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.