Flight Lessons 2 and 3

Flight training report this week. I missed doing an update for my second lesson, wherein the most significant thing was experimenting with slow flight. We just barely got the flight in under cloud cover that would start snowing later in the week, but it’s time logged, and right now I’m still of the opinion that any flying day is a good day.

I finally got to try out my new flight bag too. I’d been using a backpack I’d gotten as a freebie at a game developer’s event a couple of years ago, but for my birthday, my Lovely and Gracious Wife got me a dedicated flight bag from Sporty’s. She even got my initials monogrammed on the bag! I’m really blessed to have a mate who supports my crazy plans and dreams.

Tuesday was another flying day. Lesson number three, and my introduction to stalls and instrument flying. It was a really bumpy afternoon, and of course, I would be under the hood (a vision restricting device that blocks your view outside the airplane) during the worst of it, just fighting to keep the airplane straight and level. In some ways, though, it’s easier than trying to do the same thing in a simulator, since your tactile senses help tell you the airplane is moving. Not that I can entirely trust them. I’ve “enjoyed” some lovely vertigo sensations while playing simulators, when I knew my butt was nailed to the floor, and could tell my inner ear to shut up, I know better than to trust my sense of balance when the airplane really could be banking left.

Stalls in the DA40 are interesting too. It’s a very well behaved trainer, and after the stall warning horn starts, the next thing you get is a mild buffeting on the stick, then buffeting of the entire aircraft, before the nose finally drops at around forty-five knots. Basically the aircraft gives you plenty of “Don’t do that”, “No, really, don’t do that”, “Seriously, if you keep it up, stuff is going to happen!” feedback beforehand. It also seems to glide quite nicely at seventy-eight knots, as demonstrated when my instructor decided to give me my first taste of emergency procedures with a brief bout of “engine trouble”.

Assuming the weather holds out as good, I’ll go up again tomorrow morning (Saturday). Apparently I’ll try landing for the first time *twitch*.

For those with wings, fly to your dreams.

Please Help Global Warming!

Note: I did get to fly on Thursday, and will have a post about that and my schedule up in the next couple of days, but first, this important message!

HELP GLOBAL WARMING!


Because it's past the middle of April, it's Seattle, and it's snowing outside. Seriously, can we get some extra CO2 here? Blizzards in Cleveland in April I can deal with, because it cancels baseball games that give me lovely double-headers to attend in August (anyone else remember the fun that was the first couple weeks of last year's baseball season). But Thundersnow-storms out my office window I have a little more of a problem with.

Well, at least my kids are happy. Per the Lovely and Gracious Mrs., The Boy and The Girl are standing at the dining room window shouting "Snow!" right now.

Getting Older

As my younger brother noted, today, in addition to being Tax day and Buy A Gun day, is also the annual anniversary of my release from the womb.

I've been blessed with two wonderful children, a beautiful and tolerant wife, a dream job, and the ability to reach for my dreams.

My occasional complaints about a lack of cooperation from the weather for accomplishing my aviation goals pale in comparison to things like that.

Flight Lesson #1

Tuesday was my first official flight lesson. Oh, look, I’m already behind on my ground school reading *nervous eye twitch*. Granted, the reading was my own fault, since I decided that spending the weekend submerged in the sea of manga, anime, and Japanese culture that is Sakura*Con was a good idea. I regret nothing.

Fortunately, I’m familiar with most of the material in the first couple chapters of my ground school book anyway, so I should get caught up in short order. I’ve got to remember to ask my instructor what kind of information I’m supposed to be reading out of the DA-40 reference manual though. That things as dull as the FAR/AIM book, and laid out less coherently.

But book learnin’ is boring anyway, when compared to actual flying. Tuesday was graced with partially cloudy skies, and while unseasonably cold for early April (seriously, we had snow over the weekend. That DOES. NOT. HAPPEN. In Seattle during the last few days in March), still sufficiently good flying weather for a low VFR lesson. I finally got my checklist cards, and tried to follow along as my instructor demonstrated proper pre-flight and checklist procedures. They seemed simple enough, provided you can remember where everything is.

Then we were off, with me tap-dancing on the toe brakes to get us to the run-up area. Boeing Field didn’t seem terribly busy at the time, with just a couple of corporate jets, a twin, and a couple of other trainers leaving at various times.

Once off, we headed to Galvin’s designated primary practice area for my introduction to basic maneuvers. So far, so, … adequate… I managed to mostly hold altitude correctly while flying straight and level, and manage decent level turns. Turns while climbing and descending, and just descents in general, are going to be trouble until I can really get a good feel for proper power management. We also tried steep (about 45 degree of bank) turns. My first one wasn’t so hot, but on the second one, I did a bit better. That was basically the last maneuver I tried, and I think by that time I was starting to get used to the feedback coming from the instrumentation in my inner ears and gluteus maximus.

I think I was finally starting to get the whole “terrain picture” thing my instructor was talking about too. I still feel a lot more comfortable trusting what my instruments tell me I’m doing, but I think with a few more flights, I’ll start recognizing the visual picture as well. In some ways, comprehending the picture outside feels like learning to read a new language: until you learn the patterns that make up the letters and words, it’s all incoherent gibberish.

Hopefully this weekend I can get my reading caught up, unbury my home flight-sim stuff. If I can get in a couple of sim hours before next Tuesday, I’ll be really interested to see if there’s any kind of noticeable improvements.

Until then,
For those with wings, fly to your dreams.

Weather Intervention

No flying this week. My scheduled first lesson yesterday was scrubbed due to the predictably unpredictable Pacific Northwest spring weather (don't like it? Wait ten minutes) that meant nobody but the big boys in their jet toys were leaving Boeing Field. Well, this is why I started doing the work now. Better weather will come with summer, and hopefully I can get my Private rating completed before fall brings the unpredictable rains and shorter days back.

The day wasn't a total loss though. I got to meet my instructor, an IT refugee who did a career change to flight instruction. I think we'll get along just fine. I also got books. A lot of big, thick books. One for the FAA regulations, three to study for tests, two plus a syllabus and a DVD for my actual groundschool, and the manual for a DA40. Good thing I'm comfortable with homeschooling, because there's going to be a lot of studying going on.

I also stumbled on a website selling a DA40 set of add-on aircraft for the version of Microsoft Flight Sim that I own! One of them even has the Garmin G1000 cockpit I'll be flying in. So my task for the rest of the week is to start hitting the books, get my desk cleared off to where I can use my sim setup again, and see if I can set up the G1000 equipped DA40 sim.

For those with wings, fly to your dreams

Introductory Flight

On Tuesday, March 18^th, 2008, a second entry went in my logbook. At around 3pm local time, Keith, my instructor for the day, and I took off from Boeing Field in a Diamond DA40. Amid mostly sunny skies, we looked into Safeco Field (home of the Seattle Mariners), turned west to fly over Bremerton, then headed back south-east to overfly SeaTac airport before returning back to Boeing Field.

It took me two days to stop smiling.

I was impressed (and very surprised) by the amount of flying Keith let me do. He handled all the power management, and was never far from taking control when necessary, but for the most part, he let me do the vast majority of stick and rudder work. It’ll be interesting to see how that compares to actual lessons.

The most valuable thing for me though, was that the whole thing just felt right. Sometimes you worry that when you’ve wanted to do something for so long, when you finally do it, reality fails to match your expectations. Not this. For me, getting off the ground and playing with the birds, even if only for a little while, felt good.

I’m really excited for my next lesson, happening next week, weather permitting. As a side note, this should guarantee at least one blog post a week, as I write about my training experiences. :)

For those with wings, fly to your dreams.

The Logbook

I have a little black book. Not THAT kind of little black book, but a small pilot's logbook. It was purchased sometime in spring of 1992, a few weeks before my twelfth birthday. The first entry was made on my twelfth birthday, an hour of dual time in a Cherokee 140 with the pilot friend of my dad's. After that, the logbook went onto my shelf, looked at on occasion, but never added to.

When I went to college, moving across the country to the cradle of Naval aviation, Pensacola, Florida, the logbook went with me, on the off chance I got work at the airport or something. Twice yearly, the book was packed into a box, shipped cross country, taken out and placed on a shelf, then put back in the box and shipped back across the country. I did this for all four years of college, but never had opportunity to actually open and write in the book.

When I graduated college, and made my final cross-country drive, the logbook went back on a shelf while I tried to find a job. I got married, my wife and I moved into our first little apartment, and the logbook found another shelf. We bought our two-bedroom condo, and the logbook ended up on another shelf while we busied ourself with bringing two little children into the world.

And the logbook sat on a shelf, slowly gathering dust. Out of sight, but not entirely out of mind. Until one gray February afternoon last month, I walked out of a physician's clinic in Kirkland with a small, yellow piece of paper tucked into my jacket pocket. There were a bunch of words and phrases on the paper, but the ones that were important said this: "Medical Certificate 3rd Class and Student Pilot Certificate".

I was actually supposed to go up today for my first official lesson, and make my second entry in my little black book. Unfortunately, Seattle's temperamental March weather forced a rescheduling of that flight, but that entry will go in the book soon. And, Lord willing, it will be followed by many more.

Sometimes dreams take a little longer than we expect. But I'm reminded that sometimes, if you wait long enough, and have the courage to take a big risk and grasp at the opportunity when it's given, you really can fly to your dreams.