Over the mountains and through the hills

Cross Country flight #2 for today. The plan was to leave Manassas on a NW heading and track to the Linden VOR. From there, track away from the VOR to the Shenandoah River, and follow that south to a notch in the ridge to get to airport 8W2, New Market, Va. A few odds n' ends about the route. It involved cross over the Shenandoah Mtns. It involved a small airport tucked in the middle of rolling terrain. And it involved a runway that is half as long and half as wide as I'm used to. To top it off, it was a fairly breezy day, with moderate turbulence in the air.

On the flight out, my instructor and I went over a few bad habits I've picked up. Namely, not using the correct technique in keeping the plane straight and level. We hit some pretty bumpy air as we crossed over the mountains at 5500 feet. I did an OK job of not letting it bother me and retaining control of the plane. Following the river was a piece of cake. The turn over the smaller ridge was very bumpy, but smoothed out almost immediately. And then things got interesting.

When passing over the airport, we couldn't see the wind sock. Winds were forcast for winds out of the SW, which means that using the runway that points SW would make sense. Try for a landing, everything was awful, so I powered up and went around for another try. Came in again, everything was better, but we were going really fast over the ground. Go around again. At this point, my instructor takes the plane, and tells me to take a deep breath. She noticed that the winds were giving us a tailwind. So, up we go, set up for the *other* end of the runway, and wouldn't you know it, a perfectly respectable landing. Go figure. One thing that bugged me about all of this were the many low hills around the airport.

After a short break, it was back in the air and heading home. My flying was, in general, better going home. Still bumpy, but the brisk tailwind gave us a ground speed of 140 kts. at one point. Landing into Manassas was fine, even if my cross wind work is still lacking.

When going over the flight with my instructor, she said this: Individually, the parts of my flying all range from fine to good. It's when the pieces start having to complete for brain time that things start to get sloppy. I mostly knew that, but it was good to hear it. Plenty of work still to do.

First solo away from the airport

Last weekend I was signed off to do solo flights out to our designated practice area. It's about 20 miles away from Manassas, with a pair of airports in the area. Since Wednesday looked like a docile weather day, I skipped out of work early and headed to the airport.

Long story short - several things slowed me down and caused frustration. Frustration leads to lack of focus. I was an hour late, and only had about 90 minutes of daylight. I did everything safely, but certainly moved at a less deliberate pace than usual.

I've flown out to this area probably 20 times, and this time it was like I had never flown before. Just never got comfortable in the plane of the surroundings. Instead of doing useful practice, I just cruised around a little and headed back in. At least the landing was solid.

Next flight should be to New Market. Then probably another solo to the practice area, and then maybe a solo to Charlottesville. And sometime soon, we'll do our first night flight.

Photos!

Here is my flickr set for all of my flying photos. Not much to write home about, but here ya go.

Flying Set

Cross Winds, Cross Country and Bad Attitudes

The last two weekends I have actually flown all four of my scheduled lessons. Major topics covered are radio navigation, crosswind takeoff and landings, unusual attitude recovery and planning and flying a cross country.

VORs are basically radio towers that broadcast on the 360 degrees of a compass. You dial in the VOR frequency, dial in the radial you want, and the instrument in the plane tells you where you are in conjunction to that VOR. Very handy way to create a sort of radio highway to follow. We did this both with and without the view-limiting goggles(i.e. with and without simulated instrument conditions). It's fun, but not as easy as I thought it would be.

The same day we did VOR tracking, my home airport was having some very solid crosswinds. The runway is lined up to 340 on the compass. Winds were from 270(70 degrees from the left) at 10 knots, gusting to 17. That's not much fun. The technique is to dip the plane into the wind, and use the rudder pedals to keep the plane going straight. We did three landings, none of them were very good. Two of them I'm surprised I didn't ding the plane up.

Unusual attitude recovery was pretty easy. We learn this in case you get disoriented, and the plane is no longer in straight and level flight when you think it should be. Usually the nose has crept up and you are nose high, and in a turn. Or nose down and in a turn. The idea is how to you recitfy that before it develops into something unpleasant. Especially if you've accidentally gotten into weather you shouldn't be in(read: clouds).

Last thing was a cross country flight with my instructor. We flew from Manassas to Charlottesville, Va. This was much more difficult than I imagined. Instead of just flying, this introduced a new level of work in the cockpit. Mark checkpoints, writing down flight times, adjusting headings according to wind corrections, presetting radios. It was a tiring 45 minutes down there. At least my landing wasn't too bad. We parked and took 15 minutes to talk over what went well, and what needed improvement. On the way back, instead of flying quite as direct a route, we followed Rt. 29 northeast back to Manassas. This made things much easier, as did the brisk tailwind. Our groundspeed was close to 140 knots, or over 140 mph. This leg took about 25 minutes. Landing back at Manassas was fine, nothing spectacular.

End of year wrap up

Several lessons since my last post. Here's how the year wrapped up:

- I was supposed to have my pre-solo stage check with the chief instructor on 12/22. The only problem was that the plane wouldn't start. By the time it fired up, it was time to go, so no test today.

- 12/24 lesson had some mild wind for a change, so we did pattern work with landings. Since I was recovering from a cold, we only did a handful of landings. All of them were solid, and it was good experience in the slightly gusty winds.

- 12/28, had the rescheduled stage check. I got to the airport at 8 AM. It was still pretty dark, cold and quiet. Thankfully the plane started right up. Unfortunately, my flying sucked. The chief was very forward about what I was not doing well. Most of it centered around not using enough right rudder on climbout, and not enough rudder entering and exiting turns. We did a few stalls, a steep turn, and four landings. I figured that was it. Nope - he signed me off for my first solo, and off I went. Three trips around the traffic pattern, and all with good if not great results. In all honesty, it was sort of a blur. Still, nice to get that milestone done.

- 12/31, still recovering from the cold, we started in on short and soft field takeoffs and landings. Only four trips around the pattern. Not a good day of flying. I was fine except for the last part of landing. Everything just felt like it was happening too fast, and I couldn't get ahead of the plane. My CFI offered to let me go do a pattern or two on my own, but I begged out. I didn't feel safe on my own.

So, that's it for 2006. 20.8 hours, 59 landings, .7 hours of Pilot in Command. Next up, getting ready for the cross country flights.