ET's Info-Stew

Today was my first flight as a Private Pilot. I took up Jenny and though the air was smooth, the winds were high and gusty at the ground. She got freaked out during the landings, but I landed them pretty well anyway. I also showed her a steep turn and a power-off stall. She thought a stall was what happened if the engine stopped running. So when she got the sinking feeling in her stomach, she was...surprised.

Despite my belief that the weather would not be good enough to take my check ride, I did it today and I passed! I performed sub standard in a couple areas and above standard in many others. Recounting the negative aspects of my flight is not fun, but it is instructive. Nonetheless, I'm not going to discuss them here. Hopefully the lessons were well learned and I am a better pilot as a result.

Tomorrow is my last training flight before my scheduled checkride. I've been doing checkride preparation for the last couple weeks and Nick seems to think I'm good enough to pass. I've been studying like crazy and I still need to continue to study. These last two weeks have shown me that even though I may be proficient enough to take the checkride, I should continuously keep learning.

After yesterday's and today's flights, I'm now at 39.9 hours. I'm scheduled to fly with Nick again on Tuesday, so hopefully I made noticeable progress today. I went to the practice area for a short while practicing steep turns, slow flight, and stalls, then came back and did 18 landings. The primary goal was to practice soft and short field landings, but I also added in a no-flaps and power-off landing. The quality of my shorts and softs varied. I did an excellent job of fine-tuning my approach speed and angle and waiting until I was low to flare.

The flight training situation seems to change almost daily lately. Yesterday I couldn't fly because the plane was out of service, so I went in to today's check-ride practice with Paul cold. I didn't do as well as I thought I would do. It was hot, I was dehydrated, and I got motion sick twenty minutes into the flight, but it was obvious even still that my failures were due to lack of knowing how nearly all operations were supposed to be conducted. In a sense, I pretty much winged them all. This boils down to lack of experience, though the lack of instruction probably played a role too.

I have drawn up a plan with Nick to aggressively finish off my flight lessons. By the afternoon of Saturday September 1st, six days from now, I could be a private pilot! The next six days will be spent studying and cramming for the knowledge portion. In addition, I am scheduled to fly Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. It's not certain that the examiner will be available, but if he is, I intend to be ready. I'm going to be taking the checkride in a 172N, so I had to go out an get another Aircraft Information Manual.

Some aspects apply to the Cessna 172, though most of this applies to any plane.

I’m going to go over some important points with you before we continue. First, I am the Pilot in Command of this flight. What that means is that I alone am responsible for the safe execution of this flight so whatever I say goes. At any time, if I decide that the situation is unsafe, I alone can make the decision to terminate the flight in the safest means that I deem possible. That may mean landing at an alternate airport. I have checked the weather and inspected the airplane and have determined that it is safe to make this flight.

I recently made a fairly bad landing in my first tail-wind landing experience. I thought it would be instructive to illustrate why.

My last blog entry mentioned that I switched over to the Cessna 172 from the 152 for the remainder of my training. I thought it was be a time consuming processes to get used to the 172, but I took to it right away. In fact, Nick endorsed my certificate to allow me to fly the 172 after my very first dual flight in one! It helped that I had put in some study time reading the POH.

My first attempt to fly the Cessna 172 solo in the pattern didn't go as planned. When I got at the airport at 9:00 AM the wind were 170 at 7. Not only is that more than a 5 knot crosswind but it is a bit of a tailwind. Nick told me to wait because the wind usually whips back around more favorably for runways 28. Sure enough at 9:50 AM the wind sock turned around and a few minutes later the ATIS said the winds were 270 at 5. So I got the go-ahead from Nick and off I went.