Commercial Lesson - Day 27

Summary

Scheduled Time: 8:00AM - 12:00AM
Actual Hours Ground: 2.0
Actual Hours Flight: 2.2

Total Hours Flight: 19.8

Another day closer to completion, but not a big confidence booster. Craig is putting a lot of pressure on me to memorize the FlightSafety procedures. On top of this, he asked me to plan a cross country flight. I spent a couple hours last night trying to complete the cross country planning - to Lakeland, FL, home of Sun 'n Fun. 

I got to bed way too late and the alarm went off far too early this morning. I felt pretty good with my preparation, but not 100%. Craig and I briefed all the commercial maneuvers and we headed outside. I took my time with the preflight, trying to be sure that I was doing things the FSI way.

After takeoff, I was cleared for a northwest departure. I noted my time off and started looking for my first waypoint, which was the 322 degree radial of the Vero Beach VOR where it crosses I-95. This went well. My next waypoint was reached a bit early, but still very close to planned. At that point we diverted to a nearby field (can't recall the name, starts with 'V', too. Valkeria?). I estimated a new heading and time and before long, it appeared in front of our eyes.

At this point, we headed for the Hotel practice area and did eights on pylons. My first points were too far apart, so I regrouped and found closer points. I had some difficulty the first time around, so Craig demonstrated the technique. I noticed that he was not holding the wing on the point, but instead kept the point 'a Coke can' above the wing. I tried this technique and things proceeded quite well from there.

Next came chandelles and lazy eights. In both cases, I was a bit jerky on the controls. I was trying to use headings instead of landmarks, which caused my eyes to stay inside the cockpit much too long, at the expense of my proper aircfraft control. Once I went back to eyes out, things started working out well again.

On the way back to the airport, we did slow flight and steep turns. Slow flight went smoothly, with the plane hanging on the very edge of a stall. Steep turns went perfectly - up to the last 10 degrees, where I managed to lose 100' in an instant while watching the initial heading come around. This is when I miss Mt. Baker and Mt Rainier. With eyes outside, it is very easy to see the initial heading come around. Here in Florida, the haze destroys the horizon, so landmarks are harder to find under the nose.

Reporting in for landing, we had to hold over the outlet mall. We couldn't even get a word in and when we finally did, the controller responded back before I finished talking and I didn't realize he was talking to me. Thus, I got a mini lecture about not responding correctly, then headed south and made circles in the sky until he was ready to let us procede. He turned us to the south to line up on a six mile final to runway 4, with two other aircraft in front of us. Meantime, he had a Beechjet landing on runway 11R. He asked us to slow down, so we went back into near slow flight, but that wasn't slow enough. Next he asked us to do an S-turn for spacing. We did and watched the Beechjet cross our runway as we were on short final.

We have now done all maneuvers at least once, except for the steep spiral. One more lesson to refine my control and I should be ready for the checkride.