Commercial Training - Day 19

Summary
Scheduled Time: 6:30PM - 8:30PM
Actual Hours Ground: 0.3
Actual Hours Flight: 1.1
Total Hours Flight: 12.3

Yesterday was another good day of training. The weather was once again questionable - overcast at 2,500 feet with light rain - but the flying went very well.

We started the flight by heading northwest towards Port Townsend to do some 8s on pylons. Once there, I found a tower on a hill and used it as my first pylon. Unfortunately, every potential pylon nearby was hundreds of feet lower than the tower, making for a bad pairing of pylons.

We continued to fly around a while before finding an east-west road with two intersections about the right distance apart. With these points as pylons, I was able to successfully demonstrate my ability to fly around pylons.

We then headed back to Paine Field for some more landing practice. On the way, Brian asked me to demonstrate the gear failure procedure. Although uncomfortable with pulling circuit breakers, I agreed and went through the checklist items one by one. I was able to get the gear down and locked using the emergency handle. It took 32 pumps to get the gear out and locked. Once complete, we quickly reset the circuit breaker and raised the gear.

Back at the airport, we practiced 180 degree turns to landing while aiming at the 1000 foot markers on 34L. We had the runway to ourselves, so there were no distractions. Slowly, I think I'm learning the descent characteristics of this airplane. The first attempt came up short, but it was interesting to see the affect of dumping all flaps while in ground effect - the plane floated over the runway much farther than I would ever have believed possible.

So, it looks like we'll try one more training flight, then move on to some heavy duty ground instruction in preparation for my mock oral and practical exams. If all that goes well, I'll be scheduling my real oral and practical exams within a week or so.