Second First Solo

2009/07/10

Bright and clear this morning, virtually no wind, very little cloud, and 1.5 hours booked on the airplane. Today's objective is to work on landings - and if all is OK, fly solo in preparation for next week's cross-country solo.

Preflight, load up, taxi out, and try a short-field take-off. Did well getting off the ground and a lower speed, but we accelerated quite nicely and didn't stay in ground effect for the acceleration. I need to go through the motions even if the aircraft wants to go flying.

My airspeed on the climb-outs is still not quite stable - I need to pick an outside attitude and hold it, rather than chase the airspeed needle.

First landing OK but a bit long - the source of the problem is that I'm not getting slow quickly enough at the end of the downwind leg, which causes me to be high during base, and I just keep catching up throughout the circuit until I finally get it down on the ground.

We did a stop&go, backtracked, and I had the instructor demonstrate a short-field take-off. Yep, I'm doing the short-field the same as he does, I thought it was OK, now it is confirmed.

Flaps up, full power, carb heat in, rotate, and fly.

Mid-left downwind the instructor pulled the power and said "simulated engine fire". This is a from-memory checklist:

• Mixture to idle-cut-off (simulated, of course - touch the control but don't actually turn the engine off)
• Fuel selector off
• Master electrical off (but leave it on since this is simulated, and we need to communicate)
• Cabin heat and air off, leave overhead vents on
• Airspeed 100 kts to extinguish the fire. If not extinguished increase speed until it is out.
• Conduct a forced landing

By this point we were past the mid-left downwind, and ready to do a forced landing:

• Declare where you're going to land (the runway)
• Point the aircraft at the landing point
• Maintain straight and level flight, and slow to best glide speed (65kt in the C172 with no flaps)
• Communicate (radio intentions to traffic)
• Forward slip to get down, including a turn to runway heading. I could put in flaps, but it takes a while to deploy them, and more importantly, it takes a while to retract them - but a forward slip can be taken out very quickly if we need to preserve altitude to make the runway.
• On short final I put in 20 degrees of flaps, and did a pretty good landing just past the numbers.

Full power, carb heat off, flaps up, rotate, fly away.

On the third circuit I pulled the power from 2300rpm to 1700rpm earlier, rather from 2300rpm to 1500rpm later. Maintaining altitude by progressive nose-up and adding in 20 degrees of flaps, all on the latter stages of the downwind, meant I was starting to descend at my target airspeed as I turned to base. Reducing the power to idle on base, and starting the turn to final earlier (so it would be a nice gently-banked turn), meant I was in a much better setup during short final. Remember to keep the nose down to maintain airspeed, add a touch of power for distance, eyes to the end of the runway to get a better perspective for the flare and for yaw control, and the landing was much much better.

The instructor told me to exit at Bravo, he hopped out, and I flew two circuits solo. Both landings were quite good, though the second final approach was a bit low. My first solo was October 5 2008 in the Eclipse, this was my second "first solo", this time in the Cessna 172.

Next steps: Instrument instruction, in preparation for the cross-country solo. I've booked two 4-hour flights, next Friday (for dual cross-country) and next Sunday (for solo cross-country)

Dual flight: 0.3
Dual landings: 3 (1 forced)
Solo flight: 0.3
Solo landings: 2

S S S S S Stuff

2009/07/09

Third lesson in three days - I'm loving it. Today's weather was sunny with a large number of Cumulus clouds and a high ceiling - the glider pilots were loving it as well.

The aircraft was back a little late, so RK and I briefed Emergency Procedures. I'm doing the emergency procedures OK, my approach to the procedures is logical and reasonable, but not exactly what the manufacturer has prescribed. Time for some more study.

Preflight was very thorough, since we were going to be doing utility-grade work today. Taxi, checklists, and a normal take-off all went well. We flew up to the practice area, staked out an area between Meech Lake and the Gatineau River, and started the upper-air work. Most of these activities I had not performed since the fall of 2006, so while I knew what I needed to do, I was apprehensive.

Stalls:

• Several power-off stalls (the C172 is very gentle in a stall). I recovered at the first sign of a stall, rather than seeing if we could get a good clean break&drop.
• Power-on stalls. The aircraft breaks a little harsher, but recovery is routine.
• Climbing turning full-power stalls - I've not seen one before. These are really interesting - one second you're climbing to the left in a very nose-up attitude, and the next second you've tumbled down to the right. This was demonstrated only, I didn't recover one myself (time constraint). Must do that someday.

Spins

• My last spin was in October 2006, so I had RK demonstrate spin entry and recovery. We lost 1,000 of altitude in the spin.
• I tried twice to put the C172 into a spin, but was too cautious in kicking it in, or we were not quite stalled enough when I tried the entry, and achieved two spiral dives - which I recovered easily.

Spiral Dives

• RK put the aircraft into a few spiral dives, which I recovered correctly and readily (in addition to the failed spin attempts).
• As a quick demonstration, RK put the airplane into a steep spiral dive and recovered. It felt like we were going to launch a torpedo attack on an aircraft carrier. Impressive. And what I am likely to see on my flight test.

And I put in a few forward slips on the way home, to lose the required altitude when leaving the practice area. Still not slick.

RK quizzed emergency procedures as I made radio calls, scanned for traffic, switched from the practice area to the aerodrome frequency. Nothing like keeping your mind busy.

Circuit good, final approach good, and the touchdown was the best yet.

Overall, I was very pleased with today's lesson. We reviewed a lot of items, I handled all of them (except entering a spin) well. Good enough to move along. I'd like to go back and review all items again, sometime in the near future, just for the practice. I was apprehensive and now feel comfortable, however, I would appreciate some additional practice.

Dual: 1.1
Landings: 1