A really awful takeoff

Apparently I am starting to get a handle on this thing called flying... I wasn't happy with today's (September 30th 2006) performance. Maybe that means I am starting to have a clue. Minimal skills, but at least a clue about what should be happening.

Once again, paperwork and pre-flight went fine. On the checklists I have to just relax and let the checklist do the work.. stop thinking ahead and do the item we're doing (different checklists will revisit the same item, and I get ahead of myself).

My taxiing was quite good. I followed the lines, didn't cut any corners, and was nice and smooth throughout. Very little drunken sailor wandering. The post-flight feedback was to trust the rudder, and touch the brake only if I'm not swinging the way I want to -- don't touch the brakes as the first step. At least I don't ride the brakes.

The wind was somewhat variable, pretty much 90 degrees abeam the runway. The instructor asked me to make the call whether to use runway 10 or 28. The wind made it a coin flip, but the last few flights had landed on runway 10, so I decided to go with the flow and called runway 10.

About halfway down on the backtrack the wind swung 30 degrees to tailwind and decided to stay there, so I decided to switch, made the radio call, backtracked, and setup for the takeoff on 28. So far, quite good. The runway is less than 4000 feet long so it requires only one windsock... but sheesh, there are two taxiways, put up two windsocks!

Previous takeoffs have resulted in a lot of veering to the left on application of full power, so I was ready this time. Too ready, too much rudder. On the takeoff roll I zigged and zagged all over the place, finally dragged the nose off the blacktop and prayed we'd be airborne before we were sideways. Clearly - circuits are not for a few more lessons. Once we were off the ground I got the ship stable and pointy-end first.

The climbout was pretty good. I swung about 10 degrees left, rather than my usual 30. But I maintained best rate of climb reasonably well on a day where we were bouncing through the thermals.

Todays lesson was turning, so we went through gentle/15, medium/30 and steep/45 turns. By the end of the lesson I was making the turns and losing (or gaining) less than 100 feet. And one turn I remained spot-on altitude. My gentle turns were fine, I tended to be cautious on the medium turns (perhaps 25 degrees from time to time), and the instructor said my steep turns were sometimes closer to 60 degrees rather than 45 -- I guess I wasn't shy on those. Flying the Eclipse one needs to add power for the steep turns only. Memo to self: Keep the eyes outside, straight ahead, and maintain the bank angle and the pitch (airspeed).

We did climbing and descending turns, (slow-speed) canyon turns, and collision avoidance turns. And we reviewed climbs and descents, and of course there was lots of practice of straight&level flight while we reviewed and planned. As usual, I did all the flying, except for the demonstrations.

The collision avoidance turn was something special.. since there was no imminent collision we dropped the speed to 100 kts to reduce stress on the airframe, and did a good lookout. When it is time to turn.... slam the power to idle, right rudder to the floorboards and stick to the right, a hard 60 degree bank turn, about 45 degrees through the turn pull back on the elevators to pull you through the turn and apply full power.. and come out at a 90 degree turn with minimal altitude loss. And don't be suprised if the stall warning horn goes off. It is a pretty exciting 2 seconds. First time I banged my way through it. The second time I was much more smooth, and came out having lost about 50 feet and was pretty much spot on a 90 degree rotation. So we did one more just to make sure. You know you've really slammed it through the avoidance technique when the Directional Gyro is spinning like a top when you're done. My wife had dinner-plate wide eyes when I described it to her when I got home. I hope to fly these in practice only.

Interesting observation: My turns at the start of the flight were mostly eye-out, but with a bit of instrument scanning to double-check. Then I was switched to correct technique, keeping the eyes out all the time. At the end of the flight, as we were resetting to our practice area after the collision avoidance turns, I was eyes-out, glancing the instruments from time to time just to find out where I was, and not to assist with the flying. My altitude stayed reasonable constant. It's coming.

We had one aircraft come scooting through the practice area unannounced, perhaps 500 feet below us and a half mile south. Everyone in the practice area was doing a good job announcing where they were and what altitudes they were working, and this guy zips through without a peep. S/he might have been on YOW's frequency, or NORDO, or monitoring and decided to keep quiet since they were a distance away. Or oblivious. I'm glad we were not doing stall and spin recovery (movements where there is a lot of altitude loss, in a short time).

And it got interesting on the approach into CYRP. We had four aircraft converging at once, as well as two for takeoff. We were coming from the north, a Katana from the southwest, one more from the northwest, and someone else wanted to land on runway 22 (the unpaved runway) and they were somewhere north of the airport but at a lower altitude, and wanting to fly through the left-hand circuit. We were first, so we flew over&back, ran the circuit, and led the parade. After the three of us got down, rwy 22 did their landing.

The wind was solid from the south now, and I did a decent job of aligning the runway and set up a crab of about 20 degrees to counter the wind. But I was wayyyyy high, and I wasn't sure I wanted to lose the crab and flare all at once when I hadn't managed a nice flare yet. So at about three hundred feet I just stated "no sense being a hero, you have control" and the instructor did the landing. Once we were stable on the ground the instructor handed control back to me and I finished up.

So where am I? Well, with no flying for 8 days I felt rusty in the seat.. the burn rate through my credit card hurts when you fly twice a week, but the frequent practice does prevent the rust. I did have a good chance to re-read the last few lessons and internalize the knowledge. And we put 1.5 more hours in my book, since we took the time to review everything (explicitly or implicitly) from the previous lessons (it is cheaper to take an extra half hour and review, than to book an extra 1 hour discrete lesson). I'm pretty ham-handed, but getting smoother and more "minimalist" in my control techniques.

This week will be a busy one at work, and the following week I am travelling, so (weather willing) I will book a lesson on a weeknight later this week. Probably 1.5 hours instead of 2 hours, due to the shorter days.