Lesson #3

Today was a much smoother flight. Very little wind, unlimited visibility, and almost no clouds. I spent the week reviewing the ground school material, and figuring out things to work on during this flight. My number one concern was using the rudders to keep the plane steady. Number two was holding altitude. Both were much improved. I still find myself using the instruments too much for level flight. The horizon line is still hazy, so I am finding it difficult to establish a "sight picture" which tells me "Yup, we're straight and level". One area where I'm still woefully behind is in using trim. Trim is basically small flaps on the tail of the airplane which help you relieve pressure on the stick. If you have to keep yanking back on the stick, putting in some nose-up trim will help alleviate that. In short, the airplane should always be properly trimmed for the airspeed and nose up/nose down attitude it is in. I'm so busy trying to do everything else, I sort of forget.

New stuff for this lesson: Simulated instrument flying, slow flight, and the traffic pattern. For the simulated instrument flying, my instructor gave me a set of plastic goggles that limit your line of sight to the major instruments. He'd then say "OK, hold the plane straight and level" or "Turn to heading 065". The idea is that if you ever get accidentally caught in the clouds, you can use your instruments to get your ass the hell outta there. It was harder than I anticipated. Slow slight is just that - handling and maneuvering the plane at slow speeds. Which you do every time you land. I still felt like we were still only dipping our toes in the water on this one.

Finally, the traffic pattern. This is just a fancy way of describing an imaginary rectangle over an airport. Everyone flies this course for landings and takeoffs. I will end up flying the pattern about 1000 times before this is all said and done. While heading towards Culpepper airport, we talked a little bit about radio communications. I've read alot about this, and when given the opportunity to do the radio work, I gladly jumped in. He said I sounded like a pro. So, we flew the pattern, and landed uneventfully. I elected to try another go around the pattern. I thought hey, this isn't so bad. Right until we ended up flying towards the runway way to high and way too fast. I pointed this out, said we should abort the landing, and we did just that. From there we flew uneventfully back to Manasass. The flying back was nice. I held the plane straight and level, and generally on altitude. And for once, I wasn't totally exhausted when we landed.