Archive for the ‘Flying’ Category

I just passed my Commercial Multi-Engine checkride. I’m done with Airman. Done, done, done!

The checkride was tough, but I did reasonably well. It started with a closed pattern departure. The examiner pulled an engine about 300 feet above the ground. I reacted correctly, though not as fast as I might have hoped. He seemed to think I did just fine. I climbed straight out to traffic pattern altitude, flew the pattern single engine, and landed single engine. Remembering the bit of obvious advice that Zach had given me last night, “Berck! You’re landing single engine on a 5,000 ft runway in a plane that needs less than half that. It’s OKAY if you don’t land on the numbers. Leave power in until you’re rather high, chop the power, drop the flaps and LAND.” I’d previously been making acceptable, but extremely difficult single-engine landings right on the numbers. Duh.

With both engines running, the Duchess is a joy to land. It’s so incredibly easy as compared to a Cessna. Just come in at the appropriate airspeed, hold a just BARELY nose-high attitude, and it just lands itself.

With a single engine running, it’s fine, provided you make the approach carefully so that you have enough airspeed and altitude to pull the remaining throttle to idle a fair bit above the runway. You can’t really land with power, because the plane flies sideways. If you get slow, you’re nearly screwed. As I discovered yetserday, it’s always a bad idea to put yourself in a situation where you have to add power. The more power you add, the more the plane tries to fly sideways, and things get wonky way too close to the ground..

So my landing wasn’t beautiful, but considering I had a direct crosswind, it was perfectly acceptable. On climbout, he instructed me to depart the pattern and fly to the south. He had me do stalls at 5,500 feet, then I climbed up to 9,500 feet. He had me feather the right engine, secure it, then restart it. That done, he told me to put on a hood and set up for the localizer approach back to Norman. While I got set up, he flew the plane. As we descended through about 5,000 feet below the scattered cloud layer, the turbulence became horrible. Just what you want for what was bound to be a single engine approach. We requested the approach, and vectors seem to take forever. They vectored us all the way across the localizer and back toward it for traffic. I waited until the last justifyable moment to put down flaps, because I figured he’d wait until I had flaps down to pull the engine, just to make it harder. I dropped 10 degrees as the controller gave me the turn back toward the localizer to intercept. While in the turn, he pulled my inside engine. Power up, clean up, identify, verify, feather. That done, I returned to chasing the localizer needle. Considering that I was having a hard time seeing it through the turbulence, and it was wagging back and forth in the turbulence, I’m amazed that I managed to get well established on it several miles from the marker. I busted the crossing altitude by about 50 feet, but given the turbulence, I don’t think that was such a big deal. As we crossed the marker beacon, I put the gear down, started the clock, did a before landing checklist, and throttle back a bit and tried to establish the 700ft per minute descent I knew would get us down to MDA right as we crossed the river. Thinking back on it, I’m glad that it’s an approach I know by heart– one less familiar could have been even worse. My leg started to kill me as we neared the missed approach point. I suppose I could have used the rudder trim, but it took all of my concentration to hold the localizer needle as the wind seemed to shift wildly as we descended. At last, 1700 ft and the words “Go visual, circle for runway 17,” sounded marvelous. Tossed my hood in the back, futzed with my headset while trying to set up on downwind for runway 17 while avoiding a plane off the departure end of 21. As I approached midfield, I had a heck of a time maintaining airspeed. At one point I started losing airpseed and had to sacrifice some altitude and went full throttle on the remaining engine. “Good, excellent, nice correction,” which made me feel better, though I probably should have had all the power in already. I barely maintained 85 knots (Vyse, as well as approach speed) as I turned base, then final. I waited a bit, still at full power until I was sure I had the runway, and dropped the flaps, leaving the power in. Then, set up for a nice, steep approach to land a little long. A miserable crosswind and I landed a few feet off centerline, but still perfectly acceptable. And then full power to go around for one more landing. I asked the examiner to take the airplane on climbout so I could fix my headset which had been all askew since I removed the hood. He gladly accepted, configured the plane for cruise and told me the next landing would be a full stop. “Just a normal landing?” I asked? “Yes, that will be fine.” I thought for sure he’d have me do a short field, and when he didn’t, I was worried he was going to kill an engine again. I hoped he wouldn’t, mostly because I was simply exhausted and my leg was killing me (surely he’ll at least pull the other engine). It was about 100 degrees out, and the turbulence was getting worse. He didn’t pull an engine, and I made a rather steep approach followed by a pretty darned good crosswind landing.

After about half an hour of oral quizzing, he signed my logbook and shook my hand. Done!

I checked my voicemail, and had gotten a call about a job interview at a flight school here in Oklahoma. So, I’ve got THREE options now.

I called the chief flight instructor out in Colorado, and I’ve got an appointment to meet with him at 8am on Friday morning. So, I’ll drive out there tomorrow… I’m quite excited. The more I find out about it, the more I feel like I can’t possible be qualified for it. I’ll find out soon enough, I hope…

http://erau.edu/er/newsmedia/newsreleases/2002/airforce.html

http://www.diamond-air.at/en/press/pressarchive/21111.htm

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IBP/is_2_47/ai_98542399

http://flighttraining.aopa.org/learntofly/articles/diamond0308.cfm

I just got an email about a job [censored] in Colorado Springs. It sounds like a great job… Next step with that is to go out there. I haven’t bought my plane ticket to Orlando yet, and I’m thinking that this is a way-cooler job in a way-cooler place, so I’ll probably head out to Colorado first. I’m terribly excited.

Last week, I talked to Zach about finishing up my multi-engine training. He told me to plan on doing it on Monday, and that he’d get me finished up quickly. I called him on Monday morning, and he told me that the left seat was broken, but that it should be fixed by Tuesday and to fly Tuesday at 1pm. On Tuesday morning, he told me to come in at noon.

I did, and the plane was ready. It was entirely too hot. It took me about 5 minutes to get the fuel cap off the left wing tank. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it, but it’s a needlessly complicated affair. There’s a tab in the center of the cap that lifts up and then twists, and then the whole cap rotates a bit. First I couldn’t get the tab to twist, and then after it did, the whole thing wouldn’t come off. After endless turning the cap and the tab back and forth it magically appeared in my hands. All that to see that there was, in fact, fuel in the tank. I strained some water out of the left tank as well, and crawled around under the wing straining fuel from the other three drain points on that wing. The cap on the right side fuel tank came off very easily. With it came a flood of av-gas. It had clearly been filled when it was quite a bit cooler outside, and now the gas had expanded. After depositing a gallon or so on the ramp, I got the cap back on. Zach yelled at me from the parking lot. “We have to take a prop to Okmulgee!” “Yay!” I yelled back. “Do you know how to get there?” he asked. “I have a chart!” He gave me a thumbs up. I wondered where Okmulgee was, and figured I’d try to see how to get there. But I couldn’t find my chart. I realized I must have pulled it out of my bag when Joanna was asking me where Altus AFB was. I told Zach I’d left my chart at home. He doesn’t own one. We talked a student into loaning us one, though he seemed very reluctant to give up his $7 chart.

I like starting two engines. It makes me feel like a real man. The sound of the second engine coming to life and almost, but never quite syncing with the first makes a wonderful sound. Two engines and steerable nose gear that actually works make taxiing relatively easy. I thought getting back in the left seat would be weird, but I didn’t even notice it.

Zach pulled an engine right after I released the brakes. Way too easy, and I heard it before anything else, so I didn’t even swerve. Rotate at 71 knots, accelerate to 85 knots. A comment about “a complex airplane…” as I remember to pull them up, rather late. In a twin, it’s a good idea to get the gear up early in case you lose an engine. Which I did, right at about 300 feet when Zack yanked the right throttle back to idle. I was totally unprepared and after about 3 seconds of losing airspeed and trying to get my body and brain to do what was needed, Zach said, “Oh, brutal. I don’t want to see any more, take your engine back.”

We consulted the chart, and headed out over Lake Thunderbird. We leveled off at 5500 ft. I would have liked to go higher, but the visibility was only about 5 miles, and the higher we got, the harder it got to see stuff on the ground. I muttered that we might should have just filed IFR. Zach tuned in the Okmulgee VOR, which we were able to pick up over Thunderbird or so, and so I flew more or less at that. We made out I-40, and a few lakes in succession. After about 45 minutes, Zach pointed to the right side fuel gauge. It read 1/4, while the left side was nearly full. I quickly reasoned that if we were losing fuel from the right tank, the left side seemed to be good, and provided the crossfeed worked properly, we could fly a really long time off the left tank only. Okmulgee was probably the closest airport anyway. The fuel cap looked good.

We called Okmulgee traffic, and talked to someone going missed on an instrument approach. They were making a right turn out, and were no factor for us as we made left traffic. I made a rather steep approach, overshot final just a bit, but made a beautiful landing. Come in at 85 knots, and the plane just lands itself provided you don’t try to help it. We taxied to the appropriate hangar, shut the plane down, and pulled off the right fuel cap. It’s a 50 gallon tank, and there’s labels inside to help you judge fuel level. A little over 40 gallons. Same on the left side. “Bad guage” we concluded, and set about getting the propeller we’d wedged behind the rear seats out.

Of course, no one was expecting us, so I looked at a prat and whitney turboprop engine that was being dismantled in the shop while Zach called our maintenance people to figure out what was up. Eventually they got things straightened out, and we headed back to Norman. The right side fuel guage switched randomly between reading 1/4, the correct amount, and pegged past F.

I flew again on Wednesday, shot 3 localizer approaches which weren’t awful, but weren’t beautiful either. Zach figured he could have me ready for a check ride after one more flight, and told me I was scheduled for 4pm that afternoon. He called me around 3:30 to tell me he was a few hours late with his last flight because he thought there was a problem with the right side prop governor, but it worked fine for the mechanics. He called me again around 6pm to tell me that it just wasn’t going to happen because of their Monday night meeting. He called me again at 8pm and said, “Come fly now!” I showed up, filed a flight plan, did the preflight, making sure all the lights worked. The engines always start up with no problems, unlike the endless cranking and sputtering most of the cessnas produce. I started the left engine, checked the engine instruments, selected 1,000 rpm and moved on to the right engine. Fuel pump on, fuel pressure verified, throttle closed, mixture rich, mags on both, prime for a few seconds and start. CLICK, and nothing. The prop didn’t budge, and it didn’t make any more noise. I let go of the started and tried it again… again CLICK. Zach looked over at me was like “what are you doing?” “Nothing, apparently,” and I shut down the left engine to see what the right one sounded like when I tried to start it. Click, WHIRRRR… Zach went and reported to the chief flight instructor, who came out along with everyone else who was about to go home, to see what kind of funny sounds the Duchess was making. They spun the prop, tried the starter again with the same result.

Zach’s gone out of town today, so hopefully the Duchess will be fixed by the time he gets back on Tuesday.