Flying Lesson 7: Instrument

Saturday July, 9, 2011. Today I had to where the hood! I have been looking forward to this for months! The hood is a device you put on your head that limits your vision so you can't see outside of the cockpit.

The hood makes flying a little more challenging I think just because you want to look outside of the cockpit really badly. But I like a challenge and I thought it was really fun. Tony had me do climbs and descents and climbing turns as well as descending turn. I can see how one could easily become disoriented in the clouds.I think I would be able to manage just fine though as long as I  had the controllers to guide me down. Once you get your scanning pattern down it's a piece of cake! This flight took place over the lower valley as well. 

Flying Lesson Six-Review

In this lesson we flew over the lower valley and practiced ground reference maneuvers and one engine failure. Let me start off by saying that the weather was fantastic. I haven't had the pleasure of flying in what pilot's call "glass" until now. It was amazing! My mom also got to come and look at the plane during the pre-flight. I think she stayed and watched me takeoff too. She looked proud and that made me happy! Everything went smoothly this time and I even made a few T&G's. By the way I am doing all the flying now and Tony is just giving me verbal instruction. He would take over if there was an emergency of course. Also I do most of the radio communications unless they give us a really complicated one. We flew south-west over the lower valley and then Tony pulled the power back to idol as soon as we got over the hills and told me to make an emergency landing. I immediately pulled up and got the plane trimmed off for 60 Knots which is the best glide speed for our aircraft. Then I began to select a suitable field for landing. The one I picked was light brown and had a sprinkler running parallel to the landing area so not too many obstacles there. Everything was going smoothly until I turned final too soon and came in too high. we could have brought it down in time but ideally I would have better planned my descent. It is tricky though, after all there are no glide slope indicators out there in the middle of no where. I did really well with my S-Turns across the road. I was exceptional with my turn around a point. Which was a tree in this case. Got a little close. All in all it was a fantastic flight for a Friday morning!

Flying Lesson Five: Engine Failures

May, 20, 2011, at this point I have gotten quite comfortable in the aircraft. I have been looking forward to simulated emergency landings for quite sometime. It turns out they are quite fun. I feel I could easily land the plane virtually anywhere in an emergency situation in average flying conditions. Tony pulls back the power to idle and I have to slow the plane to 60 knots, determine the wind direction, find a suitable field for landing and land there. Thats all there is to it, piece of cake! And its pretty exciting, I enjoy scaring the people in the lower valley!

Ground School Lesson Three

May 5, 2011, not the best weather so I thought I'd do a little ground instruction. In this one hour lesson we covered Pitot, Static Instruments, Gyroscopic Instruments: Operation and Errors. Also we went over all the V-speeds for the Cessna 152A.

Flying Lesson Four

I'll start off by saying flying an airplane is by far the best experience I have ever had. It's been about a week now since I've flown and I'm going crazy! This last lesson involved Turns around a point, flying at low altitude and S-Turns.

S-Turns across a road.

An S-Turn across the road is just to help you gain consistency in your turns, S-Turns would be really useful for surveying the land below which could come in handy in a variety of ways.

Turns around a point.

Turns around a point can be done between about 500 and 1000ft AGL. I really enjoy doing these because you can really see everything from the air and houses and roads and such look really interesting. Also friends will love flying in circles above there houses. The turns took extra effort due to the unstable air from the thunderstorms that were moving in. When we were about 500ft AGL some serious wind coming from the south caught the right wing during a left turn. I thought it was going to flip us over but I quickly righted the plane. I will admit I was a bit frightened though. After the practice we came in and did a few touch and goes then brought her back to Nolands. Tony is having me do most of the Radios at this point which is pretty cool. I get a bit nervous though sometimes. 

Flying Lesson Three

April-22-2011. A beautiful Friday morning with not a cloud in the sky. Today we practiced some stalls and slow flight. Everything went smoothly during the preflight but something unexpected happened right before starting the engine. I went to prime the engine and as soon as I pulled on the primer it completely cane off!!! Right out of it's little hole! I just looked at Tony in astonishment. No one said anything for about 10 seconds. Then being sarcastic I asked "is that normal"? We both laughed and he said he had never seen that before. We ;both got out of the plane and Tony looked at it and just pushed it back in and it simply screwed together. I guess over time it had just wiggled loose. After that we started up the plane and I got to radio the tower for the first time. I said "Yakima Ground, Cessna 761UA is at Nolands with romeo, ready to taxy for south departure". Yakima ground responded "Cessna 761UA taxi to and hold short runway 27 via taxiway Alpha Alpha 1. I did most of the radio communications throughout the flight today. We went south over the hills and did some power off stalls and slow flight. Stalls aren't at all scary because the airplane recovers so fast. I just don't like the feeling you get in your gut. Feels like your falling out of the sky (because you are). Then we made three T&G's that I felt pretty good about and called it a rap. Can't wait for the next lesson.

Ground School Lesson Two

Friday, April, 15, 2011, my second ground school lesson. This lesson was about two hours long. Last week I ordered my Jeppensen part 61 kit and it just got here last Wednesday so we went over what all the books are for and also some aircraft systems. Here are the pictures of everything in the kit. 

Student Bag

Test Guide

Practical Test Study Guide 

Private Pilot Text Book

Practical Test Standards

Private Pilot Maneuvers

Federal Aviation Regulations / Aeronautical Information Manual

Navigation Plotter

E6B Flight Computer Instructions

E6B Flight Computer

Sea Bands (for motion sickness)

The Sea Band on my wrist

A special Ginger Root gum to help with motion sickness

And that's is! Everything you need to become a successful pilot. Well that and a lot of money! Basically just the books to learn everything and the study guides to make sure you pass your tests. Also as you can see I have invested in some Sea Bands and Ginger gum to get rid of my motion sickness. It is against the FAR to take any kind of motion sickness pills so I have to use natural methods. I don't get really sick unless I am staring at the instruments or taking pictures but I would rather be safe then sorry. You never know what the air is like up there. Also in this first lesson of ground school Tony and I went out and looked at the plane and talked about the various components of it. Back in the office he explained Bernoulli's Principle (what makes the airplane fly) to me as well as how the engine works and we talked a lot about carb heat and why it's so necessary. Next Friday morning is going to be my third lesson in the air. If I remember right we will be doing some stalling procedures and recovering techniques. 

Flying Lesson Two

April, 8, 2011, the day of my second flying lesson. In this lesson we went over flow checks and slow flight, playing with some different flap configurations. The duration of this flight was 1.2 hours on the hobs. The lesson began with me preflighting. Everything was looking good until I sumped the left wing tank and found there was some water in the tank. I went back inside and asked Tony if that was a problem. He told me to continue to sump until the water was gone. The other tank was water free and so was the bottom. Then I purged a little fuel from under the hood and a significant amount of water came out. I let all the water out then continued the preflight.

Sumping the wing tank

Once the fuel was cleaned out I checked the levels. 14 Gallons total. With that done I finished the preflight and hopped in the plane. I think I'm getting a better handle on the taxiing and ground steering. Tony is still working the radios but I will get there. I hope I don't freeze up when it's my turn to talk to the tower. We took off via runway 9 and made a right turn at 700AGL through the gap to white swan. Once we where out there the training begun. In the takeoff I had to use a lot of left rudder due to the 14kn crosswinds. 

What a tough little airplane

We basically just practiced some landing procedures over and over for 30 min or so. The flow check consists on the following: fuel selector on, flaps up, mixture full rich, throttle set to 1700 Rpm, Mags on both, master switch on, and primer in and secured. Next I add 10 degrees of flaps at 85kn. Then 20 degrees at 60kn, and last full flaps (30 degrees) and adjust power as needed to prevent a stall. As you can see in the picture above the sun was shining brightly, but don't let that fool you there were quite a few bumps up there. After the lesson was over we headed for my house and did a few circles around it as well as my grandma's house and my high school. 

Thats me doing all the flying :)

My house is there in that bunch of trees.

A side view of my place.

My grandma's house just up the road.

East Valley track and high school.

After all the scenic flying we headed for the airport on a left downwind for runway 9. We flew straight in and did a touch and go. Then we flew two right approaches for a touch and go runway 9. After that we flew way out to west valley and back straight in runway 9 because we had to wait for a king air and another 152 to land and clear the runway. In the future there won't be as many pictures on the blog because I need to focus on learning and not taking pictures but the pictures are always nice. Now I need to get my books ordered and go in for a ground lesson next week!

Ground School Lesson One

Today is March, 30, 2011, my first ground school lesson. In this lesson we covered the Traffic Pattern, What I can do with my PPL and medical exams. I feel I now know the traffic pattern like the back of my hand! It's very exciting to feel the progress I'm making so quickly! Here are some great photos of how the traffic pattern works.

Flying Lesson One

Ah March, 25, 2011, the day of my first lesson. On the way to the airport I was as excited as I was for the intro flight. When I got there we didn't mess around due to the weather quickly deteriorating. Tony gave me the keys and said "go preflight". I was excited to have the responsibility of preflighting. My grandpa Roy watched as I looked over the plane and he had many questions. Most of them I couldn't answer yet!

Cessna 152 Cockpit.

And behold the Cessna 152 Cockpit. Not as complicated as is looks. The first thing we did was go over all the buttons and instruments and what they do. After that Tony radioed Yakima ground and we got clearance for runway 27. I taxied us down to the runway and held short awaiting a Piper J-3 Cub that was coming in for a landing. Believe me steering with your feet is much more difficult than is sounds. Plus the plane turns about 3 seconds after you push down the pedals. 

This time I took off and basically did everything Tony told me to. We flew over the lower valley and worked on turns, climbs, descents, climbing turns, descending turns, using the rudder, climbing, descending, holding altitude, and using the instruments. Sounds like a lot but I thought it just came naturally to me. Piece of cake Tony said! At the end of the lesson I made 3 touch and goes to practice landings. I thought they wend pretty well. Also I got a good idea of how the traffic pattern works. We flew two left pattern entries for runway 27 and one right pattern for runway 9. The plane wants to fly so badly that you have to force it to the ground. It's quite reassuring. On the final full stop landing we flew the right traffic pattern for runway 9 then turned left off the runway at A3 then taxied back to Noland Decoto. My first lesson was complete and I felt really good about it.

Intro Flight

The afternoon of March, 22, 2011 was a glorious one. It was the day of my first flight in a Cessna 152. Ever since I was a little boy I have had a burning desire to be a pilot. And today I will begin making that dream a reality. One day I met a man named Marc who had recently become a pilot. He told me to call my local airport and ask about an intro flight. I did so and the next thing I know I was in the air with Tony, my flight instructor. The weather was unfavorable with 14kn crosswinds coming from the north but Tony said we would go up anyway. Right away I picked up a headset and went out to the plane. Meet Cessna 761UA, a 1981 Cessna 152 Aerobat.

Gassing up the airplane.

The first thing we did was went over the preflight checklist. Next we got in the plane and did the before takeoff checklist then radioed Yakima Ground and asked to taxi for takeoff. We were instructed to taxi to runway 27 for takeoff. I got to start the plane and taxi to the runway with Tony's help of course. When we were holding short of runway 27 we did a run-up then asked for takeoff clearance. Once we turned onto the runway I gave it full throttle and we started racing down the runway. Because of the severe crosswind Tony took off and landed on this flight. I remember him using so much rudder on the takeoff that the plane was sideways and I was thinking wow it's lust like drifting a car. 

Look at those clouds!

We climbed to 700ft AGL then turned left to a heading of 180 degrees. As we headed over the hills to the lower valley we leveled off at 3,600ft MSL. Crossing the hills was a bit bumpy due to the weather conditions.

Once we were over the lower valley I got to climb, descent and make turns with rudder. It was great to get a feel for the airplane on my first flight. Tony asked if I wanted to make some touch and goes and I agreed. Unfortunately on our way back through the gap I started getting a little airsick. Next time I will invest in some Dramamine. So we cut it short and made a full stop landing. The world is so beautiful from the sky that I couldn't believe my eyes! I was hooked and asked when I could start lessons.

The beautiful lower valley.