30 March 2008-Flights cancelled

The Saturday and Sunday flights were canceled due to low ceilings and fog.

Next lessons are
5 Apr-10am
6 Apr-10am

21 March 2008-Ground School Test

I took my ground school test this morning and passed with a 95. I had more than a couple questions that I felt a little uncertain about, but I guess I figured them out well enough.

No flying this weekend because of instructor being unavailable and conditions not being suitable enough for the second solo cross country.
Next scheduled times are
29 Mar at 10am Begin checkride prep
30Mar at 10am Solo cross country

If next weekend does not work out, I will have to plan on taking time off from work at the first available time so I do not go through another several week break from flying.

16 March 2008-Flight Cancelled

No flying again. The winds were all out of th east at 10 to 20 knots. Too much crosswind for the 152 and my level of skill.
The seven day forecast shows some promise, but time will tell on that.

15 March 2008-Flight Cancelled

No solo cross country today because of winds. Tomorrow is uncertain, but I think it will be too windy then as well.

I am hoping I will get to at least work in the pattern, but Bob will be unavailable for the next few weeks. I am not sure if the instructor I flew with for my night flight will be available tomorrow or not.

I have scheduled to take my ground school exam this Friday. I have spring break next week, so I will use this weekend and the extra time I have next week to prepare and get it out of the way.

Last weeks cross country has really picked up my enthusiasm for flying again. My flight training has taken so long, that it been more of a routine that I do each weekend rather than something to really look forward to. I am starting to see the end of training in sight and have been thinking about places I want to fly to and what kind of aircraft I want to buy.

Still a bit of work to do, but I am hoping in the next month or two I will finally have my PPL.

9 March 2008-Flight 36

I finally did my solo cross country today. It was also a first in that I also did not have Bob in the right hand seat as I was taxiing out. Winds were light and variable.

We moved the flight from 10am to 10:30am. While I was preflighting the plane, Bob checked over my work for the flight. He did spot one mistake. I had an addition error in my course from Okmulgee to Stillwater. It should have been 296 and I had 196. I think I would have spotted the error easily enough once I was in the air, but I probably would have needed to return to OKM to redo my calculations.

My biggest concern was having to talk to the tower in Stillwater. Bob and I reviewed the procedures. He told me not worry about it. If I was confused about something, let them know and they can talk me through it.

The flight from SNL to OKM was uneventful. I had no problems hitting my checkpoints within a minute. It was a little hazy out, but I had no problems finding my checkpoints.

When I arrived at OKM there were a few planes inbound besides me. I made one mistake on my callouts. I was saying I was going to land on runway 17, but then another plane inbound for OKM was saying he was landing on 18. I checked the Airport Facility Directory printout for OKM and sure enough it was 18. So I restated my intention to land on 18 and not 17.

I had to go around on my first attempt to land at OKM. When I crossed threshold I realized I was too high and too fast to get safely stopped. So I went to full throttle, established a positive climb, brought up my flaps and tried again. My second time around was much better. The landing was a little hard, but I have had rougher landings.

Bob wanted me to refuel the plane at OKM before I headed to Stillwater. I stopped at the fuel pumps and a person from the FBO came out and topped off the tanks. The plane did not need much fuel since it was a 38 minute flight, but in case I get lost I want to have as much fuel as possible. I also had the person that filled up the plane sign my log book.

After fueling up and I took off on a heading of 296 for Stillwater. I was not able to find my first checkpoint along the flight path which was a small town. So I readjusted my time until the next check point which was a larger town and reached it within a minute of the estimated time. Along the way I used the sectional to verify my position with other landmarks. I was not too worried about being off course because I could see electric wires along my path on the sectional and out the window I could see the same thing.

About halfway to Stillwater I tuned in the ATIS(Automatic Terminal Information Service) to get the winds. The winds were 220 at 6 knots. However when I tuned into the tower frequency, they were landing airplanes on all runways, 17/35 and 22/04. So listened some more and the tower was saying that the winds were calm.

About ten miles out I contacted Stillwater tower and told them my intention to land. They told me to contact them at 4 miles out. At four miles out I contacted the tower again. They told me to fly a right base when I reached the football stadium. I am not familiar with the Stillwater area and informed the tower of this. I also decided the inform them that I was a student pilot, but they may have already figured that one out. They told me to continue towards the airport. I finally saw the stadium and runway 35 in relation to it and informed the tower. They replied saying they had me in sight and I was cleared to land on 35.

I had about a 3 mile final, so I had plenty of time to get a good glide slope established for landing. Still I flared too soon and the landing was little rough. I was instructed by the tower to get off at the first taxiway and then they gave me progressive taxi instructions on where to park.

After shutting down I got out and took a few pictures. I meant to get pictures at OKM, but I forgot to. So for the first time you can see what I have been flying for the last several months.

and the tower in the background

After I found someone to sign my logbook, I headed back out to the plane, went through my checklists and started the plane. I contacted ground control that I was ready to take off and they told me to follow another plane that was leaving as well. After the planes in front of me had left I set up to do my runup checks. After that I said I was ready to takeoff. I forgot to switch to tower frequency. I was told to contact tower. I changed frequencies, contacted the tower and said I was ready to takeoff on a VFR flight to Shawnee. I was given clearance to takeoff and headed down the runway.

I climbed to 3000 feet and changed course to 170 which would take me back to Shawnee. Finding my checkpoints was no problem and I hit them all within a minute. About halfway to SNL I switched to AWOS to get the winds and then to CTAF to see what was going on in the pattern. There were two other planes inbound as well. I was able to spot the airport about 5 miles out. Since there were two other planes inbound I decided to enter on a right downwind instead of entering at base. My landing back at Shawnee was the best one of the ones I had done today, but of course I am familiar with that airport.

At this point I have one more cross country to do. After that, Bob says all we need to do is start prepping for the checkride. Spring break at UCO is in a couple of weeks, so I will get the ground test out of the way then.

Next flights are scheduled for:
15 Mar- Checkride prep. Time to be determined.
16 Mar- Second solo cross country from SNL to ADA to MLC and back.

8 March 2008-Flight 35

Tonight we did a cross country night flight. As mentioned in the previous post, I was going to be flying with a different instructor. I had some concerns about flying with someone different on a night flight. Those concerns evaporated very quickly after I got a chance to chat with him and we got into the air.

Cross country night flying is very different from flying in the day. While I tried to pick check points that would be visible at night, I still found my ability to use those checkpoints very limited. We found ourselves needing to really reference the map to identify various landmarks to figure out where we were. If I had not had an instructor with me, I would have gotten lost very quickly.

We flew to Stillwater first and made full stop. I was surprised that I made a pretty good landing. Last weekend I was flaring too soon and landing hard. I did not do that today. We stopped at the terminal briefly. I got confused at one point and almost turned off the runway before I was at the taxiway. After getting out for a few minutes, we got back in and took off.

Getting to Wiley Post was a little trickier. We tried to use the landmarks, but once we got into the OKC area we could not find Wiley Post. There were too many lights. We finally had to get help from OKC air traffic control to get us pointed in the right direction. Wiley Post was touch and go and then it was back to Shawnee.

Once you get east of OKC, Shawnee is not too hard to spot. It is a big bright area amidst a sprinkle of other lights. I tried to use the landmarks from my flight path, but without much success. I did have some difficulty finding the runway and was practically on top of it before I saw it. My landing at Shawnee was a little rougher, but still not too bad.

I am glad there is not a solo night cross country requirement. I think I would need a lot more dual time, before I could handle a night cross country.

Tomorrow I fly again at 10am. It might be a solo cross country, but that will depend on weather.

8 March 2008-Flight 34

I did not get to solo cross country today. The winds were good. About 5-10 knots out of the south, but it was very hazy out. That makes it hard to find the airport. Since this would be my first time on a cross country, Bob wants to wait for better visibility. We may try to do the cross country tomorrow, but I think it will be too windy.

We did get up for a little bit. I went around the pattern once with Bob so he could be sure I was having a good day. After one pass he got out and told me to take it around two more times and bring it back. He had another lesson in the Cardinal and was not going to be in the area. So overall my morning flight time was 30 minutes.

The night flight is still on unless weather conditions change. I did get one surprise for tonights flight. Bob has hired an additional instructor to help him. So I will be going up with somebody new. I have to admit to feeling a little concerned going up with somebody different on a night flight and told Bob this. However I told him I would go if weather permitted.

I will make an additional post after this evenings flight.

2 March 2008-Flight Cancelled

The high winds continued into today, so todays flight is canceled. Actually we decided to cancel yesterday based on the forecast, but I forgot to post it.

New flight times are
8 March- 11 am Solo cross country(again)
8 March- 6:30pm Dual night cross country from SNL to SWO to PWA and back.
9 March- 10 am

We scheduled a second cross country on Saturday because we are trying to beat daylight savings time. If we have to delay to after the 8 March we will have to wait until 7:30pm and later to do the night cross country.

At this point I am watching the 7 day forecasts. If I see a time during the week that looks favorable for the solo cross country I will just take a day off from work. At this point I do not see anything that looks particularly promising.

1 Mar 2008-Aviation Weather Seminar Day 3

It would have been nice to have flown to Will Rogers from Shawnee. There is a taxiway leading right up to Metrotech and I was told by one person that you are allowed to park your plane there. However, Bob had other lessons to do so I could not tie up the 152 for the afternoon just so I could joyride to the Will Rogers. Of course as I mentioned in my earlier post, conditions were a little tough in the morning and by afternoon it would have been too windy for the little 152 and my level of experience. So it was just as well that it did not happen.

I arrived at Metro Tech about an hour and half early. I had a little time to check out some of the other demonstrations going on. I went to the hangar area and got a lesson in changing an oil filter and examining it for metal. The example plane had some pretty bad wear and it was not hard to see bits metal shavings in the filter. Also the oil was in rather bad condition. The plane is not a flying plane, but one used for training A&P students.

I also got to take brief look at the sheet metal shop. I wanted to try my hand at some riveting, but there was someone there ahead of me and I did not have enough time before the seminar started.

I wish it were possible for me to take A&P classes. However even not counting my working on a masters degree, there would not be enough hours in the day for me to go to work and then spend another 6 hours at Metro Tech.

Todays lesson was headed up by two people from the National Weather Service(NWS) who are responsible for maintaining AC-0045f. AC-0045f documents the various aviation weather products provided by the NWS. The instructors are also responsible for testing weather briefers to make sure they are providing good quality reports. So we are learning from about as close to the original source of aviation weather information as one can possibly get.

I will only touch on the highlights of what was covered. I could write a novel on that and still not be complete The information that was covered on Monday and Wednesday was preparation for todays 4 hour lesson.

All of our time was spent focusing on the features of the aviationweather.gov website. The first item covered was the standard briefing section. While this is called the standard briefing, it is not a substitute for calling flight services for a briefing. Instead it is a way to get an idea ahead of time of what to expect. The weather briefers are trained with using the various sources of weather information available and may notice things that a person who does not work day in and day out would miss.

The main areas covered on the standard briefing page were the Convective Sigmets, Convective Watches and AIRMETs.
A few items mentioned were
1. Convective Sigmets are current thunderstorms.
2. Convective Watches are for forecast thunderstorms.
3. Convective Sigmets are not made for every thunderstorm. It was must be significant enough. Again that is what the briefer is for. The briefer can check other sources to see if there are any local storms in a flight path.
4. The lack of an AIRMET does not mean there is not icing, turbulence or IFR conditions. If an area is smaller than 3000 sq miles then an AIRMET may not be generated. During the lesson I noticed there was an AIRMET for turbulence covering Oklahoma. I can testify to the accuracy of that.

Next the wind/pressure charts were covered. One point mentioned was that you need to remember to not only look at surface winds, but winds at other levels. You need to do this in particular when calculating your wind correction. As mentioned in the previous post, winds were 9 knots at the surface, but 35 knots just 3000 feet up.

PIREPs(Pilot Reports) were covered next. One comment made here was to try to give PIREPs to flight watch. Even if conditions are clear, the information from PIREPs are entered into computer weather models and can improve the accuracy of forecasts.

Satellite imagery was covered next. One nice feature pointed out was the movie mode. When I was flying earlier today I could see brush fire to the SE of me several miles away. I was able to see the smoke from that fire in the satellite imagery. It was very apparent in movie mode.

Even though we covered area forecasts earlier in the week, there was some review of that as well. One point emphasized was that area forecasts do not give information on IFR conditions. Airmets need to be used to get IFR info.

Another area covered was the use of radar. One point mentioned is the limitation of aircraft weather radar. Aircraft weather radar can not penetrate as far into a storm as ground weather radar can. This is a limitation of the wavelength of the aircraft radar and not power. An example was given of a pilot who relied on aircraft weather radar and thought a storm was not as large as it really was. The pilot tried to fly through, got pelted by baseball sized hail and had to make a forced landing. Fortunately the pilot survived.

TAF(Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts) were covered next. The point that was emphasized here is that they are forecasts and they are local. To get current current conditions remember to use METARs which are current observations.

Finally we covered the use of the Flight Path Tool. This is a java based application that pulls data from multiple sources into one convenient application. One nice feature is that you can enter your flight path and get a display of flight conditions along the flight path.

Overall I found the seminar well worth my time. I had actually explored most of the features of the aviation weather site several months ago and have used to find out if a lesson was going to get scrubbed. Still it was good to get more formal training and gain an understanding of the limitations of each tool. If you get an opportunity to attend this class I would recommend it.

1 Mar 2008-Flight 33

Today the winds were 9 knots from 180 and predicted to increase to 20 to 25 before the day was out. I checked the winds aloft and winds were 30 to 35 knots at 3000. Bob said that means it will be a bit bumpy today. As it turns out I have flown bumpier days, but it was more challenging.

The first thing we practiced was S turns and turns around a point. We had not done those in many lessons. We are starting to get into a mode of getting ready for my checkride. I think it will still be a few months before I get to that point, but it is time to start reviewing the basics again. I did not do a very good job on the S turns and turns around a point. I was not banking the plane at the proper times and I was letting the wind push me out of position. We will be doing more of those in the future.

After S turns and turns around a point it was time for more foggle practice. With the extra turbulence it was a lot more difficult keeping the plane level. I was definitely experiencing disorientation about the position of the airplane. If I let my attention wander for just a second, I would find the plane either out of level or climbing or descending. Bob had to prompt me a few times to keep up the instrument scan.

VOR practice was added in next while I was wearing the foggles. Bob had me fly a course that took us back to SNL. Again my instrument scan was not very good and I did not do a good job of descending down to pattern alititude.

On the way back to SNL I noticed that the pattern was a lot busier. I heard three different aircraft announce that they were on the way in. Bob handled the radio since I still had the foggles on. About the time we reached the downwind pattern, Bob had me take the foggles off.

There was a bit confusion where one aircraft was. The pilot announced he was crossing the highway and we thought he meant the interstate. We looked and could not find him. So we extended our downwind and finally noticed his shadow north of the interstate. So it was a good thing that we had extended our downwind.

Next a plane shooting ILS(Instrument Landing System) approaches and another inbound for a touch and go. The others were several miles out, so we made our turn to base and a very long final. For some reason it seemed a lot more difficult getting a good approach today. I am sure the winds had something to do with it. After two more touch and goes, Bob asked if I wanted to take it around on my own a few times. I said yes. It had been several weeks since I had soloed last, so I was looking forward to it. Especially with my “one of these days” solo cross country trips coming up.

Again the winds made landing much more tricky. I had a hard time maintaining a steady approach. The first landing was okay, but not great. On the second go around, the plane doing ILS approaches was setting up on final. The final for an ILS is several miles so it was going to be bit before he arrived. About the time I was turning from downwind to base, the ILS plane calls 3.5 mile on final. I have to decide if I want do my base turn now or extend my downwind. I decide to do my base turn and call it. I continue on to final, but I start feeling so nervous about the plane behind me that I really start getting sloppy on the approach. I call out when I am on short final to make sure the ILS plane knows where I am. I get a response back from the ILS plane saying I have plenty of time. They have slowed down. I start thinking about doing a go around, because my approach still feels sloppy. I finally started settling down and decided to continue on with the landing which again was not real good.

Thinking back on it I probably should have just done the go around. Unless I am having engine problems or about to run out of fuel, there is always time to do a go around. I should have an idea in my mind that if things are not going good at a certain point in the landing, then I should just go throttle forward and go around. I had not really had an opportunity to really consider this until today.

As I am rolling out on my landing I considered making this landing a full stop, but I decide that I need to be able to handle these situations. So push the throttle forward and take off for my third time around the pattern.

There were no other planes in the pattern on the third time around, so I had a chance to settle down and collect my thoughts while I am on the crosswind and downwind. My third landing is better than the second, but still not that great.

One thing I will mention is that I was not the only one having difficulty today. While I was at the seminar I heard another pilot with much more experience than me say flying conditions were a little tough this morning. That made me feel a little better about my own performance.

After the lesson it was a 40 mile drive from SNL to Metro Tech to attend the last day of the aviation weather seminar.