Flying keeps me grounded

Another week, another lesson learned. This week, I was supposed to learn how to enter, recognize, and get out of 'slow flight'. However, we ended up doing two lessons in one this week. The other lessons was stalls.

I'll start out with trying to explain some characteristics of slow flight. Slow flight generally exists right after an airplane takes off, and right before it lands. It's defined as the airspeed below the endurance speed, but above the stall speed. Some of the characteristics of slow flight include slow airspeed, high RPMs (engine output rate), and sluggish performance of the flight controls. For those of you who are interested in the details, you can read more about slow flight here.

I found that flying an airplane in slow flight feels like a whole new way of flying. As stated above, the flight controls act sluggish and different. It's useful to practice slow flight in case a pilot finds themselves in a situation where they mistakenly enter slow flight, they'll then know how to safely exit out of it.

I haven't made a joke so far.

We practiced slow flight for a bit, and then it was time to do stalls. STALLS. That's a word that people hear and don't normally associate with airplanes. Unlike earth vehicles such as cars, stalling an airplane doesn't have much to do with the engine itself. The definition of a stall according to Wikipedia:
"a stall is a reduction in the lift coefficient generated by an airfoile as angle of attack increases. This occurs when the critical angle of attack of the airfoil is exceeded."

Sounds exciting right?
For people such as myself, who'd rather stick a fork in their eye rather than try to understand what the definition above means, a stall can mean that the wings of an airplane can not generate enough lift (for various reasons) in order to keep the airplane at the same altitude.

I made a joke.

And so the airplane stalls, and the nose of the airplane goes from a nose up attitude to a nose down attitude very quickly. Depending on how severe the stall is, the airplane I fly can generally lose 100 to 300 feet of altitude in a mater of two seconds or so. If the stall is aggravated by wrong handling of the airplane controls by the pilot, the airplane can enter a spin, and things can potentially get worse from there on. As well, if a stall occurs close to the ground, for instance during takeoff or landing, the results can be, well, devastating, for lack of a better word. This is why we practice stalls, so if they happen accidentally, I will know the correct procedures to perform in order to get out of those sticky situations. Would you like to read more about stalls? Here you go.

Sounds terrifying? I thought I'd be terrified. But a funny thing happened to me this lesson. There was some sort of change in me. I feel I have conquered some of my fears. I've come to love the essence of flying an airplane. It was a very windy and cloudy day this time around. The conditions were less than friendly, especially for doing exercises that push the boundaries of the airplane, and yet I felt strangely at ease. I rolled with the punches, or the turbulence in this case. There I was, in an airplane with an engine that has 100 horsepower, constantly trying to dodge grey clouds and rain, battling the winds at 4000 feet up, I realized that flying keeps me grounded.

In the next lesson, we're going to practice more advanced stalls, as well as a spin or two. I didn't think I'd look forward to this time in my flying endeavors , but to be honest, I can't wait for the next lesson.

Flying for Range & Endurance

Photo taken from www.last.fm forums

New Post! I'm fresh out of the airplane. Just had a lesson this morning. Today's lesson involved flying for range, and flying for endurance. I won't bore you with the details, but basically what those two terms mean is flying for the greatest amount of distance, and flying for the greatest amount of time respectively. Put simply, one achieves this by slowing down the airplane to a pre-determined speed, or a certain power setting (RPM) on the Tachometer (engine gauge). These pre-determined speeds and power settings are written in the performance charts of the airplane manual. There are a few calculations to be made in order to reach these pre-determined numbers, but it's not rocket-science. It's airplane math. And if I can do it, anyone can.

I realize this doesn't sound like much fun. The thing to note is that when you're using lower air speeds and low power settings, your aircraft is at a higher risk of stalling, so one must be more aware of the airspeed and other indicators in order to stay a safe distance from a stall.

It's been two weeks again since I had the last lesson. While I did feel comfortable this lesson, I felt a little bit less sharp - things felt a tiny bit more overwhelming, than if I had flown the week before. At least this is how I feel, however my instructor told me that I completed everything well and that I'm being hard on myself. I told him that being hard on myself is what I do best.

I do also feel that a weak point of mine right now is radio communications. A couple of times I found myself pausing mid-sentence, not knowing what to say next and looking to Eric (my instructor) for help. This bothers me. I feel like I should be more fluent in my communications by now, so I'll try to practice that a bit more for next lesson.

Near the end of the lesson, Eric decided to have some fun and show me what stalling the airplane feels like. Right. I told him that I hope he doesn't take offense if I swear at him during the stalls. He laughed. My actual stalls lesson is coming up in two lessons, so I thought I might as well experience this now. Well, I experienced it. Great. Nothing like falling 300 feet in about two seconds.

To be honest, it wasn't as bad as I made it out to be in my wimpy mind. It's something I feel I'll be able to master without fear when I get to practice it. To me, steep turns seemed a bit more extreme. I'll get into stalls a bit more after I have that lesson, I just wanted to give you a preview of what's to come.

As an aside, I got to land again. I came in a tad too high, but the landing itself felt like the smoothest yet. Landing is quickly becoming another part of the flying experience for me, which is good because landing is important for getting back on the ground. The approach and landing experience goes by so quickly, probably because you're so focused, and so many things are happening very fast. I hope that with more experience, things begin to slow down in my head. But right now it's a very fun, and a bit stressful part of flying.

Ok, by the way, if all two of you followers have any questions, comments, ideas for topics for me to write about, or you would to tell me what you had for dinner last night, please do so. Feedback is fantastic.

Preps , Reps, and Props and Repeat

I don't have anything new to report to you today. I was supposed to have a lesson on Sunday, but it was canceled. My next scheduled lesson is this Wednesday, but at this point, I'm not banking on anything. As I stated before, taking two people's limited schedule availability, and taking into account the weather limitations, cars breaking down, people getting sick, etc., and you begin to realize how many lesson cancellations can occur, and that's what's been happening to me. Frustrating? Yes.

Instead I thought I'd tell you the things I do in order to prepare for the next lesson:

1. Read
I like to read newspapers, internets, and romantic novels. But for every lesson, there's also a chapter out of the "Canadian Flight Training Manual" book. This book is fantastic. It basically tells you about each lesson, what exercises it will consist of, what you should expect, how to handle the airplane, etc. It's actually an easy and interesting technical read, and I look forward to reading it after every lesson. In fact, I've pretty much read the whole book once over, but I go back to it before each lesson for the particular chapter.

2. Flight Simulator
It is, after all, how it all started for me. It's a big part of how I became fascinated with flight. These days, I use it as practice. I have a computer that runs X-plane, which is a cheap but very realistic flight simulator. I practice things that I have done the prior lessons, I brush up on things that that I haven't done in a while, and I practice the exorcises that I feel I'm weaker at, such as steep turns. Apart from feeling those G forces and feeling like you're going to die, you can really get accustomed to the angle at which the horizon sits on the windshield. I think X-plane is proving to be a big help, as well as a big money saver for me. It keeps me sharp so I won't have to spend as much time on things I already did in the air in the real airplane.

3. Live ATC
I've started listening to the air traffic control for Buttonville Airport, which is where I fly from. You can listen to it here if you want (in fact you can listen to every airport's available traffic control frequencies here), but I don't imagine that would interest many people so much. For me, it's good practice to get used to the "radio language", as well as the procedures for Buttonville airport. When I cross-reference what I hear on ATC with my airport diagrams and maps, it all starts to come together and really make sense. For a small airport such as Buttonville, there are only so many taxiways, routes, navigational landmarks and procedures that the traffic is based on, so in that way it starts to become repetitive, and more importantly, more familiar to me.

4. Take pictures
No, not while in the airplane, not yet. While sitting at home anxiously waiting for my next lesson, in order to psyche myself up, I sometimes take pictures of... well, just look for yourself:

Im going to get a lot of slack for this one.

All joking aside, I find that when I feel over-prepared for my lesson, that's when I feel most comfortable in the airplane. If I don't do enough of the things I stated above, then it feels like a million things a second are being thrown at you, and it's hard to comprehend them all. However, when I do enough studying and preparation, the lessons are like butter.

Flying, and everything that encompasses it, seems to be a lifelong, never ending journey. There's always more to learn, more to study, more to explore. I feel like the more passionate I am about it, the more I will accomplish these things. Sometimes I feel like I don't do enough, but so far I've managed to work on my weak points and be focused about this endeavor. I'm thankful that my passion for flying is holding up.

Steep turns & the feelings in your stomach

So, it's time for another flying lesson. It was a 5:45am wake-up call for me. That's about as early as I've had to wake up in about 27 years of living. Though I hear that commercial pilots enjoy waking up early, so I'll have to get to that point... when pigs fly, I mean, when I fly. There is something nice about waking up that early, but I'm not sure what it is.

Today's lesson was turns. There are three types of turns - gentle turns, medium turns, and steep turns. It is the first lesson in which the exercises include a more extreme type of flying, where you're pushing the envelope of the airplanes limits, which is not done in normal flying procedures. Steep turn maneuvers are usually done in emergency situations, for instance, when two airplanes are on a collision course and pilot has to change directions immediately. Here's the thing - I didn't realize that I was going to be doing this type of flying in this lesson. I should have figured it out during reading the "Turns" chapter, but I didn't. The thing with doing the types of maneuvers that evoke load factors (G-factors) such as steep turns, is that they have effects on your body that you're not familiar with. These effects are quite hard to explain. I'm not a big fan of roller-coasters, but I have a feeling that you probably get some of the same effects falling from a peak on a roller-coaster as you do doing steep turns. It's that feeling you get when you get pushed back into your seat, as you become light-headed.

Picture taken from http://www.imfi.net
A steep turn is defined as a 45 degree angle turn. I know it may not sound like much, but in the airplane, the window on the inside of the turn is completely filled by the earth, while the window on the other side is completely filled by the sky. Across the windshield is a sight that can only be described as an uncomfortable angle of the horizon, where the earth meets the sky.

If you haven't gotten the clue up until this point, I'll admit to you that it was the first time I was a bit frightened being up there in the airplane. I felt a little uncomfortable. I wasn't soiling my panties or anything, but there was a definite timidness on my part. Regardless, I spent about an hour practicing steep turns, but I have yet to fully get comfortable with them, or perform them to an acceptable standard. I think because I was timid on the flight controls, I tended not to pull up on the steering column enough as I was making the steep turns. This means that the airplane lost about 200 feet or so, every time I performed a steep turn. I know I can do better, and I will next lesson. But it was a bit frustrating, as it was the first exercise in an airplane that really stumped me. Until then I was really catching on quickly. Oh well, it's back to the flight simulator for me to practice some steep turns.

On a side note, I got to land the airplane again. It wasn't as rough as last time, though I did almost stall the airplane on approach - not good. Over the runway, my airspeed was a tad too fast, so when I pulled the throttle to idle, and pushed back on the steering column to raise the nose of the airplane up for touch down, the airplane climbed instead of descending to the ground. When the airspeed is a bit to fast, the airplane climbs only a couple of feet, and eventually settles on the runway. It happens, but it's not a desirable quality to accomplish during a landing. In other words - amateur hour. I'm determined to perform a quality landing next lesson.

Still feeling timid after the lesson, I decided to email an Air Canada pilot that I've been in touch with for about a year now. I asked him if the timidness I experienced from practicing the steep turns is a normal thing that most pilots experience. Thankfully he sent back an email within the hour, saying that he experienced the same things while he was getting his licenses. He told me to stick to it, and persevere, and that I'll love myself for overcoming my fears down the road. It's good to have a pilot that has accumulated more than 13,000 hours give you words of advice sometimes. Captain Doug Morris has a blog you can find here. It's a great read for those of you who are interested in the on goings of a life as an airline pilot.