Today the weather was so beautiful I couldn’t stop myself from going to the airport. Calm wind, almost unlimited visibility with clear sky and temperature around 60 degrees just asked to fly. So I set everything straight at work and headed towards the airport.
The plan for today was to train soft and short field landings. I will spare you details but I did few of them and made myself sure I still can’t do them properly. But I’m getting there. Read the rest of this entry »
First lesson outside the pattern since… as long as I can remember. I preflew the plane, set up camera (yes, first usable video from Piper) and departed. If you remember from last lesson I had a small problem with landing gear being fully extended. This week for a change the bird went for some other maintenance and having it in the shop they fixed the gear so it was back where it should be. I figured out one or two landings to get familiar with it would be in order. And… disaster, two first completely botched, ended with go arounds. Third one acceptable, I flared a little bit to high and touched just a little bit too hard, but as they say - ‘every landing after which you can reuse the plane was a good one!’. Read the rest of this entry »
Today’s lesson was like no other before, ever. I’ve never done so many “crazy” stuff in one hour ever before. Well maybe if you don’t count Sugar Bottom Scramble I raced last Sunday.
It started with nice and not so smooth two rounds in the pattern. Not so smooth because for some reason main gear in the Cherokee was almost fully extended and looked as it wasn’t working. it took me two rounds to get used to flare 6 inches higher. It came quite easy, surprisingly easy.
From then it was just uphill. Read the rest of this entry »
It turned out somehow oil was able to get into heat exchanger, where it evaporated and entered the cabin through windscreen vents as a white smoke. Apparently wasn’t as dangerous as smoking electrical cables, nevertheless it could cause some poisoning if I didn’t noticed it and flew much longer.
I’m happy they found it and will have the fix ready before the end of this week.
To be honest it starts to be a little bit boring. I came out today planing to do some touch and goes before Terry comes back from his flight. The plan was to try some soft and short field operations.
I did the preflight, taxied out, started, climbed out to 1500ft, flew downwind, turned base, saw white smoke coming out from windscreen vents, turned final, landed, taxied back, shut her down and went to the office to request maintenance.
Looks like our Cherokee has some deeper burried electrical problems. I hope this time mechanic will be able to localize and fix the problem. Otherwise I may be forced to switch planes again. Too bad, I already started to like her.
0.2h/0.0h inst : 1 to/ldg logged
26.5h/0.8h inst : 145 to/ldg total
Excited about in flight charging failure I totally forgot about the most important thing that happened today. It was my first real solo. My CFI wasn’t even there at the airport. I did the preflight, all checks, procedures, everything by myself without Terry’s careful eye watching at me. Quite strange feeling, and I’m very pleased considering all that happened today.
And the airplane is still usable! Well, when they recharge the battery and find the cause why this circuit breaker popped up it will be.
Looks like I becoming closer and closer to be a pilot.
Looks like today’s flight wasn’t meant to have nice ending from the beginning.
First, the weather. Four miles visibility with clear sky and beautiful haze. Then the wind - 10 knots gusting to 20. I was quite close to cancel it right there, but decided, that it was a perfect opportunity to get familiar with it. Especially nice one as the wind was blowing directly down the runway, so the only hard part was supposed to be base itself and flare just before touchdown.
Then the fuel. It turned out our club run out of 100LL fuel and basically less half filled tanks were all I was left with. Quick consultation with POH and the Boss and we decided that there is still plenty of fuel for at least 2 to 2.5 hours of flight in the pattern.
Read the rest of this entry »
Today I’ve read newest number of the Over The Airways bulletin and I was shocked. Statistics say that every six out of ten student pilots quit their training before checkride.
Unbelievable.
She was so nice to me during last three lessons that I figured out something nice has to happen. So today I went to the airport and washed her.
A little bit of polishing on leading edges, thin layer of wax and she’s beauty again. I hope she will still be so nice to me on my real solo next time.
- You know why there is this fan in front of small airplanes?
- To cool down the pilot - look how he’s sweating when the fan stops!
Today I did my third solo. Nothing really exciting happened except that on my third round Terry said:
- ‘OK now when we’ll be about half the length of the runway I want you to do a simulated emergency landing, the whole nine yards’
- ‘Uh?’ I said more surprised then scared
- ‘You know, you do the “big knob pull”, establish best glide speed, start the pattern with all the call outs, proceed with emergency checks - fuel tank, pump, mixture, carburator heat and magnetos and land’.
- ‘Uh….’
Read the rest of this entry »