23 November 2007 – Flight 22

I did my first cross country today. As mentioned in the previous post, Bob was able to find another 152 to use. While the Cardinal is a very nice airplane, it felt good to be in something I am familiar with.

The weather was very nice for flying. It was cold, but almost no turbulence. With the air colder, the density altitude was lower and plane seemed to have a bit more pep to it.

Before todays lesson, Bob told me to get a sectional and mark a course between Shawnee, Ada and Pauls Valley. I also printed out copies of the airport layouts from the Airport/Facilities Directory and checked for any NOTAMs. I also had read up on the basics of plotting a course, taking into account winds and magnetic deviation. I decided to wait on calculating anything until Bob had shown me the full process.

There are several steps involved with planning a flight. First you need to know where you want to go. After figuring out the destination you identify various landmarks on the sectional. You want to have landmarks about 10 minutes apart. The landmarks can be towns, roads, water features, etc. Next you figure out the true course which is the direction to the destination, wind adjustments, magnetic variation and compass deviation. The number you ultimately get is the direction you want to point the nose of the airplane to get to your destination. The direction you point the nose of the airplane will be different than the actual direction to the destination. This is especially true when accounting for the wind direction.

To assist with all these calculations you use what is called the E6B computer. It is not a computer in the electronic sense, but is instead a paper computer with turnable disks to allow you calculate adjustments for wind and also flight time. It takes some practice to use. Somewhere in the back of my mind there was a part of me that wanted to use plain old calculator. There are calculators for doing those kinds of computations, but as a student I have to learn how to do it the old fashion way.

Our flight was planned to be flown at 3000 feet MSL. When I called the flight service station for a weather briefing, I made sure I got the winds at 3000 feet. The winds today were 140 at 10 knots. For comparison, on the ground the winds were from 90 at 9 knots.

The flight between destinations was pretty straight forward. For purposes of planning we assumed an airspeed of 100 knots. Taking winds into account, we had ground speeds anywhere from 90-104 knots depending on which direction we were flying relative to the wind.

When figuring out the flight plan, you estimate how many minutes it is between checkpoints. Generally we arrived at checkpoints about a minute sooner than estimated. I think in one case we were on time.

My parents live about 2 miles away from the flight path from Pauls Valley to Shawnee. So we took a small deviation to overfly their house. Unfortunately, despite calling ahead of time, they never noticed us up there. I also forgot to get my camera out of the car before we left, so I could not even take any aerial photos. There will be other opportunities in the future.

One of the biggest problems I seem to have while flying today was maintaining a constant altitude. I would drift anywhere from 2500 to 3500 feet while flying. Even with playing with the trim, I could not keep my altitude constant for some reason.

The landings at Ada and Pauls Valley went pretty well. Both were cross wind landings and I think I handled them pretty well. Bob did have to correct me once on pulling up on the nose while turning into final at Pauls Valley. Final is right over downtown Paul’s Valley and it felt very strange to be coming over so many homes and businesses.. In some ways flying still seems like a very surreal experience and sometimes it still feels very strange to be flying above the ground.

Also as a quick comparison between flying and driving. According to google maps the shortest distance from Pauls Valley to Shawnee is 64 miles and a drive time of 1 hour 24 minutes. The flight from Pauls Valley to Shawnee was 41 nautical miles or 47 “normal” miles with a flight time of 24 minutes. In terms of fuel consumption, my Toyota Corolla would have burned about 1.7 gallons of gas. The 152 burns 6 gallons per hour, so that leg of the flight used 2.4 gallons. So for the cost of .7 gallons of gas or $2.10 I reached my destination 1 hour sooner. There is more to the cost of flying a plane than just the fuel of course, but I think it is an interesting comparison just the same.

Bob says we will do a few more dual cross country flights before I have to do it on my own. I am looking forward to it.

Because of a storm system moving in, there will be no flying Saturday and Sunday. The next lesson is scheduled for 1 and 2 December at 10am. Bob says we will stay in the Shawnee area to concentrate on some more basic maneuvers and foggle training. Hopefully I will get to do some soloing as well.

20 November 2007 – Schedule Update

Did not get the fly this last weekend. The Cardinal was not available to use. Flights are scheduled for 23 and 24 November at 10 am. Not sure if those will happen considering what the weather forecast is looking like.
Bob was able to find another 152 to use while his is being worked on. So if the weather cooperates I will get to do my first cross country.

10 November 2007 – Flight 21

No cross country flight today.

As mentioned in the last post the flight was canceled. As it turns out the Cessna 152 had some engine problems after my lesson. Bob said that a pushrod had broken on the engine. After the mechanic tore into the engine, it was decided that an overhaul was needed. So the Cessna 152 will be down for at least a month.

Bob does have a Cessna Cardinal which is normally used for IFR training. It costs 50 dollars an hour more to fly. I did not want to go a whole month with no flying lessons so I decided to do some training with this aircraft.

About all that the 152 and the Cardinal have in common is that they both have wings and an engine.

First the Cardinal is about 400 pounds heavier than the 152 when empty. It also has 800 pounds more maximum weight compared to the 152. The advantage of that was quite apparent today. Even though it was quite windy today, you would have hardly known it in the Cardinal.

The feel of the controls is much different than on the 152. The Cardinal has much heavier controls and you really have to muscle them around. Use of the trim tabs is a must. On the 152, the only time I touched the trim was to setup for level flight on the downwind leg. When I first took off in the Cardinal I found myself suddenly having to apply a lot of forward pressure to keep the nose down. Bob was ready for it and told me to use the trim. The problem is every time you change something you have to adjust the trim. Very different from the 152. The control pressures are so light on the 152, unless you are just way out of trim, you hardly notice having to push or pull on the yoke.

The engine in the 152 is 110hp while the engine of the Cardinal is 180hp. You do not feel the extra acceleration on takeoff, because the Cardinal is a heavier aircraft. What is noticeable is the amount of right rudder you have to apply to compensate for engine torque. This also is noticeable in the air as well and the Cardinal does have a rudder trim so that you do not have to keep pressure on the rudder.

Engine control is very different in the Cardinal. With the 152, you push the throttle forward and keep it there until you are at altitude and then reduce to 2300 rpm. In the Cardinal, you have three controls you have to fiddle with. One is the manifold pressure which controls how much power you are putting out. The next is the prop speed control which controls the rpm’s of the prop and finally the mixture.

I can not remember what the initial settings are for the controls, but I remember that once you are a few hundred feet in the air you want to set manifold pressure to 24 and rpms to 2400. After that you adjust the mixture until the exhaust gas temperature(EGT) is two ticks below the center line of the EGT gauge.

Cockpit layout is very different between the two aircraft. The Cardinal is setup for IFR flight, so there were a lot more instruments to figure out. There is a reason why you have to have a full checkout before being allowed to fly different types of airplanes. It makes me think of trying to learn how to use a new piece of software. The basic application may be same, but there are a lot little details that make it different.

As always, the whole experience seems overwhelming the first time I am exposed to it. Bob had to keep prompting me on what to do next. I am glad I did not start out trying to fly this plane. I think it would have been too much for me.

Todays lesson was just an orientation flight to get familiar with the aircraft. After take off, we went to the practice area and did several climbs, descents and turns. Because of the different handling characteristics, I had a very hard time trying to maintain altitude. I can see further over the cowling on the Cardinal and this threw off my site picture of what level flight looks like. So I kept bringing the nose up and starting to climb.

My landings in the Cardinal were not very good. I kept pressing on the left rudder pedal for some reason and Bob had to keep correcting me. Bob has mentioned this before even on the 152. While thinking about this on the drive home, I think what I am doing wrong is I am not taking account the perspective from the left seat. If I am looking at the nose and I try to point the nose at the runway then I will be slipping the plane to the left. I should be thinking about lining up a extended center line through the airplane and lining that up with the runway. I will run that by Bob on the next lesson and see what he thinks.

It was a rather stressful flight today with so many new things to absorb. Hopefully after a few more lessons I will get more comfortable with all the new features of the airplane and help me be a better pilot. Who knows, I might even be able to solo in it before the 152 is ready.

The plan at the moment is to go into a maintenance mode and just fly the Cardinal for an hour a week to maintain my proficiency until the 152 is fixed. It should only be for a month. If for some reason it takes longer, then I will have to decide if I want to continue normal training with the Cardinal or look into a different flight school or instructor.

4 November 2007 – Flight Canceled

Sundays flight is canceled.

Next flight is scheduled for 10 November at 11:30 until about 2:30. The reason the lesson will be a little longer is Bob wants to do a cross country. The flight will be to Ada, Pauls Valley and back to Shawnee. The time will include an hour of ground school so he can demonstrate charting a course and filing a flight plan.

3 November 2007 – Flight 20

Another very nice day to fly. The winds were from 10 degrees at about 4 knots. No turbulence. With todays solo I now have a whole one hour up in the air by myself.

We started working on short field and soft field take off and landings today.

Short field takeoffs are used when you are trying to takeoff from a shorter than usual runway. You want to takeoff at a speed called Vx, which is the best rate to climb for a given distance. This is different from Vy which is the speed for best rate of climb. The procedure is to set flaps for 10 degrees, press down on the brakes and bring the engine up to full power. You release the brakes and at 55 knots you pull back on the yoke to maintain 55 knots. After you are about 200 feet up you start lightening up on the yoke to build airspeed and bring up the flaps at about 75 knots. After that you fly as you normally would.

When doing a short field landing you land with 30 degrees of flaps and an airspeed of about 60 knots. Bob pointed out two marks on the runway that are 1000 feet apart. I have to have the plane fully stopped within that 1000 feet. Once the plane is down you apply lots of brakes to get stopped.

Soft field takeoffs are for situations where you are landing on snow, ice or a muddy runway. Basically you are wanting to get the plane in the air as quickly as possible. If you tried to perform a normal takeoff you would either never get enough airspeed to get airborne or you would break the nose or main landing gear. While accelerating you keep the nose up as high as possible to keep the weight off the nose gear. When you have enough airspeed the airplane will get up into the air and you immediately level off about 10 to 15 feet above the ground to build up airspeed. Once you build up airspeed you start to climb out. (Note I think I am leaving out some steps here. I will update it later.)

Soft field landings are for landing on muddy or snowy runways. The big hazard is the nose digging into the ground and breaking the nose gear or even flipping the plane over. In this case after you touch down you maintain enough speed to keep the nose gear off the ground until you are on more solid ground.

Like anything else I have seen the first time while learning to fly, it is hard to remember all the steps much less actually perform them. However I know I will master them with plenty of practice.

After I did a couple of each of the types of landings and takeoffs, Bob got out of the plane and I took it around 3 times on my own. I just did normal landings. I will wait until Bob gives me the ok before I try practicing the other types of landings.

The biggest problem I had with my solo landings today is I was coming in a little fast. So I either floated down the runway a little further than I should have or would bounce back into the air. I mentioned this to Bob and he said he would work with me on that.

The short and soft field landings require more skill, so I am hoping as I learn to handle those my normal landings will improve as well.

There were also two other planes in the pattern with me as I soloing. This was the first time I had to deal with that. I felt a little more pressure to do my touch and go and clear for the next aircraft.

Since this is fall I also saw plenty of migrating birds. On one solo takeoff I decided to alter my course a little because I had a flock to my left and above. Birds generally will dive to avoid you, so I wanted to be certain they did not dive right into me.

Next flight is tomorrow at 9am.