Our Dumb Blog

I called this afternoon to wish my mother a happy birthday. Ben answered the phone, and I asked if Mom were asleep. “Oh, you haven’t heard,” he said. “Mamama seems to have had another stroke.” She was sitting at the table eating Chinese after church when she slumped over. She’s at the hospital now, not really responding to anything but seems to be sleeping.

I’m glad I got to see her last weekend when I was back in Mobile for Ben’s graduation and Ian’s dedication.

I’ve got about 18 hours and it’s time for me to solo, D. says. Unfortunately, I need winds of not much more than about 10 knots before I can do it. So lately, it’s just been sit-and-wait. It’s been 20-30 knots lately. Since the winds are typically calmer in the morning, I’m scheduled for Monday morning at 8am. I have my doubts, though.

I still can’t land crosswind very well. I understand how, I just need much, much, more practice doing it. But, I’m comfortable flying, and I do just fine as long as the wind is mostly down the runway. All my landings have been safe for the past several flights. None of them have been perfect, though.

I learned to fly a short approach the other day. We were in one of the planes with 40 degrees of flaps. Barn doors, they are. There’s really no need for 40 degrees of flaps in a 172, but it does allow me to descent at about 1200 feet per minute at 65 knots. It’s like falling out of the sky, dive bombing the airport. It’s fun. My short-approach landings and simulated engine-out landings were really much better than my normal landings. I think having all that time to mess up an approach means I’m likely to do it.

After I successfully solo, I have to undergo a check-ride with one of the Airman’s check-airmen. I’m not really worried about it, and it’s no big deal if I fail it. (I have to go review whatever I failed and do the ride again) D. thinks I’m well-prepared. I’m a little less than convincing on my emergency procedures, but I don’t think it will be a big deal. Picking a field to simulate landing in is only hard because there’s so many to chose from out here:)

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…

I’m done with my private ground school class. This is good, since I doubt I would be able to stay awake if I had to go to class after getting up at 4:30am tomorrow to take Joanna to the airport. Dale finished up talking about Stability today, which is what he started talking about the day I started. So now I just have to concentrate on the flying until I get enough flight time and skills in order to pass a checkride.

D. and I stood outside and talked awhile, and I figured we probably wouldn’t fly. But, I got the weather and the sky was 2700 broken, winds were 15 knots gusting to 21. Below the 25max allowable for privates. D. left it up to me, so I elected to do some pattern work. I executed three fairly decent and one pathetic touch and go. I was getting tired, so I told the tower the next one was going to be a full stop. The winds had picked up a bit, and we were getting knocked around a good bit. D. mentioned that he hadn’t landed a plane in something like a month, not counting his salvage of my landing the other day. I went ahead and let him land the last one, and sat back. I figured it would be a good chance to watch a good landing. D. didn’t do such a good job and we came in way low, skimming across the grass, and then wound up fast at touch down. It was still good to sit back, my feet on the floor, and let someone else fly for a couple of minutes.

Basically, the goal now is just to get me proficient enough, particularly at landing, that I can solo. I don’t feel at all ready yet, but I’m starting to see that maybe it won’t take the 100 hours I was sure it was going to take when I started. D. said he thinks I’m a lot more ready than I think I am. I’ve got just over 10 hours of flight time, and D. said students are usually ready to solo around 15. I’ll probably be a little over that number before I feel comfortable enough, but we’ll see. Basically, I just don’t feel as comfortable at being able to make the plane do exactly what I want yet. But I’ll get there.

It was a good day for flying today, I like flying later in the evening; it was about 7pm by the time we were ready to takeoff today. Since it was later, Joanna was at home when I left to go fly. She asked if she could listen to ATC, so I turned it on for her before I left. D. had me practice slow flight, right at MCA or, minimum controllable airspeed. MCA is defined as that speed at which any increase in angle of attack or decrease in airspeed will result in a stall. It’s really good practice, and I’m getting better and better at it. It’s really hard, though, when you get behind the airplane. If you start losing altitude but you’re maintaining your airspeed and pitch, all you can do is add power. If you’ve got 30 degrees of flaps out, you can run out of power trying to maintain level flight. When I say level flight, I mean that I’m maintaining altitude, but the airplane is hardly level. You sit back with 10-20 degrees pitch up, mushing along. If I manage to get well configured, it’s usually not too bad to then do some turns, but it’s really hard, because as you turn, you lose altitude. Normally, you’d pitch up a little to do that, but you can’t if you’re at MCA. So, in a turn, you have to add a little power to maintain altitude.

After a few minutes of that, I did a couple power off stalls, then we did a couple power off stalls with a little bank. No big deal, just need some more rudder correction after it breaks. Then we did power ON stalls with 10 degrees of bank. I knew the plane was going to break harder, but wasn’t really prepared for just how much harder. I put in 10 degrees of right bank as I approached a stall with full power. Stall warning, a little buffet, and then WHAM, the plane stalled, left wing first. In less than a second, that 10 degrees of right bank was long forgotten as the left wing dropped out of the sky. I was a little late getting right rudder in there, and next thing I knew I was looking at a horizon that was dead vertical across the windshield. I was dropping out of the sky sideways. It took all of my concentration to fight my natural inclination– to apply right aileron which will do nothing but make things worse, eventually putting us into a spin. I timidly started applying right rudder and looked at D., who appeared to be enjoying my dismay. After a few seconds, he applied full right rudder and the plane righted itself nicely. Wow. I did a few more, and managed to recover in less than 100 feet, which is all that’s needed to pass a checkride. It’s fun because you know that one wing is going to drop off a lot more than the other, but there’s really no telling which one will drop off first. If you’re in a climb, the outside wing will stall first, and if you’re in a descent the right wing will stall first But if you’re not established in a climb or descent, it’s hard to tell which is going to stall first.

After the stalls and slow flight, I practiced some steep turns, then we flew back to Norman to do some touch and go’s. The first two were really pretty good. I was actually surprised as the plane touched down that I wasn’t skidding or bouncing or anything too badly. They weren’t beautiful landings, but they were good enough to pass a checkride. The last landing was to be a full stop. A little bit of crosswind, and I was slightly destabilized on the approach, first high, then a little low, but I thought it was all going to be good. I entered the level off a wee bit high, then pulled back too hard trying to flare and the plane started ballooning upward. I immediately corrected with a little power and slowly pitched down like I was supposed to, then did the same thing this time going quite a bit higher than I should have. As the plane started back down, it didn’t look all that bad to me, but D. stated rather emphatically, “My airplane.” I let go of everything and sat back and watched. My first thought was, “Huh, it’s not all that bad.” Then I realized that we were high, slow and sinking FAST. D. applied full power immediately, and I thought he was going to go around. When I realized a couple of seconds later that he wasn’t going to go around, I wondered why not because it started looking really bad really quickly. In no time, we were crabbing, had a hefty bank angle, were getting blown off the runway, sinking fast, and power was all the way in. D. pulled off quite a save, slowed the descent, got us going down the runway, pulled the power and landed. As we turned off the runway, the controller said, “Niner Four Alpha Victor, you got my heart pumping real good with that one!” I told him my instructor wasn’t doing much better. D. did, in fact, look like someone had just tried to kill him.

Overall, it was a great lesson, I learned a lot, and a little excitement at the end when I know I’ve got someone to get me out of trouble is always nice:)