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.