After last flight I had logged 6.5h in complex airplane. Due to my low overall time it’s still 3.5h short from the point when our insurance company will let me fly it solo. So to lower this number a bit I’ve decided that short cross country is in order. Terry also applauded this idea saying that I could use some cross country flight to get better sense of navigating, piloting and in the end landing at new to me airports. The biggest problem was how to convince Iza to go with us. Food is always a good bait so idea of one of those $100 burger trips has been conceived.
Initially the plan was to go to Dubuque (KDBQ) but as I was unable to confirm that the airport cafe is still in business we’ve decided to go to Prairie du Chien (KPDC) instead. Preflown and gassed up we took off at 12pm sharp and headed north west. I rehearsed my lines to Cedar Rapid’s controller several times before (communication is still my weak point) so the initial exchange of formalities went smoothly and we went on course.
We had a bit of a headwind so I wanted to stay low, but that quickly turned out to be a very bad idea. The spring has come recently, but the grass and crops did not turned green yet. Which meas a lot of exposure area and extreme thermals. Every few minutes someone on the frequency was requesting climb to higher altitudes, and so did we. Initially at 3500ft we quickly ended up at 5500ft just below the clouds.
It wasn’t smooth up there either, but at least it was bearable. Thanks to Arrow’s speed the flight was relatively short, and we were on the ground in Prairie du Chien. Unfortunately our favorite burger place was closed for lunch so the $100 burger turned into hibachi grill lunch. Tasty and funny to watch.
With full stomachs we headed back to the airport and took of on our way back home. This time we climbed to 6500ft without even checking what is going on down low. Nice thing was that with the amount of tailwind I was seing groundspeed in areas of 150kt. That brought us back to Green Castle in just a little over 30 minutes. Not bad.
Interesting thing happened on our way back though. Our track was going through Cedar Rapids’ class C and their controller requested that I fly exactly over the top of the airport at altitude no lower than 3000ft. I understand that was to keep me out of their approach and departure paths without having me to fly around in huge circle. Nice idea, and nice that they want to save use some time and money too.
After this flight my current complex logged time is 8.3h. I need just 1.7h more to be able to fly it on my own. Yuppie!
P.S. Iza was taking pictures during this flight. If you want to see some more click on the one above and head out to her blog.
1.8h : 2 to/ldg logged
84.3h : 380 to/ldg total
All started as yet another lesson for complex airplane. We took Arrow and went to practice area to play a bit with emergency gear extension. We extended the gear using the emergency mechanism couple of times, I played a bit with rocking the airplane as a simulation of gear not wanting to go all the way down on it’s own. and we went on to Iowa City to try some cross wind landings.
With the exception that when we got there it was almost directly aligned with the runway. It still messed me up a bit on base though. Every time when I have a tailwind on base I have problems with overshooting the runway. Still have to work on that to remember to actually widen pattern a little bit in those cases so I bet aligned better on final. Iowa City has right hand traffic on 12 which added to the problem a bit. I flew right hand traffic probably less than 20 times so far, having runway from that side makes it still tricky.
After three touch and goes we went to Washington. This leg was a little longer that the one to Iowa City so I had a chance to play with Arrow’s autopilot. It was my first time ever to fly an auto piloted airplane and I have to say that even such simply 1 axis autopilot takes quite a lot from pilot’s load. You just dial in heading, trim the airplane for level flight and you are pretty much set. That is as long as you won’t forget to turn it off just before entering patter so both of you don’t fight for the control 
.
After Washington there was Muscatine and Tipton. Nothing really worth mentioning other than Tipton’s runway has shown me again why you should study airport layout carefully before you try to land. Runway 11 is sloped downhill and it has thrown me a curve, it kept running away from me and as a result I did quite ugly landing.
Then we went back to Green Castle and here Terry caught me by surprise. When I was on downwind he dimmed dashboard light off which as a result turned off landing gear lights. There wouldn’t be anything wrong with it, other than I did my whole GUMPS check, I even touched the gear handle, and I failed to notice that the lights are off. It should have rang a bell in my head. Now after I got back home I remember than I saw lights when I extended gear the first time. And I assume that once they are down they stay down, yet it was my obvious mistake. Well, they say that you never really learn to avoid mistakes until you make them. Now I have done this and hopefully I won’t do it again.
As a remark, with the exception of Tipton’s landing all remaining 6 ones were very nice and I’m quite happy with my performance here, especially considering the fact that each of those runways had different width ranging from 20 through 50 and 60 to 75 feet.
After we put the airplane on the ground and finished all paperwork Terry signed my logbook on one of the last pages
As of today I have my complex rating (which I can do nothing with yet as insurance requires 10h dual before I can fly Arrow solo) and my flight review clock started ticking from the beginning – I’m good for another 2 years!
2.1h : 7 to/ldg logged
80.3h : 364 to/ldg total
It was second time when I took our Arrow and continued my training towards complex rating. Today we went to Iowa City as their runway is a little easier to operate from and allows to concentrate on operating the airplane instead on landing technique. Unfortunately Iowa City is also much busier airport. When we approached patter there were three different airplanes flying and taxiing around. That made things that more interesting. It also provided a lot of distraction clearly showing to me how easy it is to get behind the airplane. During the six approaches I did I made only one mistake (did not advance propeller) but there were several other things that weren’t executed as I would like them (speed, pattern track, etc.) plus there were multiple situations where I had to sacrifice communication to be able to make all the needed checks and land safely.
In the end I (and what’s probably more important Terry too) was pleased about how things progress. GUMPS checks are easy to perform in Arrow if you are not forcing yourself to follow the acronym. In Arrow the check goes as follow: fuel pump, mixture, propeller, manifold pressure, gear, fuel tank. Sounds complicated, but in fact it’s trivial because this combination follow cockpit layout – starting from the right side of cockpit and moving to the left allows you to quickly go through all elements both verbally and by touch.
Some notes about Arrow itself. Flying it for two hour let me get to know it a little bit better and now I was able to pick up on some of it’s flying qualities and characteristics. Having flown Cherokee for more than 56h made the transition relatively easy. Yet despite the fact that Arrow is truly a Cherokee with retractable gear and constant speed propeller there are some differences. First and most important is speed. Arrow is heavier so it needs higher speeds to take of and land. In most cases it’s 5mph higher than in Cherokee. Not much but you have to remember about this. Second distinction is the gear itself. And I’m not talking about the fact that it retracts. This is obvious. What’s not so obvious is that due to the gear construction Arrow is much more fragile and you have to really make sure it’s lined up with runway’s center line. Also as the main gears retract somehow unevenly the airframe is exposed to very uneven drag during the retraction process. All that makes it handful to fly for rookie like me.
But it files 20kt faster than our Cherokee on the same fuel and that’s what counts!
1.1h : 7 to/ldg logged
75.4h : 347 to/ldg total
One of the requirements to get IFR ticket is to show at least 50h of cross country flights preferably to the airport at least 50nm from your home airport. As of now I’ve got only about 12h fitting into this requirement so I’ve created a map of airports just outside 50nm radius from my home base to which I’m going to fly from time to time no matter if I have any other reason Airports marked green are those that I’ve already visited. For obvious reasons I’ll try to fly to airports I have not seen yet first.
IFR flights map
This morning in my inbox there was an email saying:
All of the required information, including fingerprints, associated with the following Request for Training has been received. Based on information available at this time, the Transportation Security Administration grants Permission to Initiate Training for the following flight training request:
Provider: Green Castle Aero Club Ltd.
Training Request Course Name: Instrument
Training Request Aircraft Type: C172 PA28
Training Request Category: 3
Hopefully Iza’s permission will also arrive soon and both of us will be able to get on with our new tickets
