ET's Info-Stew

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.

I now have 27.9 hours of flight time under my belt after a kind of marathon flying week. By 33 hours, all I will have left to do is 3 hours of checkride prep time, so I'm asking whether I can switch to a Cessna 172 with those remaining 17 hours. My goal is to have my certificate and Cessna 172 type endorsement by the time we go on vacation to Colorado. It would be fun to take up Jenny, Liz, and Cy.

I can see the finish-line ahead, but that just means that I have a lot of work to do in a short amount of time. I have some pictures from today's flight that I will eventually put up.

Today I did my long solo cross-country flight from KHWD to KMHR to KTCY back to KHWD in 2.4 hours. I'm happy I finally got to do it, and now that that milestone is past I can start with the remaining requirements: night and instrument time. I still have more solo time to do, but I imagine I'll do those occasionally, kinda on my own time.

Yesterday I was supposed to fly my cross country stage check with Joe, but instead I flew with a new instructor, Erick. I passed easily, and even made a pretty descent landing at the end of the flight!

I intended to fly solo to Modesto today with Nick's endorsement, but Nick wasn't so sure. When I check the winds at KMOD and they were 350 at 11, which is higher than my allowed crosswind component. So Nick decided to come with me. I did very well in the planning and execution of the flight and with the other aspects. The high density altitude was instructive: we never actually got to 5,500 feet! It turned out that when we got to the airport the winds were 300 at 12, which is within my allowed range. Oh well.