Brrrrrrr, & I did it!

I did it! Another milestone accomplished. Today I practiced spins.

The day started off with a 5:45am wake-up call, for a lesson start time of 7:00am. However, it's not the way things turned out. I got to the airport at 6:45am. It was still dark outside. I had to wait until sunrise in order to be able to fly legally. Not only that, but temperatures hit zero degrees overnight last night, and that means frost - or in aviation terms - icing.

Icing on an airplane. Image taken from Wikipedia

Icing can occur on any part of the surface of the airplane including the wings, dashboard, and even inside the engine during certain atmospheric conditions. In Canada this usually happens in the winter during freezing conditions. Icing can look like - and sometimes is - frost. There are other types of icing that are an actual accumulation of ice on the wings and body of the airplane. What I experienced this morning was frost. It was about 1/4 inch of frost. If we were to try to take off with that amount of frost on the airplane's surfaces, there's a good chance we would stall on takeoff, and, well, crash. Flying with icing is a big no no as the airplanes we fly are not certified for icing conditions. You can read more about icing here.

How do we get rid of icing? Usually a deicing liquid is sprayed on the whole airplane. It is a sticky orange liquid that removes ice, and also prevents ice from accumulating on the airplane surfaces during flight. You might have experienced a deicing on airliners in flights from Toronto (or any other cold place) during the winter. The airliners have to deice as close to takeoff as possible, and the captain would usually announce this.

Spraying deicing fluid on an airliner. Image taken from Wikipedia

However, since it is still October, the airport flight-line services didn't have their de-icing equipment ready. Eric the instructor and I had to resort to removing frost with a credit card (as scrapers aren't allowed). Then wiping down the water with paper towels. The sun that eventually came up helped melt the frost as well. This took up the best part of an hour.

So, after waiting for the sun to come up, and manually deicing the plane, we were finally up in the air at around 9:00am. I climbed the airplane to 5,000 feet, when Eric told me to perform the checklist for spins.

I've tried to get myself mentally ready for spins for the past few days, but it's hard to convince oneself of the idea of purposefully creating conditions where you're piloting an airplane that's spiraling towards the earth.

Eric performed the first spin. As I wrote in my last post, Eric showed me a couple of spins the last lesson. So at least I was ready for what was going to happen. During the spin that he preformed, I noticed myself paying attention to the way he moved the flight controls, knowing I would have to preform the next spin.

The demo spin came and went. We lost about 600 feet in a matter of seconds. We straightened out as I heard Eric say "Ok, are you ready?" to which I responded "I don't know, am I?" to which Eric responded "Yes."

I took control of the airplane, breathed in deeply, and went for it. I proceeded to first stall the airplane (a requirement in order to enter a spin). Once the stall horn came on, I pushed the rudder pedal all the way to the left, and bam, we're upside down hurling towards the earth, kaleidoscope windshield and all.

I'll pause here to mention that for some reason, my spins we're quicker and more intense than the ones my instructor preformed. By that, I mean that the corkscrewing actions - or spins - were tighter and the rotation got tighter more quickly.

I learned that when you preform a spin, there is a point at which you feel that there is no way you're getting out of this situation - an airplane that is spiraling towards the earth, in which you feel like you have no control over. However, I proceeded to push on the right rudder pedal all the way, and the rotations slowly stopped and the airplane eventually leveled off. It was intense. I did it. It's one of the things I considered a milestone on the road to becoming a pilot. I never got into flying to do this type of thing, but it's a reality - something you have to go through in Canada if you want to become a pilot. I did it, and it was intense and amazing and all of the other words people use to describe something so fulfilling to the soul.

We proceeded to climb back up to 5,000 feet and do another spin.

As I stated above, I considered spins as a milestone for myself. I'm not sure every student pilot does. I think I considered it a milestone because I was somewhat fearful of it. It's that point at which a lot of people decide to not continue their lessons. But knowing that spins are the absolute worst thing that can happen to a pilot (when it's inadvertent), it feels great to know that I now know how to get out of one. And I can't wait for my next lesson.

On a personal note (as if, this whole blogging exercise is nothing but a self-bloating externally propelled internal fart), it's days like these that make me so thankful that I chose to take on learning how to fly. Where last year I felt that I was stuck in certain areas of life, lessons like this make me feel that I'm progressing, liberated, chasing something I want so badly. I have people around me to thank, as I'm not sure I would have had the courage to undertake flying without continued support from my family, girlfriend, and friends.

As for the blog? I hope that it's entertaining for you, at the very least. I started writing it mostly because I know that I will want to remember all of these experiences in detail. I could have written a diary, but that's so Anne Frank. I realize that I get overly emotional on this blog sometimes, but that's just the adrenaline talking. I hope I don't get too personal on this blog for you as to make it awkward. I'm just trying to convey my experiences onto cyber-paper. As always, thank you for reading and for your continued support. ;)