Flights 9 and 10

Didn't ever get around to writing a thing about Flight 9, so I'll just combine them here.

Flight 9
2009-07-29 17:30

This flight was all about landings and emergency procedures. As far as the emergency procedures, it's basically just important to remember what you need to do immediately in the case of any kind of emergency. One that we did was an engine failure simulation, which amounts to Jory pulling the throttle to idle. Step one is to try and restart the engine through a simple procedure, while at the same time looking for a backup plan on the ground (a field). If that doesn't work, you just bring the plane (using only your pitch and flaps since you don't have an engine) to 65 kts, which is the optimal glide speed for this particular plane. I'm told it results in a 9:1 glide ratio, which should get you a few miles, but you don't have room for error, that's for sure. We also worked on an emergency descent, which is exactly what it sounds like. Dive down as quickly as possible without ripping the plane apart. Those went relatively well on the first try, I just didn't descend quite quickly enough on the emergency. It's hard to convince yourself that you need to be more abrupt about things. I'm so afraid of breaking the plane, that I end up not doing things as extremely as they should be done.

After that, we headed back to the airport to do a few touch and gos. The first one was flat (main gear and nose gear touched down at the same time...bad). It was soft, but flat. The second one was uneventful, but the third one was damn near perfect. Decided to go for one more to seal the deal. The last one was also pretty good, but hit the ground with the nose pointed about 5 degrees to the left.


Flight 10:

2009-08-01 10:00

Laura came up with us on this one to get a feel for what kind of things we've been doing. Definitely not the best day I've had so far. Since my next flight is my first solo, today was basically a review of everything we've done so far. We started off with slow flight and brought it into a stall. The first stall I did wasn't very well coordinated, so it tossed my stomach for a loop. Didn't lose it or anything, but it doomed my concentration for the remainder of the flight. I was too busy thinking about not being sick, and I just couldn't get it together to do everything else perfectly. My steep turn wasn't nearly as good as the first day. Ended up way north and headed back to the airport. My pattern entry and approach were pretty awesome. Overshot the runway on the base leg just a little bit, but made up for it with a textbook landing. Went up for one more, and made exactly the same mistake as I did on Wednesday. Second landing succumbed to the crosswind and hit just a little off center. That's a correction that I understand just fine on the ground, but forget completely when it comes time to actually execute it.

Anyway, the next flight is my first solo. No tricky stuff, just a few patterns and landings. I'll start off with Jory and if he's comfortable trusting me with a $270,000 plane, then I'll finally fly a plane on my own.