Lesson 7
Progress check time. Actually, in the Cessna curriculum flight 6 is a flight with a chief instructor who introduces you to instrument flying and then might ask you to do a couple of things you've learned to see how you're progressing.
I had my last lesson just this morning so I went home to decompress. I'm really working myself up about this prog check and I don't know why. The little movie that keeps playing in my head is of an old guy pointing me out and saying, "hey you, you're not a pilot. You're just pretending. Get out of here." I know it sounds silly but I suppose after what I went through to get the medical I just keep expecting something to happen that would keep me from flying. And the idea of flying with someone who is suppose to be judging my performance is a little intimidating.
So I eat a bowl of soup and I lay down on the floor and try to empty my mind. The zen of flying. =;-)
Soon enough it's time and I hop back in the car and drive over to Monarch. There are three chief instructors and my lesson is with P whom I've seen around there before, I just didn't know who he was. We chit chat for a bit and then he checks out the plane and sends me on my way to preflight.
As I walk out I notice that there are two other planes being preflighted. I walk down the flight line and when I get to the end I realize that my plane isn't there. What the .... ! I make the walk again double-checking the tail numbers until I realize that one of the planes being preflighted is mine.
I walk over and politely ask the guy to check which plane he's suppose to be in. He looks at his paper and realizes he has the wrong plane (even though the key fit the lock!) so he moves down the line to another plane. I start getting my stuff settled and I realize that I left my fuel tester in the plane I flew this morning. Doh! So I lock up everything and turn to go in and ask if that plane's here when I realize that the guy who had the wrong plane is preflighting the plane I drove this morning. So I walk over and ask him if he minds if I look inside. I could tell from the look on this face when I walked up he was thinking ... "now what!?".
Sure enough, there's my fuel tester. Whew! But before I leave the guy starts asking me questions. Here's the deal ... he wanted to fly the plane that got checked out to me. That actually was the plane he scheduled. And I had originally scheduled the plane the he's preflighting because I wanted to fly the same plane for both lessons today. Confused? Somehow the planes we scheduled got switched and this guy thinks the rate on both planes is different. So he asks if it's ok with me to switch? Sure, I don't have a problem with that. So he takes off with the paper work for both planes and I gather my stuff and move to 729SP and start another preflight.
After a while P comes out and meets me and he's got the corrected paperwork. We have a good laugh about the whole thing and I start to feel more relaxed. P seems like a really nice guy and not intimidating at all. And the ridiculousness of the swapped planes just makes me want to giggle. So we hop in the plane and get the engine fired up.
It's noon on a beautiful Sunday and again everyone and their grandmother wants to go flying. So it takes us nearly ten minutes until there's a break in the ground traffic to get clearance to taxi. When we get out to runway 15 there must be about six other aircraft out there ... everything from another Cirrus, to a twin Seminole, to a Boeing Stearman.
Finally, our turn comes and I lift off and we start following Preston Road north to the practice area. P says, "I hate to spoil the view for you but I need you to put these on." And he hands me a pair of frosted safety glasses.
I put them on and P gives me the finer points of flying by instruments alone. The main two instruments to watch is airspeed and attitude. As long as I keep the little ball centered on the horizon line then I'm going to stay level and I can tell because my airspeed stays constant. If you let it rise or fall even just a little then you see a definite change in airspeed and then you can see your altitude changing. Same goes for keeping the wings level using the attitude indicator.
Seems pretty simple. P has me do an ascent and a descent and then some turns to various headings. And I think we did a climbing turn in there too. All in all, it is pretty simple. As long as I keep the changes small then the plane doesn't get away from me.
This is where I think all those hours flying the Microsoft Flight Simulator have paid off!
Finally I get to take the glasses off and then P asks me to show him a turn-around-a-point. So I descended to 1700' and slowed to 100 kias and picked out a spot pretty quickly that had some good obvious key points around it and I managed to do a pretty good turn. We went around the point twice and then he asked for an s-turn. There was a road right ahead of us so I just headed straight toward it and did one s-turn and I managed to cross the road perpendicular and wings level both times! Not perfect, mind you, but much better than any I have done yet.
Afterwards we climbed back up to 2500' and I turned to the south because we were getting to the northern boundary of the practice area. P asked me, what would you do if the engine quit right now. Hmmmm well, first I'd drop the nose and trim for best glide which is 65 kias in this plane. And then I'd find a place to land. "OK", he says, "where"?
Well, how about that field I suggest. "It looks like a good field but do you think we'd make it that far?" he asks. I don't really know, I can't really visualize from here how far we'd get. So with that he pulls back the power and we start a 65 kias glide. Oh! I quickly realize that the field I picked out is too far. From 2000' we're not going to get far.
P points out that I should pick a field that I can see out my left window because anything I pick out of the right window will disappear when I turn. And if I happen to have a field right under me that's perfect because we've already made the field ... we just need to descend in a spiral to land in it.
He asks me what else I would do and we discuss changing the transponder code and making a call on the emergency radio frequency and opening the doors to prevent them getting stuck if we have a hard landing. I mention all kinds of things except "following the engine-out checklist". Doh! Lesson learned.
With that he says let's head back in and we turn toward Addison. After landing and taxiing back in we de-brief and he tells me that I don't need to be nervous about flying with him because his job isn't to fail people. That's what the FAA Examiner is for. The worst that I would hear from P is that my instructor and I need to do some more work on something. He was pretty encouraging and said that I handled the plane well and am progressing satisfactorily. So my next lessons will focus on landings. Yeah!
I showed up today nervous about missing three weeks of flying and nervous about being "tested" but everything went pretty darn well. I'm doing the right things and I'm cleared to continue to the next big task.
So next weekend C and I will go to either Collin County (TKI) or Denton Airport (DTO) to start learning how to land. Even better news is that my boss gave me clearance to begin taking a morning lesson during the week and come in to work late. So soon I'll be taking three lessons a week.
This flight: 1.3 hours
Total: 9.3 hours
I had my last lesson just this morning so I went home to decompress. I'm really working myself up about this prog check and I don't know why. The little movie that keeps playing in my head is of an old guy pointing me out and saying, "hey you, you're not a pilot. You're just pretending. Get out of here." I know it sounds silly but I suppose after what I went through to get the medical I just keep expecting something to happen that would keep me from flying. And the idea of flying with someone who is suppose to be judging my performance is a little intimidating.
So I eat a bowl of soup and I lay down on the floor and try to empty my mind. The zen of flying. =;-)
Soon enough it's time and I hop back in the car and drive over to Monarch. There are three chief instructors and my lesson is with P whom I've seen around there before, I just didn't know who he was. We chit chat for a bit and then he checks out the plane and sends me on my way to preflight.
As I walk out I notice that there are two other planes being preflighted. I walk down the flight line and when I get to the end I realize that my plane isn't there. What the .... ! I make the walk again double-checking the tail numbers until I realize that one of the planes being preflighted is mine.
I walk over and politely ask the guy to check which plane he's suppose to be in. He looks at his paper and realizes he has the wrong plane (even though the key fit the lock!) so he moves down the line to another plane. I start getting my stuff settled and I realize that I left my fuel tester in the plane I flew this morning. Doh! So I lock up everything and turn to go in and ask if that plane's here when I realize that the guy who had the wrong plane is preflighting the plane I drove this morning. So I walk over and ask him if he minds if I look inside. I could tell from the look on this face when I walked up he was thinking ... "now what!?".
Sure enough, there's my fuel tester. Whew! But before I leave the guy starts asking me questions. Here's the deal ... he wanted to fly the plane that got checked out to me. That actually was the plane he scheduled. And I had originally scheduled the plane the he's preflighting because I wanted to fly the same plane for both lessons today. Confused? Somehow the planes we scheduled got switched and this guy thinks the rate on both planes is different. So he asks if it's ok with me to switch? Sure, I don't have a problem with that. So he takes off with the paper work for both planes and I gather my stuff and move to 729SP and start another preflight.
After a while P comes out and meets me and he's got the corrected paperwork. We have a good laugh about the whole thing and I start to feel more relaxed. P seems like a really nice guy and not intimidating at all. And the ridiculousness of the swapped planes just makes me want to giggle. So we hop in the plane and get the engine fired up.
It's noon on a beautiful Sunday and again everyone and their grandmother wants to go flying. So it takes us nearly ten minutes until there's a break in the ground traffic to get clearance to taxi. When we get out to runway 15 there must be about six other aircraft out there ... everything from another Cirrus, to a twin Seminole, to a Boeing Stearman.
Finally, our turn comes and I lift off and we start following Preston Road north to the practice area. P says, "I hate to spoil the view for you but I need you to put these on." And he hands me a pair of frosted safety glasses.
I put them on and P gives me the finer points of flying by instruments alone. The main two instruments to watch is airspeed and attitude. As long as I keep the little ball centered on the horizon line then I'm going to stay level and I can tell because my airspeed stays constant. If you let it rise or fall even just a little then you see a definite change in airspeed and then you can see your altitude changing. Same goes for keeping the wings level using the attitude indicator.
Seems pretty simple. P has me do an ascent and a descent and then some turns to various headings. And I think we did a climbing turn in there too. All in all, it is pretty simple. As long as I keep the changes small then the plane doesn't get away from me.
This is where I think all those hours flying the Microsoft Flight Simulator have paid off!
Finally I get to take the glasses off and then P asks me to show him a turn-around-a-point. So I descended to 1700' and slowed to 100 kias and picked out a spot pretty quickly that had some good obvious key points around it and I managed to do a pretty good turn. We went around the point twice and then he asked for an s-turn. There was a road right ahead of us so I just headed straight toward it and did one s-turn and I managed to cross the road perpendicular and wings level both times! Not perfect, mind you, but much better than any I have done yet.
Afterwards we climbed back up to 2500' and I turned to the south because we were getting to the northern boundary of the practice area. P asked me, what would you do if the engine quit right now. Hmmmm well, first I'd drop the nose and trim for best glide which is 65 kias in this plane. And then I'd find a place to land. "OK", he says, "where"?
Well, how about that field I suggest. "It looks like a good field but do you think we'd make it that far?" he asks. I don't really know, I can't really visualize from here how far we'd get. So with that he pulls back the power and we start a 65 kias glide. Oh! I quickly realize that the field I picked out is too far. From 2000' we're not going to get far.
P points out that I should pick a field that I can see out my left window because anything I pick out of the right window will disappear when I turn. And if I happen to have a field right under me that's perfect because we've already made the field ... we just need to descend in a spiral to land in it.
He asks me what else I would do and we discuss changing the transponder code and making a call on the emergency radio frequency and opening the doors to prevent them getting stuck if we have a hard landing. I mention all kinds of things except "following the engine-out checklist". Doh! Lesson learned.
With that he says let's head back in and we turn toward Addison. After landing and taxiing back in we de-brief and he tells me that I don't need to be nervous about flying with him because his job isn't to fail people. That's what the FAA Examiner is for. The worst that I would hear from P is that my instructor and I need to do some more work on something. He was pretty encouraging and said that I handled the plane well and am progressing satisfactorily. So my next lessons will focus on landings. Yeah!
I showed up today nervous about missing three weeks of flying and nervous about being "tested" but everything went pretty darn well. I'm doing the right things and I'm cleared to continue to the next big task.
So next weekend C and I will go to either Collin County (TKI) or Denton Airport (DTO) to start learning how to land. Even better news is that my boss gave me clearance to begin taking a morning lesson during the week and come in to work late. So soon I'll be taking three lessons a week.
This flight: 1.3 hours
Total: 9.3 hours
posted by AirmanChet at
09:55
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