Commercial Training - Day 12

Summary
Scheduled Time: 9AM - 11AM
Actual Hours Ground: 0
Actual Hours Flight: 0
Total Hours Flight: 5.0

Thursday turned out to be a great day, after 2PM. Unfortunately, I had other plans. Today, however, was back to 'normal'; gray, drizzling, and low ceilings. Four days scheduled this week. Four flights canceled. Unbelievable.

Commercial Training - Day 11

Summary
Scheduled Time: 2PM - 4PM
Actual Hours Ground: 0
Actual Hours Flight: 0
Total Hours Flight: 5.0

Wow, three days of miserable, unflyable weather in a row. I'm really starting to wonder why I ever moved to Seattle.

Commercial Training - Day 10

Summary
Scheduled Time: 2PM - 4PM
Actual Hours Ground: 0
Actual Hours Flight: 0
Total Hours Flight: 5.0

Today, the weather was too ugly to even stay in the pattern, so another canceled lesson. It was actually worse than yesterday, with mist and a 500 foot ceiling. Jeesh.

Commercial Training - Day 9

Summary
Scheduled Time: 2PM - 4PM
Actual Hours Ground: 0
Actual Hours Flight: 0
Total Hours Flight: 5.0

Today, the weather was too ugly to even stay in the pattern, so another canceled lesson.

Commercial Training - Day 8

Summary
Scheduled Time: 10AM - 1PM
Actual Hours Ground: 0.3
Actual Hours Flight: 1.2
Total Hours Flight: 5.0

Today, the weather was just barely good enough to get off the ground. We headed to the west side of Whidbey Island and did turns on pylons for the first time. The theory is that there is a pivotal altitude based on ground speed and if you are tracking the ground speed and the pivotal altitude, a point on the ground will remain fixed off your wingtip. So, you pick too points about 3/4 mile apart and do a figure eight around the points, adjusting altitude to correct for ground speed changes that are generated due to the constant changing of heading and the wind - headwinds decrease the ground speed and tail winds increase the ground speed.

The manuever is more difficult than it appears in writing. One reason is altitude. The pivotal altitude for 100 knots of ground speed is only 885 feet above ground level. This is quite low, and my natural tendency is to increase my distance from the ground, not decrease it. Another issue is the closeness of the two points. As soon as you go around the first, the second is already under you and you must find it and turn on it immediately, else you'll mess up the entire circuit. The third issue is turbulence. It is hard enough to keep the wingtip glued to the ground reference. Throw in some bumps and it gets nearly impossible.

After about a half hour of turns, we headed back to the airport for some more short field landing practice. I kept coming up short and couldn't figure out why, so we landed and discussed it more on the ground. I think my biggest problem is not anticipating the different decent characteristics that occur at different speeds. On normal landings, the airspeed is higher and the plane settles into ground effect and floats a few hundred feet before finally settling on the wheels. On short field approaches, the airspeed is slower. As soon as the power is removed, the plane drops to the ground, so you really need to be at - or slightly beyond - you desired touchdown point before pulling the power.

You may be thinking, "Didn't he have to learn all of this to get his private pilot license?" Yes, of course, but that was A) many years ago, and B) in a very light Cessna 152. The Cardinal is a different airplane that takes time to master. Soon, these standard maneuvers - and hopefully the new ones as well - will become second nature. I'm counting on it.

Commercial Training - Day 7

Summary
Scheduled Time: 2PM - 5PM
Actual Hours Ground: 0
Actual Hours Flight: 0
Total Hours Flight: 3.8

It's strangly funny, but every day, when I think the weather can get no worse, somehow it does get worse. Today was amazingly bad. After canceling the lesson, we drove to Renton. Along the way, we passed in and out of heavy showers with visibility less than a mile. I wonder what will top today's lousy weather?

Commercial Training - Day 6

Summary
Scheduled Time: 2PM - 5PM
Actual Hours Ground: 0.3
Actual Hours Flight: 1.2
Total Hours Flight: 3.8

The weather today was typical - gray and miserable - but the forecast showed lifting ceilings around 2:00 PM. I went to the airport with slim to no hope of flying, but the forecast turned out to be accurate and we decided to go do some more pattern work.

Today's training area was 180 degree turns to landing without power. We started out on the long runway, but other traffic caused us to switch back to the short runway. The first five or six approaches went well, then I seemed to hit my threshold of flying capability and things started getting sloppy. My approaches started to vary - too high or too low - and my touchdowns began to drop out of the sky the last couple feet. There was other traffic in the pattern on this side, too, so we had to change plans on downwind and do short field approaches in several cases. In one case, I was too high and we decided to just go around and try again.

Mike finally took pity on me and let me take the plane back to the FBO. All in all, a pretty good day of practice, except for the last few landings.

Andrew Phrases

Before I forget all of them, I wanted to start a blog with some of the funny things that Andrew says or used to say. Here we go:

Andrew's Phrase . . . .Translation
----------------------------------
da-nella. . . . . . . .vanilla
mag-nick. . . . . . . .magnet
sweet tongue. . . . . .sweet tooth
spa-gat-ti-cal. . . . .sabbatical
too much fun. . . . . .very fun
here ya go. . . . . . .here you go
breck-fick. . . . . . .breakfast
over dare . . . . . . .over there
microphone. . . . . . .walkie talkie
shooter . . . . . . . .gun
slide conjector . . . .slide projector
miles of power. . . . .miles per hour
I noodle you. . . . . .not sure what it means
pasta creama beara. . .pasta primavera
temporary home. . . . .hotel room or condo
ding ding . . . . . . .railroad crossing signal
ma house. . . . . . . .my house
three teen. . . . . . .thirteen
five teen . . . . . . .fifteen
dudder. . . . . . . . .another
dahdun. . . . . . . . .another

Hopefully, we'll remember a few more.

Commercial Training - Day 5

Summary
Scheduled Time: 2PM - 5PM
Actual Hours Ground: 0
Actual Hours Flight: 0
Total Hours Flight: 2.6

Today was a complete no-go. The weather was - once again - completely miserable. It rained all morning and there is no sign of improvement today.

Commercial Training - Day 4

Summary
Scheduled Time: 11AM - 2PM
Actual Hours Ground: 0.3
Actual Hours Flight: 1.2
Total Hours Flight: 2.6

Today, I went to the flight school an hour early to get in some uninterrupted study time. On the surface, this sounded like a good idea, but there are plenty distractions there, too. For instance, the King Air that pulled up to the gas pump - everyone at the school went to the window to get a closer look. Then there was the guy who just bought himself a brand new Cirrus SR-22G and was trying to get proficient on instruments again.

When the time to fly arrived, my instructor was still busy with another customer, so I reviewed some of the flight maneuvers from the last flight - steep turns and chandelles. I found the description of the chandelle to be a bit different than what I wrote last time. The actual description is a climbing constant-bank turn with increasing pitch for the first 90 degrees, followed by a constant pitch climbing turn with decreasing bank to the 180 degree point, ending within 10 knots of stall speed.

Mike returned and we went to the plane. We did the usual pre-flight, then headed West towards a large hole in the overcast. We were able to climb to 3000 feet, where we began working on steep turns again. For some reason, I had a difficult time with the left turns, but I had no problem with right turns.

Then we did a pair of stalls. I think I have stalls nearly perfected... nearly.

Then it was on to the chandelle. As earlier, I had a difficult time doing left turning chandelles. Right turning chandelles were better, but I still have a lot of work to do to perfect them.

We had another simulated engine failure, but this time we started much higher than last time, which provided more time to troubleshoot and setup the approach to the intended landing field. Since we were higher, we had time to head for the tiny Langley airstrip. I headed directly for the field, which is a very narrow strip cut into the trees on Whidbey Island, then turned 180 degrees to the downwind with gear down. Turning toward the runway again, I found myself too high and we decided to go around. In a real emergency, I could have slipped the plane and safely landed midfield with enough runway left to avoid the trees.

Then it was back to Paine Field. Again we practiced landings. Landings today were much more stable and smooth, so Mike went ahead and asked for a soft field landing followed by a soft field takeoff. On the final landing, Mike pulled the power and I did a dead stick landing. The approach was a little too high for Commercial standards, but not at all bad for my first try.

If the weather is good enough, we will do lazy eights next time, otherwise more of the same.