Wake-Jumping at 4,000 Feet: More flights

The slow, drawn-out process of Spring is finally taking hold here, but the weather patterns involved have continued to make flight lessons a challenge. In the past couple of weeks, I've had two lessons canceled outright, and one that we ended prematurely after finding the ceilings too low at the practice area, and the air too turbulent at the airport for me to learn anything. There's a time and a place for learning crosswind landings, but my instructor isn't a big fan of the "throw you in the deep end and tell you to swim" approach. Considering he has to ride in the seat next to me, I don't blame him at all.

Still, Saturday managed to bring with it an unexpected heat wave, and some good flying weather. With my regular instructor on a vacation (not my fault, I swear) I went up with another instructor from the school, and committed aviation.

Actually, it was a flight with a lot of personal firsts for me: First time flying off the big runway at Boeing Field, first Vashon departure, first time my left-hand steep turns have approached adequate, and my first landing at a different airport. Oh, and my first time flying into an uncontrolled airport as well, plus my first attempt at a landing on a runway using PAPI lights rather than VASI.

I didn't do too badly, though it's still crystal clear that I need a lot more practice before my landings can be described with adjectives other than "jarring", "bumpy", or "tooth-rattling". With 8.9 hours in my logbook, that's to be expected.

I've got another flight scheduled for tomorrow, about which I'm guardedly optimistic of my chances for succesfully completing. The weather is back to its typical combination of rain and small sunbreaks, so we'll see.

Until next time,
For those with wings, Fly to your dreams.

Flight Lesson 4 – Takeoffs are optional, Landings are mandatory

I fear I’ve taken a bit longer than I should for this update [and that’s a change how, exactly? Ed.] but the weather and my schedule haven’t exactly been cooperating again, thus I’ve had one flight in the past couple of weeks, plus a ground-school lesson.

Ground school was somewhat illuminating as we mostly focused on airspace regulations, and map reading. It was a good reality check session for me, on the order of realizing how much I don’t know. Odds are I’ll be resorting to flash cards to memorize the subtle distinctions between Class B, C, D, and E airspace rules. At least maps have legends you can use to (mostly) figure out what things mean.

The real fun, however, was on my flight lesson. I finally got some good weather, a cool, clear, crisp Saturday morning with nothing but the light haze from a thermal inversion layer making The Mountain (Mt. Rainer for the non-local) a little less than picture perfect. Either because the weather North at Everett was less stellar, or because I’m still taking too long to do my pre-flight checks, we scrubbed the original plan to fly to Paine Field in Everett and learn landings there, instead staying in the Boeing Field pattern for an hour.

No complaints here either way. Takeoffs, especially when I get to do them, are still a rush that I don’t think I’ll ever completely tire of. If pushing the throttle full forward and getting pushed back into your seat by acceleration as your airplane lunges for the sky ever starts failing to bring a grin to my face, it’s time to check my pulse, because I’m probably dead. Plus, in an hour of pattern work, I finally started to feel like I can keep up with the airplane during these maneuvers.

Nobody was going to mistake my landings for those of a pro though. By the end of the hour, I’m pretty sure my instructor wasn’t adding a lot of extra control input to get us on the ground safely, but every single one of them was definitely of the “Hard Thud” variety. Still, it was definitely fun, especially as I started to get the reference points and important directions.

Weather.com and the Magic 8-Ball both agree that tomorrow should be a good flying day, so hopefully I’ll get Lesson #5 in. Saturday should be interesting as well, since I’m planning on taking The Boy with me to start getting him familiar with the airport and real airplanes. No flying (obviously) we’re just going for the point where jet noises don’t freak him out.

For those with wings, fly to your dreams.

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