0.5h/0.0h inst : 1 to/ldg logged
67.7h/3.1h inst : 327 to/ldg total

GPS track

1.0h/0.0h inst : 7 to/ldg logged
62.6h/3.1h inst : 315 to/ldg total

After making two of those I went a little bit up and started the slow flight part of my program. Today was the very, very first time I did stalls solo. I was quite afraid because as probably most of students stalls used to scare me. Terry tried to comfort me saying ‘remember if you feel something is going wrong simply point the nose down and pick up some speed. Keeping that advice in mind I started to slow down. First I tried to fly around at 70mph (which is just above low end of green arc), some turns, some climbs and descents. Having time I played with plane reactions. This was the first time I had chance to practice how the Cherokee is behaving on the back side of power curve. It turned out that to keep 70mph in level flight with full flaps I pretty much have to power it up to 2100rpm. Quite sobering discovery, as it clearly shows that if I ever find myself in that situation on the approach only full power can save my butt and better it was there then. Stalls themselves were quite uneventful. Just a note that during power on approach to the stall I had to limit power to 2000rpm, otherwise I was running out of elevator authority before the actual stall happened and the plane was simply mushing air going slowly down. Power off stalls weren’t that docile. The nose was dropping down instantly and it took some time to pick up the speed before I could pull the nose up and clean the plane. Yet after third or fourth try I was able to do this loosing probably just a bit more than 100 feet. Nice.

I finished the training doing simulated engine out. After I established speed, picked up a place and performed the checklist I waited a bit and leveled off at 2000. Then another set of steep turns (much nicer than first one) and went back to Green Castle.

Now I feel a little more confident that I can handle Mike on Thursday. Tomorrow I have scheduled last dual with Terry to polish my skills again before the checkride. The big day is approaching fast.

GPS path

1.1h/0.0h inst : 1 to/ldg logged
61.6h/3.1h inst : 308 to/ldg total

But first things first. The lesson started with quite nice gusting winds so we went to KCID to practice short and soft field landings and takeoffs. I have to say that gusting crosswind can really spoil your day, but I managed.

After 4 landings we taxied to the tower to practice class C communication procedures. After that we headed south to Washington so I could finish off my simulated instrument time and get some fuel. Surprisingly flying cross country IFR is much easier that VFR having so dense network of VORs. Then it was back to Green Castle (again under the hood) where I could practice gusty wind landings again. I was really surprised what a difference a month makes. It’s been less than a month since we had similar gusting weather here and my landings now and then are like night and day.

After the flight we discussed with Terry what is there to do before I’m ready for checkride. He says I’m ready but I’m still going to use remaining two days to some more practice to feel ready myself.

GPS path

1.8h/0.6h inst : 6 to/ldg logged
60.5h/3.1h inst : 307 to/ldg total

The other thing that still didn’t let me go is spatial disorientation. After we flew under the hood for about 25 minutes Terry took the control, asked me to close my eyes and tried to confuse me. First to tries were rather mild and I had no problem with selecting and performing proper control inputs to stabilize the plane. Nothing really worth mentioning other than I for the very first time saw the plane flying well in the yellow arc. But then Terry tried for the third time and that hit me really hard. He was much more aggressive on the controls and I my inner ear was really confused. What hit me hard is how much time I needed to recover. I opened my eyes and was looking at the instruments. And I was seeing the needles. And yet it took good 5 seconds before my brain woke up and started to actually work. I really didn’t expect this. I was expecting that I’ll have a hard time believing what instruments are telling me. None of that happened. I was so confused that I didn’t even try to figure out what my but feels, I just looked at the needles. And yet it took so much time before I was able to react, lower the nose, add power and level the wings. Actually for the rest of the flight and quite some time after it I felt a little bit dizzy. It was the very first time when I drove maybe 35mph home despite the 55mph limit. I just didn’t feel like I can drive faster. Every thing was still shaken badly.

Time to look for some aerobatics workout to condition my body

GPS path

1.3h/0.5h inst : 1 to/ldg logged
58.7h/2.5h inst : 301 to/ldg total

So we did. First curved ball – right traffic pattern for 12 there. But that’s good as I have similar chances to get right and left traffic pattern in Cedar Rapids for no apparent reason. First landing in KIOW was regular one just to make me lined up property with the runway. The second one was supposed to be nice soft field landing and it was. I have to say that it was the best soft field landing I’ve ever made. Obviously training pays. Then we backtaxied and I tried to make a soft field take off. And again it was one of the best I’ve ever made. Nice brand new runway definitely help.

Terry decided that there is no need for practicing the soft field operations anymore and we went to the short field ones. Here it didn’t went as well. Trying to make as steep approach as I could I made all three tries too close to the numbers so I was way to high. One of them was so high that I had to go around. The remaining to were just barely acceptable. Even though I was able to full stop the plane in less than 1600 feet from selected touch down point it’s not what PTS calls for and I have to train this more. Short field takeoffs went easy. I trained them a lot so those are checked off too.

To finish the lesson we tried some emergency landing procedures. And here came the biggest surprise of them all. I was able to do them so close and fast that I actually run out of runway both times and had to go around. That would be a real bummer if the engine really quit, I have made the airport just to crash on the overrun.

Bottom line – almost all of the landings have shown that I have procedures memorized and down to the point except spacing myself from the runway. I was consistently cutting down the corners so to speak placing myself way to close to the runway. I have to remember that the Cherokee can go down only so fast and there is no point in trying to make it. It simply won’t.

GPS path

1.1h/0.0h inst : 7 to/ldg logged
57.4h/2.0h inst : 300 to/ldg total

The decision was easy. I don’t mind flying cross country, and in Washington they have cheapest fuel around by far. So without much hesitation I grabbed bag, sectional and went there to fill it up.

Getting south and back ate about 40 minutes from my lesson so there wasn’t much left but I still was able to use it to train things I feel I’m not as good at to go comfortably for a checkride. Soft field landing being my weakest spot I tried them. I flattened approach, slowed down and I was trying to drag the plane by the prop keeping the RPMs around 1500 on final. And it actually worked. I was able to make much, much softer touch downs than I even thought were possible. I’m still not fully satisfied with them, but they are OK with the PTS. I will train them some more during next lessons though.

During the very last approach I decided to try something else. The slip. So far I’ve seen it only once presented to me by Terry and it felt like some kind of extreme maneuver. I was determined to try it at least once or twice before the checkride, yet I felt a little uncomfortable doing it on my own. I’ve spent some time discussing with Terry all aspects of slipping the airplane especially on the final approach. I made deep mental note that the very most important thing is to never let airspeed drop below 80mph during sleep. So back to my last approach. I decided that I’ll make it a little higher than usual and carefully try slipping the plane on final. I tightened the pattern so the base was on half mile mark from the numbers and I turned final still good 700 feet above the asphalt. Full flaps (like me it’s Cherokee), idle and slowly pushed the rudder and compensated with left aileron. Focused on the speed I noticed VSI dropping down in 1500ft/min area. I straightened the plane just before numbers and initiated the flare. Even though I wasn’t concentrating on that this time it still was quite smooth and soft touch down. Nice. Very nice I’d say. I really like the ‘crowbar approach’ .

I hope to get some dual tomorrow to finish off my simulated instrument requirements – the only one that is still hanging over my head. I keep fingers crossed for nice weather.

GPS track

1.0h/0.0h inst : 4 to/ldg logged
56.3h/2.0h inst : 293 to/ldg total

The flight. Hard to say anything actually. This part of Iowa is so populated that there is hardly ever time when there is no big time in your sight. I had completely no problem finding destination airports without actually using any navigation aid, not even a VOR. That’s probably why the track ain’t so straight as one might want to, but I’m quite pleased anyway.

I also use all three stops at route points to train soft field landing and takeoffs. I got much, much better with takeoffs. I can feel the moment when wheels leave the ground and I have much less problem keeping the plane within ground effect before it reaches Vy. Landings still aren’t as good as they could but I also made a lot of improvement here, I even got two nice touchdowns just a second after stall light came on. I’m getting there. One or two more lessons on it and I’ll be confident with them.

Here is a short video showing couple of landings and takeoffs:

Ant the track:

GPS track

2.1h/0.0h inst : 4 to/ldg logged
55.3h/2.0h inst : 289 to/ldg total

• Short field takeoff – this is the one I’m most confident I can do properly. I have no problem keeping the airspeed within few miles from POH values. And although the attitude is way to steep for my comfort level the stall light never comes on again and the HSI shows up to 800ft/min climb. Which is nice.
• Soft field takeoff – no really problem here. I still have some troubles with gently lifting main wheels off the ground, looks like the plane wants to jump off the runway and then it quickly climbs to about 15-20 feet. I’ll work on that more but I don’t feel like there is much left to be done
• Short field landing – actually at our airport all of them are short. I’m always trying to do as short approach and landing as I can. I still have the problem with nice, positive flare execution without causing plane to float. Even if the speed is dead on 80mph over the numbers and I see it dissipating during the flare the plane tends to eat up several hundreds of feet before she settles down. Down slope runway doesn’t help here either
• Finally soft field landing – those will need a lot more work from me to satisfy myself. I still have problems executing slower than usual approach with a tad of power at the end. Even though I was able to put some really nice greasers yesterday and I finally am quite pleased of the outcome. I definitely will focus my training on those. How about making all landings ’soft field ones’ till the end of training? That should help.

All in all it wasn’t bad at all. I’ve definitely noticed and improvement compared to the last time I trained those. And that’s most important.

GPS track

0.9h/0.0h inst : 7 to/ldg logged
53.2h/2.0h inst : 285 to/ldg total

Then, there was the route problem. Terry (as probably most of the instructors) has some ‘preferred’ routes that almost every student of his is flying routinely. It doesn’t do any bad to the students yet it gives him the ability to judge your preflight preparation with just a single glance at your navigation log. Unfortunately as I fly Cherokee 180, which is quite a bit faster than the old might C150, traditional long cross country flight in my case would take less than two hours total. So again Terry agreed to my suggestion about picking slightly longer route (well… almost twice as long).

The route I planned had five legs. Two of them were way longer than required 50nm for the longest one, two were almost 50nm and one small jump of just 23.8nm, all together added up to nice 241nm cross country flight. I woke up at 6am and sit down almost 2h preparing all the logs, writing down checkpoints, wind corrections, times, fuel burns and so on. Due to slowly lifting morning fog my departure was delayed about and hour, before we saw that all airports along my route report at least 6 miles visibility. I had plenty of time to do slow preflight check, fill up the tanks and put everything together. I won’t lie to you – I felt a little nervous. It’s going to be my first unsupervised long flight. That’s why I’m doing this whole thing – to fly places.

I finally took off at 1046, turned west and headed for Pella. First leg was the easiest one. Plenty of very distinct points on my route to navigate by almost without need to look at the map. One thing worth mentioning was that when I got closer to the town I figured out that my planned course will take me directly over downtown. So I modified the flight path a little bit and flew over the highway which as a result put me nicely on downwind for selected runway. Close pattern finished with nice landing and first leg was done.

Second leg from Pella to Bloomfield wasn’t so easy, yet it still was relatively simple. I had prepared 3 checkpoints, two of them very easy to spot and the third one so close to the destination airport that I didn’t really have to look for it – I had the airport in sight already.

Bloomfield to Keokuk leg presented much more challenge. Low cloud deck (funny thing – it wasn’t reported on any of the stations) kept me flying at 2700-2800ft. Nowhere near any problems other than from that low altitude it’s a little harder to find distinct features to navigate by. First half of the leg was trivial as it was going by the road. Then at one point I really wasn’t sure how far I am. At last I saw a water which I thought was a small creek I was supposed fly over. In just a minute it turned out to be Des Moines river. You know, one could mix small creek with Des Moines river. One couldn’t mix Mississippi with anything else. So as you can see on the track – some small course corrections and I was there.

Next one was simply jump from Keokuk to Burlington. Nothing interesting to say about this. Basicaly when you climb out from one, you see another. The only challenge was that there is right traffic on 12 and 18 runways in Burlington to prevent flying over the city. Check it out on the track – I managed to stay away from it pretty nicely I’d say.

Last, and the longest leg from Burlington back home presented yet another set of challenges. The area is so populated that it’s hard to distinguish one town or settlement form the other. Thankfully highway 218 makes all that much easier. The turning left and right you can see at the end of the track is not me being lost, rather me trying to come to the airport from south-ish ‘practice area’ direction.

But the most interesting thing happened at the very end of the flight. When I entered the pattern for 15 I saw that there is Cessna on the departure point standing like it was preparing for take off. Initially it didn’t bother me much as I thought it has plenty of time to take off before me but when it was still sitting there during my turn to final I had no choice as to go around. And around. And again. All that time I was thinking how to manage the situation. I knew I could land over it and touch down around 1/3rd of the runway. but what if he didn’t see me and started his roll just in front of me, or even worse – while I was directly above him? At the very same moment I decided to make it my last circle and go to Iowa City or Cedar Rapids I saw a golf cart driving down the runway. So apparently something was wrong with the Cessna and it wasn’t going to take off. I went south in the direction of practice area and after slooow 360 I saw that they are towing the Cessna back to the hangars. One more 360 and the runway was clear. It turned out that apparently the engine died and because the battery was weak and it has generator not alternator they were unable to restart the engine on the runway. Oh well it just added few minutes to my cross country flight.

After checking out clock on the ground it turned out that my very long route with unforeseen extension at the end took just below 3.5h (3.4 to be exact). So I still need to fly one more solo cross country to fulfill requirements. This one will be much shorter though so there is a chance I’ll do it over the weekend. If not, I’ll try to wrap it up next Saturday.

There is even a chance I might be able to schedule my checkride in September!.

Flight path

3.4h/0.0h inst : 5 to/ldg logged
52.3h/2.0h inst : 278 to/ldg total