Nobody expects the Spanish Inquistion

Date: Saturday May 30
Time: 1.5 Dual
Landings: 1

I showed up at the flight school 20 minutes before my lesson, my instructor was not there. I picked up the bag for the aircraft and went out and did the preflight. After one visit, I learned that checking the oil on the Rotax engine is a pain - it has a dry sump so you need to hand-prop the engine to pump out the oil which has seeped into the sump and then check the oil level. It was, of course, low so I asked a ramper to fill the oil (nobody but staff is supposed to add oil), and went inside and waited for my instructor.

At 2 minutes to lesson the instructor breezes in, introduces himself, and we go sit down and he proceeds to give me an inquisition for an hour, checking me on all the Gate 4 items. Ummmmm, OK. I wasn't expecting this, and because I download and read manuals I could handle more questions than I expected. But how much oil does the engine hold? Coolant? Hell, I dunno -- but I should (the answer is between 3.2 and 3.4 US quarts). I knew all of the v-speeds cold. I discovered I was rusty on other things I should know, such as aircraft documents.

Because the Katana is low-powered and very different from the Eclipse, or because this instructor insists on molding everyone to his way of doing things, he got quite pedantic about the exact right way to do everything. I believe it was well-intentioned (to get me up to a level-4 crispness), but no context was provided by either this instructor or by the previous one. Hence the title for this posting.

We went outside, did a pre-flight, pointed at all the parts and asked dozens of questions. There are five holes on the front of the Katana, which let in air for the oil cooler, coolant cooler (for the cylinder heads), cooling air for the cylinders, air to the carbs, and a little one-inch hole which lets in cooling air for the generator. Plus two more on each side, for the air vents for the human cargo.

We loaded up, worked the checklist, worked the radios, and went flying.

The Katana flies like a pregnant goose. We were getting maybe 300-400fpm, and we were climbing to 3,000'. ATC was patient.

My altitude holding sucked. The feedback from the elevator to the stick was minimal, so you need to watch the attitude and the altimeter like a hawk to maintain constant altitude, and setting the trim was guesswork.

My confidence sucked. The inquisition took it out of me.

The only specific exercise we flew was steep turns, 45 degrees of bank while maintaining altitude. In this aircraft you need to do it right, because if you lose 200 feet of altitude it took forever to get it back, and an eternity to get it back if banked at 45 degrees.

The practice area was stupid busy - there must have been 5-6 aircraft in there, and most of us were doing upper-air work. More distractions.

Finally we started flying home, doing a descending 360 degree turn down to 2,000 ft and flying under the area where another aircraft was practicing. Flying west over the river we coordinated with another aircraft who was headed north, and another aircraft from the same school came barrelling through with no radio calls.

We reconnected with Ottawa Terminal then Tower, flew a right base, and landed. My landing sucked - no bounces etc, but I didn't maintain airspeed through final approach. And I succombed to the desire to put in right yaw.

There was no post-flight debriefing. My instructor said I did well (huh?), and then set about chewing a new one for the pilot that came barrelling through unannounced.

While all of the actions of this school are well-intentioned - and I can see how they would be effective - the packging leaves something to be desired.

The other factor is that the Katana just doesn't have much MTOW (1609 pounds), and it is easily at maximum weight, or over, with two adult males aboard.

I left. I'm not sure I'll go back.

In all, the lesson was worthwhile. I learned that I need to pick up my game. I am admittedly rusty in my flying technique, and switching aircraft has been a learning experience. I have been doing lots of reading in the past 4 months. But if I want to be a pilot, I need a lot more crispness.