CFI-A Lesson 8 (Part 1)

Today was all about emergencies. Before the actual lesson, I created lesson plans covering Emergency Approach & Landing, Slip To Landing, Fire On The Ground, Fire In Flight, Aborted Take-off, Emergency Descent, and Basic Instrument Attitude flight. In the briefing room, I introduced Emergency Approach & Landing. I drew pretty pictures on the whiteboard and used the model airplane to demonstrate what a slip looks like and how it can be used to lose altitude without gaining airspeed.

After wrapping up, my instructor gave his critique. He wanted to know how the student would know if he was too high or too low. I answered that it will come with experience and practice. He asked what one thing the student has already practiced and understands that he could use to help determine his rate of descent. Sight picture, of course! In VFR flying, visual cues are the most important aspect of flying, followed closely by the other senses.

In the airplane, I requested a brief delay on the runway, followed by the option so I could demonstrate the aborted take-off. Unfortunately, the tower was too busy and I was denied, so I demonstrated and talked through a soft field take-off instead.

Once out to the practice area, I reviewed and demonstrated slow flight, then reviewed and critiqued my 'student's' power-on and power-off stalls. In both cases, I noticed an error, pointed it out, and verified that my 'student' understood what he did wrong.

I then handed my foggles to my 'student' and talked him through climbs, descents, and turns while 'under the hood'. He had no problem with this, so we started climbing to do Steep Spirals. On the way, my instructor pulled the power while we climbed through 2,500 feet. Most of our western training area is over citrus fields, so finding a suitable landing area with short notice is pretty difficult. I picked two, but neither was very good and I failed to reach my intended landing point and started climbing again.

So I tried again. This time I had time to pick a good field, verify the wind direction, and set myself up on a downwind heading. I pulled the power and descended down in a spiral over the field to 1,400 feet. At this point, I had to decide whether to go around one more time or start the approach to the field. I chose the latter and ended up coming in too high. Better, but still not very good.

Back to the Steep Spirals. They turned out to be more challenging than expected. There were three other planes in the immediate area and the clouds were broken at 3,500 feet. For Steep Spirals, I need at least 4,000 feet to ensure getting three full 360 degree turns in before reaching 1,000 above the ground, so we had to find a point with no clouds above it. I asked my 'student' to tell me when we were abeam my ground reference point - I cannot see well out the left window from the right seat. He did, but when I banked into the spiral, I realized that we were not directly over the point. My 'student' told me we were abeam, but not over the point; just what I asked him to do. When it comes to students and instructions, you must be very precise about what you demonstrate or ask.

By this time, we were running up against the clock, so I decided to skip the Emergency Descent and head back to the airport. On the way, I discussed our pattern entry with my 'student' and how to compensate for the gusting conditions. I described every action I was making on the approach, downwind, base, and final leg. Unfortunately, in the back of my mind I was thinking that the tower had not officially cleared me to land - he simply said to "Continue" while I was on the downwind leg. With this distraction in my head, my approach was not precise enough and I ended up a little high and a little fast. I corrected, but the plane balooned slightly, so I pitched down slightly, but then had to add a little power to decrease the descent rate. Then we were hit by a crosswind gust that pushed me left of the centerline. I corrected this as well, but still had a rather solid, side loaded landing.

Phew, that was a tough lesson. I'll be redoing part of this lesson again; probably Saturday.

I feel that I'm to the point where I'm no longer a 'new' student, so I get no sympathy when making mistakes, and I'm nowhere near as proficient as I need to be to not make mistakes. Hopefully, I'll churn through this uncomfortable period quickly and start feeling like I have control and awareness of everything going on inside and around the airplane.