful if I could be done with this school by the end of the month.

I’ve been looking forward to my spin training for awhile. I’ve never been in a spin, and I wanted to know what it was all about. Now I know.

As Ed taxied out to the runway he asked me what a spin was. “A stable, stalled condition where one wing is more stalled than the other, resulting in rotation.” We talked about spin entry and recovery techniques and how Cessna 172’s require full rudder and up elevator control inputs to stay in a spin. “Do you get sick on a roller coaster?” he asked. “Nope.” “Eaten lunch?” “Haven’t eaten anything today,” I told him. “Good!”

There was a cloud layer at about 4,000 feet, so we found a hole and climbed up to 7,500. First, Ed demonstrated an incipient spin– the nose-down stalled attitude that will eventual develop into a spin. I’d done this before, so there wasn’t really any surprise there. Stall the plane cross controlled, one wing falls off and you’re staring at the ground sideways.

“Are you ready for a 3-turn spin?” he asked. “Yup!”

He pulled the power idle, pitched up, and watched the airspeed decrease. “50 knots, full back on the yoke… there’s the break, full right rudder.” The plane fell off on the right side, rolling about 120 degrees and pitching down simultaneously. The plane lazily pointed down for a moment and then WHOOSH. The ground was whirling around violently. “One! Two! Three turns and recover!” We hit about 150 knots on the pullout of the resulting dive. Everything looked blurry and seemed to still be spinning even though we were now in a stabilized climb. I didn’t know I was capable of releasing a few gallons of sweat instantly. I was totally unprepared for just how violent it was going to be. Fortunately, I had the climb back up to 7,500 (a few minutes) to recover. Wow.

“Okay, now your turn.” I pulled power, pitched upward, at 50 knots I added full back pressure and stomped the right rudder pedal. Around we went. There was no way I could manage to count the turns, it happened too fast. “One, Two, Three!” Ed yelled. I released the rudder, and pushed the yoke forward just a little bit and we were flying again. Once again, everything was blurry, and I was quite dizzy. Back up to 7,500 to do it again.

I wondered just how much sweat the human body could release in a matter of seconds, and wished I had some water to drink. I was feeling rather queasy and still had to demonstrate a spin to the left.

My entry was nice, but after one rotation the spin dissolved into more of a spiral drive. We tried it again with the same result, but then gave up. Which was fortunately, because I don’t know how much more I could have taken.

As Ed flew back to the airport, I concentrated on trying to calm my tummy.

I remarked to someone back at the airport, that while it was fun, I apparently don’t have the physical stamina to be an aerobatic pilot. “Oh, you probably could if you wanted. You build up a tolerance and get used to it after awhile.” I hope so, because I’ve always wanted to do aerobatics.

Well, there was no plane for my 10am flight, so it got reschduled for 2pm. When I showed up at 12pm for my spin-ride, that plane was in maintenance. And they informed me that the plane for my 2pm flight got canceled for a check ride. So my spin ride is now 8am tomorrow, and my final CFII flight is 4pm Sunday. Whee.

The instructor responsible for taking me on a spin ride today didn’t want to do it in clouds. Imagine that. Before I can get an instructor rating, I’ve got to get signed off on spin training. This way when a student puts me in a spin, I’ll be prepared to save us. Since I’ve never spun a plane before, I’m rather excited about it.

I was scheduled at 10am as well. After looking at the weather, I decided that if I could talk my instructor into it, I wanted to go. There were thunderstorms just north of the city and building, but I figured if we kept an ear out on the weather and didn’t stray far from the airport, we’d be fine. And if things got really bad, the weather was clear to the south. Mostly I wanted to shoot approaches in real IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions). I’d flown in the clouds before, but they were always pretty thin layers, so I never got to stay in them for long.

Since this was supposedly my last flight, and I still hadn’t done a single NDB (Non-Directional Beacon) approach in an airplane, I flew one of the older, rougher-looking planes. For the rest of my CFII training, I’d been flying the plane which my flight school just purchased with an HSI (Horizontal Situation Indicator) and RMI (Remote Magnetic Indicator). It seemed to be relatively new to the training environment so it’s got shiny paint and comfy seats, and the interior isn’t completely trashed. It’s slow, flies a little sideways, and the engine is sluggish, but you can’t have everything. The ADF in this plane didn’t work, so for this flight we picked a plane with a working ADF.

The plane I was preflighting just came out of its 100-hour inspection. You’d think this would be a good thing, but I have an innate distrust of our mechanics. Admittedly, I don’t really know them, but considering that nothing gets fixed and the planes are junk, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover something like a disconnected control cable. I didn’t find anything newly wrong with the plane, but its appearance hardly instilled confidence. I noticed the turn coordinator had been recently replaced by an instrument that looked older than the plane itself. Normally as soon as you turn the master switch on, you can hear the turn coordinator gyro spin up. This one didn’t make any noise, and I was about to pronounce it defunct, when I heard the beginnings of a whine. Slowly, very slowly, it spun up. Yay. The VOR’s always seemed a bit wonky to me, so I asked my instructor if he was sure he trusted the instruments enough to go fly in the clouds. “They’re not too bad,” he said.

I copied my clearance, and as we taxied out, the controllers let us know that there was level 1 and level 2 thunderstorms north of airport. We’d already decided to just stay in the vicinity of OUN rather than head up to OKC where the thunderstorms were sure to be bad. Since the clouds were above 2,500 feet, we decided to press on.

After takeoff, departure kept us flying north for awhile before they gave us a turn to the south for the NDB. I started the turn just as we were about to fly into a rather dark and ominous looking cloud. “Here goes nothing,” I said, concentrating on the instruments. It wasn’t too rough as we headed southbound, the thunderstorms being still north of us. We leveled off at 4,000 feet, surrounded by thick, bright white. We couldn’t make out the sun, but it was definitely brighter up there than it was lower. I flew to the NDB, turned outbound, and did the whole procedure turn in the clouds. We didn’t break out until just above the MDA. I don’t think I could have done it without the serious coaching I got from my instructor. We had been planning on flying the brand-new ILS 17 into Norman, but the wind had switched to the north right before we took off, so it would be opposite flow. Not too big a deal, but the level 4 and 5 thunderstorms over Lake Stanley Draper convinced us otherwise. A rather large plane on the approach into Tinker AFB headed elsewhere. We asked for the Runway 3 Localizer approach, and my instructor covered up the attitude indicator and heading indicator. And it was bumpy, and we were in the clouds. When the controller gave me a turn to 210, I had a heck of a time getting on it, and descending to 3,00 at the same time. The compass was swinging every which way, and the plane wouldn’t descend. “Just push the nose over,” my instructor said, only there’s something nerve wracking about violently descending with NO pitch information, so I hesitated. “Cessna 76067, verify you’re heading is 210.” “Uhh, I’m not sure what my heading is, but I’m honestly trying for 210,” was about the only thing I could think to say in response. My instructor keyed the mike and said, “067 is in the turn to 210,” which sounds a lot better but means the same thing. Rob pulled the covers off the gyroscopic instruments and said, “Here, you can have these back for now.” That made things worlds easier. After we got out of the turbulence, he covered them back up, and my approach was acceptable, though not beautiful. Then I busted the Minimum Descent Altitude by 40 feet, which would be an automatic failure on a checkride. And then there was some confusion about the controller’s circle to land instructions on my part, which culminated with me chopping the power, dumping 40 degrees of flaps and dive bombing the airport, landing midfield.

My instructor was ready to sign me off, but I asked if we could do one more flight tomorrow, since I had to do my spin ride anyway. He agreed.

So now I’ve just got a bunch of studying to do. Hopefully I’ll get a checkride no later than Monday.