Archive for the ‘Flying’ Category

I have time for things these days. I like having time. I don’t need to study just yet.

Commercial ground school is simply a re-hash of private ground school. By that, I mean that my flight school puts the commercial students in the same ground school as the privates. It’s generally referred to simply as “Dale’s Ground School”.

Anytime I ask about the setup, I get one of two answers. One is, “You forget it all in instrument training, anyway.” The other is, “At least the stories are good.” I enjoyed Dale’s ground school quite a bit more the first time around. I don’t mind it terribly much this time around, but it’s less exciting when I can tally the specific things I’ve learned after three days in three hours of class. Today, I learned that in spite of the fact that a Cessna 172P has “7 Quarts” printed on the dipstick, the capacity of the system is actually 8 quarts. This seems a little weird to me, since if you drain the system and put a new oil filter in, you ought to expect to be able to put the amount of oil printed on the dipstick in the engine. But, apparently, one quart is contained in the oil filter, and that just doesn’t count. Admittedly, I learned this because Dale said, “Oil capacity of the 172 is about 8 quarts.” So, I looked up the oil system in my operating handbook.

I also learned that Dale is under the impression that you cannot mix synthetic and conventional motor oils. Unless there’s something about aviation oil that’s significantly different than automotive oil, he’s wrong about this. I neglected to quiz him, since in general, he knows more than me about most things, which is an awfully nice change. I have to refrain from asking him to delve deeper into a subject that’s not really relevant and will probably annoy my classmates.

This group of people is substantially different than the last group. It’s nearly 20 people large, which is slightly larger than the “classroom” can comfortably accommodate. But the biggest difference is that this class has real, honest-to-god, actual girls in it. Two of them. Women may be a growing presence in aviation, but they’re pretty rare around this school. Prior to these two, the only other female student I encountered was leaving about the time I showed up.

These two girls amuse me for a couple of reasons. They’re both here because the Air Force sent them here. I was a bit surprised the Air Force outsources even pilot training. They only do their private training here, but they’ve got a pretty sweet deal. They get paid to go to learn to fly, unlike the rest of us who are spending obscene amounts of money. They don’t seem to much like Dale and complain about how long-winded he is, and how what he says could actually be compressed quite a bit.

They miss the point. The only reason this flight school operates a ground school class at all is because they have to in order to have their training certificated under part 141. The FAA allows “pilot schools” to condense training significantly over what you’d have to do outside of a pilot school. The school, in turn, has to submit an approved curriculum. The private course requires something like 40 hours of groundschool. It almost doesn’t matter what he talks about, the time is mandated more than the subject matter.

Dale follows along with a textbook, but he doesn’t pay much attention to it, using it only as an outline. Most of what he says is non-essential but helpful and colorful information that’s not in the textbook. This is good since anyone can read a textbook, a teacher who simply reads one for a class is hardly much of a teacher.

Dale asks questions continuously only pausing for an answer about half the time. Not wanting to look like the know-it-all I am, but still wanting to impress Dale (since he might be a significant factor in whether or not I can land a job at the school when I finish) is something of a delicate balance. Mostly, I only take the questions no one else can answer, or is willing to answer.

Every now and then he corners a student for an answer. Sometimes he goes around the room and polls, if it’s a particularly difficult question. He hasn’t done much of this in this class though since it’s much bigger.

When he asks, “What’s the fuel tank capacity of a 172?” there’s a chorus of answers, almost all simultaneous after a short pause. When he asks, “How much does a gallon of jet fuel weigh?” there’s only one respondant. I’m surprised, because it’s not me. Of the people who ever answer, we all play the game much the same way.

I haven’t flown yet, though I have been assigned a commercial instructor. The first part of commercial training is primarily cross-country solo flights. Now I get to worry about getting lost again.

Well, I have an instrument rating. Yay!

I didn’t finish it by the end of August, so the aforementioned happy dance won’t happen. But I’m still glad.

The oral portion of the exam was only a little over an hour long. There’s an art to both the taking and administration of an oral exam. B, who administered my private oral was really good at it, whereas C, who did my instrument, is not so good. C asked some really, annoying questions, sometimes in fill-in-the-blank form. More than once I had to say, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I knew everything I needed to, but he was very bad at asking the right questions. In spite of all this, he said that I did a very good job on the oral exam.

I was a bit hesitant about even taking the practical portion of the exam today because of an airmet that indicated moderate turbulence below 6,000 feet and very windy surface conditions.

I filed a flight plan from Norman to Norman, which is always a bit weird, but I had to be able to prove that I could copy a clearance and read it back properly.

The first approach he had me fly was the ILS 17L at Will Rogers. He told me, before the approach, “you won’t see the runway,” which means that I’m expect to fly the approach to decision height then execute the missed approach. It was the roughest ILS I’ve ever flown. The plane was rocking so much I could barely see the instruments. I managed to keep the needles in roughly the locations by sheer force of will, I think. I was sure that I was going to lose it about 500 feet above decision height, but I just stuck with it, fighting the airplane, the wind, and doing everything but screaming at the needles. I got through without the needles moving outside the “doughnut”, executed the missed approach, only so I could set up for the next one, the VOR 17L. The examiner told me that this approach would end in a landing, and that I would be able to see the runway when the approach was over. The VOR, not being as sensitive as the ILS and with no vertical guidance was a bit easier to fly. Still, it took a lot of work. I was at MDA and about a mile from the missed approach point when the controller informed me that I needed to get out of the way or be mown over by a 737. My examiner opted for a sidestep to the parallel runway. Since I had no idea what to do now, since I was below circling minimums for that approach, but not yet at my missed approach point, I asked him if I could look up. He said, “What did I tell you before?” This led to us yelling back and forth, me flying missed approach, and telling him that he could either quit arguing with me or fly the plane, since I couldn’t do both. He flew, and we argued some more. I maintain that it was a perfectly reasonable question to ask, and his refusal to answer was ridiculous. He tried to feed me a line about being able to make decisions on my own, but it’s perfectly obvious in real life if I can see the runway or not.

In any case, he finally decided he didn’t want to argue about it anymore, and told me to fly the published missed, which ended in a hold. I flew the hold a few circuits, which was a bit more difficult than it should have been. I needed a 30 degree crab angle and was having a hard time maintaining altitude +/- 100 feet. Gusts would knock me up and down that much quicker than I could react. After a few circuits and thinking I was about to jump out of the plane if I had to fly another one, he told me to fly the localizer 3 approach back into Norman.

He’d told me at the beginning of the flight that I’d fly the localizer back into norman partial panel (which means without the directional gyro or attitude indicator), but mercifully he either decided it was impossible given the conditions, or forgot. I’m not sure which, but I don’t know that I could have flown that approach no-gyro. I couldn’t even SEE the compass, much less guess where the middle of it’s 180 degree oscillations were. Zach insists that one can fly a no-gyro approach without even looking at the compass, just looking at the needle. But in really turbulent weather you can get turned 30 degrees off course and never realize it, so I’m not sure how this is a good solution.

With the never-ending wind, I had to maintain an enormous crab angle to maintain course, and the localizer needle was all over the place. Fortunately, I somehow managed to keep chasing it back and forth rather than getting to totally lost. The controller didn’t help by giving me some really bad vectors, mostly because of the wind. When I looked up to circle I realized just how sideways we were flying. And flying a circling approach to a runway downwind is really hard in high-wind conditions because the groundspeed is so high. I guess it’s good practice for flying planes that actually move. I circled and made a pretty darned good landing, all things considered. Wind was gusting 15-25 knots and varying +/- 30 degrees. I was about to set it down in a beautiful crosswind configuration, upwind wheel first, when a gust launched me up 15 feet, effectively messing it all up. I recovered and managed a solid, straight landing with all kinds of rudder. Oddly enough, the wind turned more straight down the runway, and I ended up touching down on both mains about the same time, with the plane headed down the centerline and it didn’t feel like I was sideways at all. I spent the taxi back trying to keep the plane taxiing straight, which was nearly impossible in that wind.

After a never-ending debrief, he passed me and signed me off. I’m an instrument pilot. And I passed the checkride first time around, which feels a lot better than having to go back for a recheck.

Now I work on my commercial license. 75% of it is solo flights, VFR. That ought to be a nice relaxing change of pace, getting to look out the window, and not spending most of my flight time breaking a sweat flying approaches. The downside is that I’m not going to be using my newfound training, essentially just going back to the skills I picked up as a private pilot. I hope the instrument skills don’t go too far away.

I flew on Tuesday, as a review flight since I hadn’t been called for my checkride yet. I still haven’t been called, so I flew again today, just to keep me current. So now I sit around and wait some more.

Well, Zach signed me off for an instrument check ride today. I don’t feel ready, but he thinks I am. I was going to refuse, but if I fly tomorrow, then I probably can’t get a check ride in Before Tuesday, since the flight school is closing down for the weekend. This way, if I get a checkride on Thursday, I’ll see how it goes. If they don’t get to me by then, then I’ll review next week, and take the checkride then.

I’ve been making some pretty darned smooth landings lately. This probably is directly related to the fact that there hasn’t been much wind.

I landed on the big runway at Will Rogers a couple of nights ago. Shot a perfect ILS, pulled the foggles off at 200 feet over the ground to a beautiful view of being situated perfectly over lots and lots of lights, followed by one of the best landings I’ve made yet. It’s enough to make you feel good.

It was pretty turbulent this afternoon, and I had a heck of a time with the ILS, but managed it anyway. After I thought that was bad, a no-gyro VOR approach was miserable. No-gyro means that the Attitude Indicator and and Heading indicator are covered up. Which means that the only way I can tell which way I’m pointed is the magnetic compass, which is a nearly worthless instrument. It was oscillating roughly 60 degrees back and forth today, which makes things very difficult.

When an air traffic controller vectors you for the wrong approach, that doesn’t help either. Here, I’ll provide some dialogue for a nice change.

ATC: Cessna 76067, turn two zero zero to join, maintain three thousand until established, you are cleared the approach.

ME: two zero zero to join, three thousand until established, cleared V-O-R one seven right

ATC: Cessna 76067, contact rogers tower one one nine point three five.

ME: Going to tower, zero six seven.

ME: Rogers tower, cessna seven six zero six seven with you on the V-O-R one seven right.

TOWER: Zero six seven, cleared for the option.

At this point, I realize that I’m never going to intercept the final approach course at my current heading, it’s not even close. Since I was cleared for the approach, I turned to a proper intercept angle.

TOWER: Zero six seven, It looks like you’re on the ILS one seven left.

ME: Negative, zero six seven is flying the VOR one seven right.

TOWER: Uhh. You’re about two miles east of the course, it looks like they had you in here for the wrong approach.

This is a little like being at a restaurant and being told by the guy who brought you the fish sandwich instead of a hamburger that he’s just doing what he was told, the waiter must have punched it into the computer wrong…

ME: We’re trying to intercept the final approach course for VOR one seven right…

TOWER: Uhhh.. You want vectors back around?

At this point, I realized I was past the final approach fix, way wide of the inbound course.

ME: That’d be fine, zero six seven.

TOWER: Roger, zero six seven contact approach, one two four point six.

Back to the controller who screwed it up in the first place, and claims we ordered the fish sandwich in the first place. Yay. And I read back the right approach. We lost a good 10 minutes to that.

I would have figured I must have screwed up somewhere, but Zach is actually the one who requested the approach as we were leaving Norman, and he said my radio calls had been right up until then.

Talking on the radio, and flying, and navigating gets to be a bit much for me. When they start talking at me and I’m not ready for it, I wave at Zach to answer them. It’s weird, I know exactly what I need to say, but I can’t get it out and do everything else. There’s also more pressure than I’m used to, because things downtown are a lot more busy, what with real commercial traffic, and endless military traffic into both tinker and will rogers.

Speaking of military traffic, I was minding my own business in a hold at 3,000 feet as assigned by ATC, when I hear, “Cessna zero six seven, traffic twelve o’clock, C-130 at 3,500, two miles, caution wake turbulence.”

That woke me up. I popped off my foggles, and see very big plane. Headed right at us. Sure, he’s supposedly 500 feet above us, supposedly, but man it looked big. And 500 feet is hard to see a couple miles out.

“Uhh. Traffic in sight, zero six seven.”

“Zero Six Seven, maintain visual separation, caution wake turbulence.”

I wasn’t quite at my fix yet, but I decided that I didn’t really want to have my world rocked. I asked Zach if it was all right if I turned a bit early. He responded with a rather emphatic yes.

I braced myself for the world to end as we passed. Big plane. Guns and stuff. No real wake turbulence though, nothing like I was preparing myself for… Turns out he was going really slowly, which probably minimized any wake turbulence

As we turned 180 for the outbound leg of the hold, albeit early, I got a nice pretty view of it. That was kinda cool.

We were also landing in close quarters with a T-38 on a parallel runway earlier, but I was foggled and never got a chance to look:(

I’m not sure if he ever saw us, since I never heard him call in that he did, but I don’t always hear military planes talk back. The E-3s talk on VHF, at least when talking to approach, but many of the military planes seem to be UHF only. I’m not exactly sure how that works, I think most of them can listen on VHF, but can only transmit UHF.

That’s all for tonight, folks…

On Wednesday, I flew from Norman, to Chikasha to Tulsa to Ponca City and back. 5.1 hours of flight.

After much ado and discussion about the weather (rain likely, no thunderstorms for the area,) we set off around 10:30am. One of the legs of the flight had to be between two airports more than 100NM from each other. Norman and Tulsa is something like 96NM. So we flew west to Chickasha first. Originally, I was going to fly an NDB (non-directional bearing) approach into Chickasha, but the ADF (Automatic Direction Finder, it’s what receives the signal broadcast by an NDB) in the aircraft we were flying wasn’t working, and the only other approach available was a VOR/DME approach. And the plane didn’t have DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) either.

So we flew VFR to Chickasha, and since I’d never done it, I asked Zach if I could land on one of the grass strips there, as opposed to the perfectly good concrete runway. I’d never landed on grass before, and wanted to try it. It’s a weird sensation, and while my landing wasn’t perfect, it was perfectly acceptable.

After landing, we taxied to the paved runway. A pipeline patrol aircraft called that he was 4 miles out, inbound for Chickasha on the radio. We replied that we were taking runway 17 and departing to the north east. Right after takeoff, we called that we were upwind runway 17. Maybe 20 seconds after takeoff, I spotted a Cessna, close at about one o’clock. At first I thought he was going the same direction we were, but then I realized he was heading right at us. I banked right while pointing him out to Zach.

Spotting other airplanes in the day is a pretty tricky endeavor. If they’re moving across your field of view, they’re fairly easy to spot. But if they’re moving across your field of view, you’re not on a collision course. If they ARE on a collision course, the other plane appears stationary and is very hard to spot. I think that the biggest reason there aren’t more aircraft collisions when flying in uncontrolled airspace under visual conditions is that there is a lot of space and planes are relatively small. I was still in a right bank when I realized how close we were going to come. At that point, it looked like we’d clear each other by about 10 feet. I increased my bank, and the other pilot was talking on the radio… “Chickasha traffic, pipeline patrol 1234 is about– OH SHIT!” NOW he sees us. He simultaneously banked off at about 75 degrees and dove, so we ended up clearing each other by about 25 feet.

25 feet is closer than you ever, ever want to get to another airplane. Even though we were both slow-moving, the time between my spotting him and passing him was about 10 seconds. And I spent the first several of those convinced he was going the same direction we were.

Zach was busy looking at something in the cockpit and didn’t see him until right about as we passed. Had I not been paying attention, we would have been toast.

The near-miss was the other pilot’s fault. We announced our position, and were flying runway heading less than 500 feet above the ground. The other pilot never should have been that low flying the wrong way over the departure end of a runway. I have no idea why he was. We talked briefly on the radio, and he claims his radio cut out and he never heard us…

But… we weren’t about to make a fuss about it. No one wants to get involved in an FAA investigation if it’s avoidable.

I’m not entirely upset that it happened, because now I know what traffic that close and closing looks like. While I can certainly hope that I don’t wine up that close again, near-misses happen every day.

As I opened our flight plan, I felt some sense of relief that we were going to be watched by radar for most of the rest of the flight. Under an IFR flight plan, ATC is responsible for keeping me away from other planes. It’s a nice feeling.

We ran into a little rain, but the clouds were pretty high, so we didn’t get much actual instrument flying in. It was miserably hot and turbulent the whole way.

Foggles, by the way, are a view-limiting device. There are lots of different kinds, the sort I use clip onto my glasses and only let me see out of the bottom. The idea is to make it so that I cannot see outside the airplane, in order to simulate flying in a cloud.

Flying 5 hours without really being able to see out can drive anyone crazy. The turbulence just makes it worse, because the plane is bouncing every which way and I have to make constant corrections in order to maintain an altitude and heading. Staring at the needles for 5 hours in 100 degree heat is enough to make me fairly exhausted.

We did a touch and go at Tulsa after shooting the ILS. It was the first ILS approach I’ve flown in an airplane, and with all the turbulence, I managed to lose the glideslope completely and barely held onto to the localizer course. The approach ended with Zach saying, “Well, you’ve got full scale deflection of the glideslope needle, and in actual instrument conditions you’d go around. Instead, take your foggles off and land.” Landing a 172 on a huge runway is almost funny. So small a plane, such a huge runway. I use what seems like a few inches of it to land and take off again. Then it’s on to Ponca City.

Ponca City has a huge runway and used to be a fairly active Mesa Airlines base. These days it’s pretty much deserted and uncontrolled. Mesa makes a couple of flights in an out of there. We were going to fly the ILS into Ponca City, but unfortunately, it was inoperative. So, we flew the VOR approach in, and it was the first time I’d actually flown a full approach, since ATC almost always just vectors you to the final approach course. But since it was an uncontrolled airport, Kansas City Center just cleared me for the approach and left me to my own devices.

We landed at Ponca City and went in for lunch. It turns out that there’s a really good Mexican restaurant in the airport. My first $100 hamburger, even if it was a chimichanga. It wasn’t Mexican-Mexican but more Tex-Mex. Or maybe Okie-Mex. The chips were these really good puffed up things which were crunchy on the outside and chewy inside. Never had anything quite like them. The chimichanga was quite good too. And it was all $4. Why was there never an airport restaurant like that anywhere I wound up as a flight attendant?

We had to pump our own gas. 23 gallons at $2.69/gal. Av-gas isn’t cheap. Apparently refineries only produce it a couple of days out of the year, and that has to last us until the next time they do it. It’s a big deal for them, because aviation gasoline needs lead in it, but they have to flush the refineries after making it to be sure that they remove all the the lead when they go back to making unleaded gasoline. Apparently aviation gasoline these days is the source of endless battles between the EPA who wants lead-free gasoline, the FAA who wants endless certification tests performed on any new gasoline formula, and pilots who just want cheap gas. The trouble is, no one’s managed to come up with a good enough lead substitute for use in high-performance high-compression aircraft engines. (The airplanes I fly, however, have engines quite similar to a 1960’s VW bug, and can be modified to run on automobile gasoline just fine.)

After pumping gas, filing our flight plan, and doing a walk-around, we set off for Norman. It’s not quite 100NM from Ponca City. It should take about an hour. Unfortunately, we had a direct headwind of about 40 knots which substantially cuts into our cruise speed. Most 172’s can cruise at a little over 100 knots. The one we were in wouldn’t do much over 90 knots. So we were flying with a ground speed of.. oh.. maybe 55 miles per hour. It would have been quicker to drive. As it was, it took us roughly two hours. It was so hot, and ATC wouldn’t give us an altitude higher than 6,000 feet. Since the standard atmospheric lapse rate is 2 degrees Celsius per 1,000 feet, the higher you get, the more pleasant it is. We wanted at least 8,000 feet, but OKC approach control really doesn’t like to deal with us, because we’re so slow. A ground track of 50 knots makes them even less happy than it does us. So they keep us low and out of the way of the real airplanes.

As we were nearing Tinker AFB, we heard, “Sentry four one heavy, we have an emergency,” in a surprisingly calm voice. In fact, the air traffic controller sounded more upset than the pilot. After being asked the nature of the emergency, the pilot, sounding noticeably more worried this time, announced that he had smoke and fumes in the cockpit. We saw them land okay, and apparently they evacuated the plane at the end of the runway, since it was still on the runway when we flew over Tinker.

“Sentry” is apparently the Air Force call sign for the E-3 AWACS planes, which are Boeing 707’s with an enormous radar dome on top. I’d never seen one in person until I moved here, and now I see them all the time. A little internet research turned up why. The Air Force has 33 of them, and 28 of those are based at Tinker. They fly endless practice approaches both at Will Rogers and Tinker. They’re fun to watch, because they’re huge and make a lot of noise.

5.1 hours of flying, and I was exhausted. It turned out to be a fairly eventful day. When I got home, Joanna called to tell me she had a flat tire.

I didn’t fly yesterday because Zach was busy with other students, and I haven’t flown yet today because it’s really too windy. I could fly, but shooting practice approaches with all this wind will prove to be nearly impossible.