Lesson #9 - Landing practice

Finally back in the air.  Again, the weather wasn't great, but it was good enough. Headed over to SJC again today for pattern work and landing practice. I got credit for my first two landings today. To be honest, I didn't even realize I had made any landings on my own until we got back and Dave filled out my logbook. I guess I'm just too busy doing what Dave tells me to check to see whether or not he's helping me. I started to get the hang of the pattern and final approach, and even got a "beautiful" out of Dave once or twice. 

I lost track of how many times we went around the pattern. We did a number of touch and goes and got a lot of practice with "cram, climb, clean", climbing to, leveling off at, and holding pattern altitude. I think I like practicing landings and pattern work at SJC. Although a class C airport, it appears to have less general aviation traffic than PAO. Maybe GA pilots stay away because of all the heavy metal flying in and out of there. We were one of only two or three planes in the pattern, and the long, wide runway seems to make practice easier. There are just so many planes constantly in and out of PAO that it seems more stressful.

After nearly an hour of pattern work at SJC, we decided to take a break and just fly and relax, since I hadn't flown in two weeks. We headed out to the East Bay and did a nice little counter-clockwise loop around Mount Diablo. I got reacquainted with flying the plane Dave introduced me to using the autopilot in VFR flight. I learned how to set a course in the autopilot using the heading bug and use the autopilot to make descents. 

We had an uneventful flight back to PAO, did a trip or two around the pattern there, and then called it a day since I was pretty much worn out. 

Aircraft: 222MF

Lesson #9: 2.1 hours

Total time: 14.2 hours

Landings: 2

Rained out

My luck with the weather is simply terrible. Lots of rain and wind today, so we cancelled. Dave thought it was doable, but left it up to me. I chickened out, and then kind of wished I hadn't. No flying at all this weekend. Oh well, there's always next weekend.

Today's flight: 0 hours

Total time: 12.1 hours

Another schedule snafu

Somehow today I managed to get the airplane booked for the right time slot, but I messed up and only had Dave booked for a single hour. Oh well. I guess I got practice pre-flighting the plane even if we didn't get to fly it. At least the next guy who flew it didn't have to gas it up.

Today's flight: 0 hours

Total time: 12.1 hours

Lesson #8 - Crosswind, pattern & ground reference work

The weather wasn't great today, windy, cloudy, and a little rainy. After checking it out, Dave thought it looked good enough to get some crosswind practice in. Preflight, taxi, and runup went pretty well in 739TW, although I'd learn later that I missed one important step during runup. Runway 13 was in use again today, my second experience taking off to the SE from Palo Alto. We took off and stayed in the pattern for one trip back around, made a low approach and practiced crosswind correction technique. The wind was pretty strong, somewhere around 12-16 knots. Palo Alto's runway is relatively short, so we decided to head over to KSJC since the 4000+ foot runway would give more time to practice on each trip around the pattern. This was my first time flying into KSJC. We made a transition through Moffett Field's class D airspace and were given clearance straight in to runway 11 at KSJC. I thought it was pretty cool to fly right over the top of Moffett for the first time. It still amazes me how close together these airports seem from the air. Taking off from Palo Alto, it only takes a minute or two before you're over Moffett and another minute or two before you get to San Jose.

The wind was blowing pretty steadily from about 160 or 170 degrees, so we had a pretty good right crosswind. Dave did one approach as a demonstration and then it was my turn to practice, each time trying to work the rudder and ailerons to hold a sideslip while Dave handled pitch and throttle to keep us off the ground. I did OK, but got blown left off the centerline a couple times and had some trouble keeping things lined up. It really is difficult to keep everything coordinated. We did several trips around the pattern, and I started to do a little better. I tend to get nervous during approach and in the pattern, which doesn't help here. Dave thinks once I figure out how to overcome the nerves, I'll do a lot better. 

The weather was interesting from the air. We could see rain shafts all over, and we got rained on a couple different times in our trips around the pattern. I can't remember how many times we went around the pattern at San Jose, but we finally decided we'd head out and go do some ground reference work before heading home. This is where I found that I had forgotten one important step during the preflight runup: I forgot to set the heading indicator to match the magnetic compass. This became important when the tower at KSJC asked us to fly a heading of 020 departing the area, and we had to make an educated guess at it. We managed to overcome this little obstacle and got out of the area without getting yelled at by ATC.

After leaving San Jose, we spent a few more minutes flying around our favorite salt ponds practicing turns around a point and S-turns before heading back to Palo Alto. Dave thought that I seemed more relaxed and I was flying much better. The strong winds definitely added some additional challenge to the ground reference work. It takes a lot of skill and planning to properly complete these maneuvers with a strong wind blowing the aircraft around. After a couple practice runs on each kind of maneuver, we headed back across the bay to Palo Alto and called it a day.

Aircraft: 739TW

Lesson #8: 1.6 hours

Total time: 12.1 hours

Lesson #7 - Ground reference maneuvers and pattern work

The weather was marginal today, but Dave and I met at KPAO and did some ground instruction and then went out for a some ground reference maneuvers and pattern work.  The ceiling was probably around 3000 feet MSL, and we never got much over 1000 MSL all day.  

This was my first experience taking off from runway 13.  Dave thought it was kind of odd that 13 was in use since ATIS said the wind was from 190 at 7 kts.  Sure enough, not long after we departed, the tower switched all traffic around to runway 31. Anyway, we made a left "Leslie Salt" departure from runway 13 and headed across the bay to Leslie Salt. For those of you who've ever flown over the bay, there are a number of salt ponds around the south and east side of the bay. Leslie Salt is a known landmark for local aviators and the Palo Alto tower. Easy to spot, it's a giant white pile of salt surrounded by a bunch of shallow reddish colored ponds. Today was all about turns around a point and S-turns. We used our favorite building or shed out in a salt pond as a center point and made several circuits around at about 90 or 95 knots. Today was quite a bit more challenging than my introduction yesterday, as the wind was blowing pretty good by this time. I did a pretty good job of holding 1000 feet, but the wind really caused problems holding a nice even circle. S-turns were even more challenging. We went back and forth using a long section of pipeline as our centerline. I kept wondering what people on the ground might have thought we were doing. Luckily it was mostly an industrial area, although Highway 84 comes off the Dumbarton Bridge right there. 

We must have spent at least half an hour orbiting around the salt ponds at 1000 feet. The Palo Alto tower guys kept an eye out for us, calling out traffic climbing out above us from KPAO at one point. After we had enough ground reference maneuvers, we headed a little North over Coyote Hills and then back over to Palo Alto for pattern work. The weather was still crappy, wind blowing, low ceilings, and the occasional splash of rain on the windshield.

Now was the time for my first official introduction to pattern work. I got an extra bonus now that we had an almost direct crosswind.  Dave seemed happy that he got to do an introduction to the pattern and crosswind approaches all at the same time. He told me how he has another student in the cross country phase who has hardly seen a crosswind in all his training. Apparently I'm lucky for the experience! OK, in all truthfulness, I suppose I'll be a better pilot down the road for having the experience. The experience just doesn't make things any less hairy at this early stage in my training.

Back to the flight. We made a midfield entry into right pattern for runway 31 and were cleared for the option. We were one of about three planes working the pattern, and we made a series of low approaches using different crosswind techniques. On one run, Dave demonstrated maintaining our ground track with a wind correction angle, then the proper go-around technique (Cram, Climb, Clean), turning on crosswind and and joining the pattern altitude smoothly. The next few circuits around, I generally flew the pattern (rather badly) and and helped with the approaches, trimming for 65 knots, setting flaps, etc. One time Dave handled pitch, throttle, and rudder while I managed the ailerons for a side slip. Another time around I got to handle the rudder while he did everything else. Finally, I got to do both ailerons and rudder while he held us off the ground with pitch and throttle. By the time we'd made 5 or 6 trips around the pattern (I forget how many), I was exhausted and we decided to call it a day.

To make everything even more stressful, we were watching out for birds all this time. Every time around, the tower was announcing heavy bird activity in the area. At one point while we were on final, a flock of 5 or 6 suicidal Canada geese flew right across midfield at about 10 feet. Avoiding the geese, Dave got us back on the ground with a nice sideslip, landing on upwind, downwind, and nose wheels all in proper order. We taxied off the runway, called the tower to terminate our option, got permission from ground to taxi back to our tiedown, and called it a day. 

Today I learned a lot again and got to see and practice flight in some less than ideal weather conditions. The flight was relatively short, but packed full of action and stress. I didn't come away feeling as good as I did yesterday, but I probably learned more.

Aircraft: 739TW

Lesson #7: 1.4 hours

Total time: 10.5 hours

Lesson #6 - Slow flight, stalls, and ground reference

Today was my longest flight so far, 2.1 hours.  I thought the weather was kind of marginal, lots of clouds around, but they were mostly high enough and scattered enough to let us fly without any problems.  

I'm getting better with preflight runup and getting the instruments and radios all set up.  Made the radio calls for permission to taxi and take off, getting a little more confidence on the radio there, although Dave handled a lot of the radio today.  We had to be careful to use the full callsign (we were in 739TW) today because someone else was out in 669TW.  Definitely don't want to confuse calls for "9TW" when you've got both up in the air.

My takeoffs are getting better, I remembered to use more right rudder on takeoff and not let the aircraft drift left. The takeoff climb was OK, although I pitched up a little too high and started to lose some airspeed. Dave had to remind me to get the nose down for a 75 knot climb. We made a right Dumbarton departure and headed out over Fremont past 680 to practice maneuvers over Lake Del Valle. 

Today's lesson started out with more slow flight practice and getting used to the nose up attitude in slow flight, going into and out of slow flight, and turning while in slow flight. After slow flight, we did a few steep turns in each direction. I have discovered that I have a harder time with steep turns to the right, not using enough right rudder.  After steep turn practice, we worked on stalls.

Stalls are kind of freaky, but they weren't as bad as I had anticipated, at least not when we had a few thousand feet between the aircraft and the ground. I wouldn't want to stall at low altitude, that's for sure.  Dave demonstrated power-off and power-on stalls. I guess we were only pitched up about 20 degrees, but it sure seemed steeper. I saw a lot of blue sky through the windshield... We ran through several demonstrations of entering stalls as well as recovery, then it was my turn.  Dave coached me through power-on stalls and recovery a couple times, then the same with power-off stalls. I won't say they're my idea of fun, but they weren't as scary as I had anticipated, at least at altitude.

We took a break from maneuvers and I just flew the plane for a few minutes, practicing trim and holding altitude and making a few turns. After 5 or 6 minutes of that, we turned back toward Palo Alto and started our descent. All that stall practice had put us to over 7,000 feet MSL, so we started heading down quickly. Dave demonstrated a fast dive to get us down from about 5,000 to around 3,500 or so. Heading back over Fremont, we dropped down to 1,000 feet and called Palo Alto to let them know we would be doing some ground reference maneuvers. We were a little worried about birds – we missed a couple random gulls, and at one point we passed above a hawk about 150 feet down to my left. 

Dave showed me turns around a point using a building in the middle of the salt ponds as the center. After I took a turn, we worked on rectangular patterns using a cluster of eight salt ponds for reference. I took the controls for a lap around and did OK, although I'm not really used to doing 45 degree banks at 1,000 feet yet. 

We were starting to run short of time, so we skipped S-turns and headed back to Palo Alto, joining the right pattern for runway 31 at 800 feet. We did an extended downwind leg and I made turns onto base and final. I got closer to landing again, but still didn't quite do it by myself. One of these days...  

I walked away from today feeling pretty good. I certainly felt like I am doing a better job controlling the aircraft. It would really help if the weather would cooperate and I could fly more than once per weekend and build my skills. The weather tomorrow is iffy, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll be good enough to fly.

Lesson #6: 2.1 hours

Total hours: 9.1

Lesson #5 - Trim practice, steep turns, slow flight

Unlike yesterday morning, today was a great day for flying. My wife, Cyndi, decided to ride along and take some pictures. Today was all flying, no ground work to speak of. I also did a fair bit of the radio work today, calling ground and tower for taxi and departure clearances at KPAO. A little more radio practice and I think I'l be OK. 

The focus today was on continued practice of trim, climbs, turns, and descents, plus the introduction of some slow flight practice. Dave went to great lengths to keep me looking outside at the horizon. He covering the instruments with a chart and had me trim for what I thought was a certain speed, then uncover and check. I started to get the hang of it, making a concerted effort to watch the distance between the cowling and the horizon and trying to burn into my brain what that looks like for different airspeeds and configurations. I practiced a couple steep turns in each direction and practiced holding altitude and bank angle in the turn and rolling out on the correct heading.

Slow flight was interesting. We went up to about 5000 feet and Dave showed me how to enter slow flight. I worked on trim, and did a few gentle turns. It was pretty weird slowing the plane down to 40 knots, just on the edge of a stall in a nose-high attitude. (We did manage to hear the stall warning horn a few times.) We did a few entries and exits from slow flight just so I could start to get the feel of it. We also did a few exercises to set up for landing configuration, adding flaps and trimming for about 65 knots while aiming for an imaginary runway in the distance.

We thought about doing a touch and go and Half Moon Bay (KHMB).  It was kind of bumpy on the way over so we decided to head back to KPAO. As we were in the vicinity of KHMB, we overheard a pilot in a Baron chew out some helicopter pilot just hovering on the runway while the Baron was on final. The Baron had been calling his position all through the pattern, and when he got to final, there's this helicopter in his way. Not cool. A few heated words were heard on the radio.

We headed back in over Palo Alto and Stanford started to get set up for landing. Dave warned me not to get under 2000 over Palo Alto or the little grey-haired ladies would come out with their stinger missiles and shoot us down for making too much noise. We descended to about 1500 over the freeway, then down to 1000 and entered left downwind pattern for runway 31. I did a pretty good downwind to base turn, but had a harder time turning and getting lined up on final. There was a little crosswind and I was over-controlling, causing some oscillation. Dave helped me straighten things out and get 669TW on the ground.

Lesson #5: 1.9 hours

Total hours: 7.0