Flying with the family

We've got a house full right now. All the kids are home from college. My son's roommate came with him, and my in laws are here for Thanksgiving. It's a little stressful. The good thing is that when I offer to take a carload of them with me, my wife has no problem with flying. Suddenly she fully supports it.

My son's room mate is an aeronautical engineering student at Georgia Tech. He works for a company that rebuilds airplane parts and he wants to fly himself one of these days. Well, we were going to the airport anyway so I called early this morning and scheduled a discovery flight for him. I got home from work and told him I had some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that you're not flying with us today. The good news is that you get to pilot an airplane today. The picture at the top is him in one of the 172 G1000s. My son rode along in the back seat and took pics and video. I think seeing the look on his face when he got out of the plane was more fun than anything else we did today.

While they were up, I preflighed good old N54058, none of that fancy G1000 stuff for me, no sir. That's me and my flying guests to the right. When Drew and John landed, it was my turn to play pilot. I took Drew and his fiance, Aubrey, up first. Aubrey is not real sure about small airplanes. The first thing she said when we got to Whitted was "Those are smaller than anything I've been in before." I was on my best piloting behavior. Fortunately, the weather was beautiful. We had very little turbulence, even over St. Petersburg. We flew out to the beach, south to Egmont Key and back to Albert Whitted. We were cleared for a straight-in approach to runway 7, but someone in the pattern extended his downwind too far and we had to circle on final before we were cleared to land. First time that has happened to me.

Next I took my daughter Sarah and her grandfather up for a spin. This time we flew south to Egmont Key, then over the bay to the Sunshine Skyway bridge. Sarah and Drew took a bunch of photos and some video. I've added to my slide show and have one of the flight videos available on the blog. Sarah also took my favorite shot, only a pilot would like this one, my turn onto final for runway 18.

The best thing to come of today was that Sarah and Aubrey gave my wife a good report. They told her I did not scare them. Now my wife says she might go flying with me. If she let her children go, I can get her in the air one day.

My gps logger was goofy. I don't know if it was in a bad spot or if the batteries were low because I forgot to charge it. No gps track this time. Next week I have some practice scheduled and cross country to Charlotte County.

How to use the VOR and how to waste $19.20.

Today I learned all about VOR navigation. Actually, I already had a pretty good idea, having read about it and having played Microsoft Flight Simulator a bit. Rob made it fairly interesting anyway. He did show me a seriously cool web site that has a VOR simulator along with other navigation and aviation tools, luizmonteiro.com. Truthfully, GPS has all but made VORs obsolete, however we still learn about it because the equipment is very common on light airplanes, it's good as a backup if the GPS fails, and the FAA will test me on the material. We also went over a truly obsolete system, the automatic direction finder and NDBs. Although none of the planes I fly has a working automatic direction finder, I still have to know how they work because I might get tested on it.

Having learned this, my mission is to plan a flight to Charlotte County (PGD). I'm to plan it two ways:
1) Track the Sarasota VOR to SRQ, then track the Punta Gorda VOR to Charlotte County.
2) Track the St. Petersburg VOR to Parrish, then track the Punta Gorda VOR to Charlotte County.
I don't know which route I prefer. Either way, we plan on requesting to transit Tampa's class B airspace. That would be new for me. Tampa handles approaches to Sarasota's class C, so that might include a little more radio work which would be good. Maybe Rob will let me fly one route on the way down, and the other on the way back.

The coolest thing about today was going over the training I still need. There's not a lot. Some solo cross country work, night flying and instrument flying. Then preparation for the practical test.

I had planned on a practice session today but the clear sky had disappeared by the time ground school was over. We still had 10 mile visibility and a ceiling of 4400 feet at Whitted, so I gave it a shot. By the time I had the plane started and tuned the ASOS, the ceiling was down to 3200 feet. I requested taxi clearance and the controller told me we had showers in the area. Air traffic control at Whitted is very helpful, so I asked him to advise me if the weather deteriorated any further. By the time I finished my run-ups, the controller told me we had showers west of the airport and moving our way. Time to call it a day. I don't need to be flying in rain showers and poor visibility. When I got to my truck, I think we were down to IFR conditions. I managed to put 2/10 of an hour on the hobbs meter to the tune of $19.20 starting and taxiing the plane.

Friday, Josh and I are taking my kids for a ride. The weather should be spectacular, and I'm really looking forward to it.

1st Solo Cross Country

I had a beautiful day for my first solo cross country flight. I got to work this morning and it was 38F with frost on the ground. Some in Florida would say that's too cold, but it's just right for me. The sky was clear and the winds calm. Perfect flying weather.

I finished my flight plan at Bay Air. I had left my E6B in the plane on my last trip, so all the math had to wait until I retrieved it. Took me about 45 minutes to get the weather, NOTAMs, calculate courses, times and fuel consumption. After Rob arrived and checked my flight plan I was good to go.

The trip north was very uneventful. The air was calm. I hit all my checkpoints within a minute of the calculated times. I remember reading that another student pilot blogger had written that flying the plane is not all that hard, it's all the stuff that comes with flying that complicates the issue. Once at altitude and with a proper flight plan, flying in good weather could not be much easier. OK, if I had an autopilot it could be easier, but even without one it's not hard. Now, if you're trying to land at an unfamiliar airport and take some pictures things can get kinda sticky. That's what happened to me.

The automated weather was out at Crystal River, but someone at the FBO there was good enough to give me wind and active runway information over the unicom frequency. I would be using runway 9, which was opposite of the way I landed Tuesday with Rob. I'm coming from the south and landing on 9, so I'm supposed to overfly the field 500 feet above pattern altitude and make a teardrop entry into the downwind, and I want to get photos of the springs, which happen to be right under the left hand pattern for 9, and I'm at an uncontrolled field which means I have to announce every turn on the CTAF. If it seems like I was trying to accomplish too much, I was.

I got a photo that was not real good (the one at top), I completely butchered my entry into the pattern and who knows what I said on the radio. Lesson learned: Take photos while cruising, NOT in the traffic pattern. I completely forgot about the teardrop, and in an effort to get my photo, my downwind leg drifted far too close to the runway. My turn to final was tight and overshot lining up on the runway. Additionally, I was too fast. The good news is that the runway at Crystal River is 4555 feet long. That's almost 1700 feet longer than 18/36 at Whitted. I touched down on the second half of the runway and had room to spare. It worked out better than it sounds. As soon as I cleared the runway, the guy on the unicom announced that we were now using runway 27. Other inbound planes were announcing themselves on the CTAF, so I spun the plane around on the taxiway, announced that I was departing 27 to the south and got out of there. Anyone who saw me had just two words to say: Student Pilot.

I'm still unhappy about not getting good photos. In my youth, I was a scuba diver and had my checkout dive at Crystal River. The river is fed by several springs, one of which is huge. The water is as clear as a swimming pool and filled with fresh and salt water fish. Diving with the manatees is a big tourist attraction now. However, the springs were literally under the traffic pattern and I was not going to try to get another photo.

The return trip was as uneventful as the trip out. Calm clear air, checkpoints on time, very little traffic to worry about. After my series of screw-ups at Crystal River, I was glad to be back at Whitted. I have VOR ground school scheduled for Tuesday and a brief practice session. The kids will be in town for Thanksgiving, so I'm going to take them up for a little sightseeing on Friday. CFI Josh will be our chaperon. I'm really looking forward to that.

lesson 16

You'll need google earth to open and view the lesson 16 file.

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Time: 15.4 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 7.3 Hours

Landings: 84

PilotMall.com Scholarship

Yesterday, after I had purchased my knee board at Pilot Mall, the young lady who waited on me mentioned that I might apply for their aviation education scholarship, if I had not finished my private pilot training. At first, I thought it was funny, that I, at 47 years of age would apply for a scholarship. But after she told me they have had only 5 applicants, I didn't think it so funny any more. They are offering one $1000 and two $500 scholarships to U.S. citizens training for a private pilot certificate. Fill out a brief application, pen a 500 word essay and that's it. I would post my essay, but one of you guys might copy it.

PilotMall.com scholarship link.

1st Cross Country Flight

Today's flight was a real learning experience. Some of the lessons were big and some were tiny little things. For example, immediately after finishing the flight, I walked around the corner from Bay Air to Pilot Mall and purchased a knee board. I had more trouble keeping my charts and flight plan organized than flying or finding my checkpoints. It's a small lesson that makes a big difference.

This was a beautiful day for flying. We cruised at 2500 feet from Albert Whitted to Crystal River (CGC). Climbing out of Whitted and Crystal River, we had some pretty strong turbulence, but once at altitude the air was smooth. I could mostly fly with my hands off of the yoke, just using the rudder to make small course corrections and making minor trim adjustments as needed.

Rob check my flight plan before we left. I had my wind correction angle wrong on the trip out. Other than that, it was good. We recorded the time at all the checkpoints and checked estimated against actual ground speed. We had more wind aloft than forecasted. Our trip north was slower, and the return trip was faster than planned. The only thing I was unhappy with was my landing at Crystal River. The north-south runway at Crystal River is grass and Rob wanted to land on the pavement. The difficulty was the 10 knot wind directly out of the north. Great. 9/27 at Crystal River is long (4555 feet) but only 75 feet wide. That 75 feet goes by pretty fast when you're drifting in a 10 knot crosswind. Rob got on the controls and put more aileron into the wind and I set her down on the left side of the runway. I would like to have taken a couple trips around the pattern and tried that again, but we headed back to Whitted.

The return trip was uneventful. After adjusting for the wind, we hit the checkpoints on schedule. Landing at Whitted, a Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter (not my photo, borrowed from another web site) did a touch and go in front of us, so we flew through his wake/rotor wash on final. That bounced us around a bit and is the reason for the long slow turn from downwind to final, if you bother to look at the GPS track.

I'm to fly the trip to Crystal River solo next. I may practice again before I fly the solo cross country. After that, VOR navigation and a longer supervised cross county. I'm getting close to being free to fly new places on my own. Too cool. By the way, Rob and I were talking about the cross wind while we were at Crystal River, and I forgot to fly north to the springs and get photos. Next time I won't forget. The photo at top was one of my checkpoints, the inlet at the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge. That's a mouth full.

lesson 15

You'll need google earth to open and view the lesson 15 flight track.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 15.1 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 5.4 Hours

Landings: 82

Practice makes perfect?

I feel like I took a step backwards today. Saturday, my maneuvers were smooth and nice (read benign stalls). Today, different story. I don't know if it was weather or what, but my stalls were more violent than they've been for some time. The first power-on stall was downright scary. But I got back on the horse and did another that was better. I wonder if warmer, more humid weather made the stalls worse. Most likely, it's just me.

I flew the same routine as my last practice session. Out over the beach for maneuvers, then pattern work back at Whitted. The GPS track does not look so good, but I thought my steep turns were perfect. I caught my wake on both the left and right turns. I would have landed right on my selected emergency landing site. If not for those wicked stalls, I would have called it a great day. My pattern work was fair. I'm still having trouble moving from normal to short field to soft field landings. Practice will iron that out.

Tuesday starts my cross country. I hope to get some photos in route to Crystal River. My family used to spend weekends there when I was a teenager. I'm hoping Rob will let me fly low over the springs and get some good shots. We'll see.

lesson 14

You'll need google earth to open the lesson 14 flight file.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 13.0 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 5.4 Hours

Landings: 80

More ground school

Three hours of ground school today left me with a headache and sore eyes. Man, the numbers on those charts are tough for an old guy, especially if the "class room" is not extremely well lit. That's behind me, so I can start some cross country work.

Rob and I went over flight planning using navigation by dead reckoning. "Dead reckoning is navigation solely by means of computations based on time, airspeed, distance and direction." Yea, that's from the book. You can see why it puts me to sleep. We also went over some more weather, or how and where to get weather information. Now I can plan a short trip. And that's my job. I've got to prepare a flight plan to and from Crystal River (CGC). Next week we get to fly there. The airport at Crystal River has one paved and one grass runway. I'm hoping the wind is out of the north so we can land on the grass.

I'm going to practice a bit more on Thursday. Cross country next week. I'm sure I'll get in some more ground school before taking longer flights and learn about the other navigational methods available to me. It's funny to use dead reckoning in a plane equipped with a state of the art GPS system. But, them's the rules.

Practice, practice, practice

My wife is out of town this weekend. Our daughter has an event at college, and Alice wanted to attend. So, can I find something to do with myself? Yep, I'll go flying, and what a beautiful day it was. I took off a little after 8:00 with no sign of clouds in the sky, calm winds, cool temperatures and great visibility. Typical November day in Florida.

I set out to practice all my practical test maneuvers and all the landing/take off procedures. I accomplished nearly all, with varying degrees of success. The maneuvers went very well. I caught my own wake in the steep turn to the right. Transitioned to slow flight while keeping my heading and altitude. Rode the ragged edge of the stall for a minute and went back to normal cruise. I know I'm getting more comfortable in the plane by myself. I did the dreaded power-on stall without Rob. Kept my heading, recovered and had no problems. The only minor problem was that I would have over shot my landing site when I practiced an emergency landing. I'll have to do a few more of those to better judge my glide path. The winds were so light, there was little point in practicing turns around a point.

I headed back to Whitted. My landings were good, but not great. Actually, I was very happy with the way I handled my most serious error. Coming back from the beach, I must not have been paying attention. I found my self too high and way too fast on final. I immediately decided to go around. I had worried that I tend to fixate on the landing, and have not actually needed to go around to this point. When the need arouse, I did the right thing. I practiced all my landing and take off techniques. The biggest problem I'm having is switching gears from one technique to another. I'll have to do all of them when my check ride comes, so I'll just keep working on it.

Alice took the good camera with her, so the shot at the top is from my cell phone. There are a lot of interesting aircraft at Whitted on the weekends, and I'll get some photos my next opportunity. A WWII vintage Stearman biplane was taxiing out as I was doing my pre-flite, and a Waco cabin biplane was doing sightseeing tours. Both are beautiful airplanes.

lesson 13

You'll need google earth to open and view the lesson 13 file. While not really a lesson, I'll keep the files sequential to avoid confusing myself.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 13 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 4.1 Hours

Landing: 74

Short shorts

I know the picture at the top of this post is a bit confusing, but bear with me. I'm trying to give you an idea of what I was looking at today.

Had another lesson. I brought Rob up to speed on what Josh and I had done last time. No need to go to Manatee again. We briefly went over short field takeoff and landing procedures before taking off for some pattern work.

Short field landings are similar to to normal landings. You're just moving slower, and on final approach, you are descending much more rapidly. It was not hard once I had done it a few times. The only problem is that things look different. The angles are different. Here is were the photo at the top comes in. At Whitted, Tampa Bay is just off of both ends of runway 18/36. Landing on 36, there is a seawall, a few feet of grass, and the runway. When landing at a steep angle, like on a short field approach, it sure looks like you're gonna hit that seawall. It took a few laps around the pattern to convince me that I could clear it.

I did 5 or 6 short field landings and takeoffs, and practiced the soft field technique a few times. All in all, my landings were good. The only one I was unhappy with was my first soft field approach. I don't think my brain had shifted gears between the short field technique and the soft field technique. I ended up bouncing through some goofy hybrid landing and was crooked in the crosswind to boot. Rob told me not to be too hard on myself. He thought all my landings were up to practical test standards. OK, I feel better.

Soon, the fun begins. We get to start our cross country work. I've scheduled a 3 hour ground school session for my next lesson, and I have a pile of reading to do. I'm really looking forward to cross country. I like going other places.

lesson 12

You'll need google earth to open and view the lesson 12 file.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 13 Hours

Solo/PIC Time: 2.8 Hours

Landings: 68

Dude, that's some sweet grass

I had two "first" today. I made my first landing away from good old Albert Whitted, and I made my first landing on grass, all with a different instructor. In the process, I had more fun than I've had in a long time. Other pilots have told me they prefer grass fields. Now I can see why. Grass is a bit more forgiving than asphalt. It requires you to do more of the "pilot" stuff, but it's a lot of fun.

I got a call from Bay Air yesterday. I knew that Rob was buying a house. He finally closed and was trying to get moved. So, I could cancel today's lesson, fly another solo trip, or schedule another instructor. Quickly thinking to myself, I thought one day I would have someone other than Rob in the plane, certainly the FAA inspector for my medical flight test and the examiner for my checkride. So might as well try someone new. Today it was CFI Josh. We talked for a couple minutes about where I was in my training and what Rob had planned next. We went to the "classroom" and went over radio procedures for uncontrolled fields and technique for soft field landing. I was up to speed with the radio, but the soft field procedures seemed daunting.

I've gotten ahead of myself. When I got to Bay Air, Josh was still up with another student. A group of guys were taking discovery flights. They were excited that they got to fly the airplane and such. Sound sort of familiar? Anyhow, they were asking about lessons, costs, scheduling all things that they needed to know. I'm minding my business, just standing around waiting for Josh, until they find out that I'm a student pilot. Guess who got to be the aviation expert for a few minutes? It was fun talking to someone who sounded just like me a few months ago. Josh showed up and put a quick end to my celebrity status.

The soft field technique is a lot of fun. You try to do a wheelie down the runway in a effort to keep the nose wheel off the ground. Once airborne, you level off quickly, remaining in ground effect until you gain airspeed, then you can begin a normal climb. It may sound like a lot, but it makes sense once you do it and is easier than it sounds. Landing is similar, you try to keep the nose wheel off the ground as much as possible. We made four landings at Airport Manatee (48X, photo at top) before heading back to Whitted. The last landing was a touch and go. Josh never demonstrated anything. He explained and expected me to do it. I prefer that. I learn faster if I do it myself.

To pilots this may sound strange, but I was happy to have a decent crosswind at Airport Manatee and have a chance to practice my crosswind landings. So far, I've not had much trouble with crosswinds. I understand the technique, but I don't think about it. I just fly the plane and it works out. Not thinking about it makes me think that I didn't do anything, but today we had a 10 knot wind 50 degrees off the runway. My books shows that as a 7 knot crosswind. That's the limit Rob signed off on for me, and good enough for now.

We were going to work on short field technique back at Whitted, but the place was so busy that we did one touch and go and called it a day. At one point we were number 5 to land. Josh laughed and said that never happens at Whitted. All in all, a great day.

lesson 11 file

Remember, you'll need google earth on your computer to open the flight file.

Statistics

Dual Instruction Time: 12 hours

Solo/PIC Time: 2.8 hours

Landings: 60