I’ve gotten bad about making entries on my flight progress lately. So here’s an attempt to get caught up. I currently have my check-ride scheduled for 9:00am on Monday, May 1. I have some concerns about making this time and the weather looks nasty, but it could all work out in the end. Anyway, on to my recent flying adventures. I’ve been at the airport almost every day this week, trying to get ready to fly. It’s been a lot of work, but I’ve been enjoying it.

Saturday, April 22nd

I haven’t flown for almost 2 weeks, due to travel for work (the first Open MPI developers tutorial, in San Jose). I needed .5 hours of simulated instrument time and it’s glass smooth day, so we start there. After taxing out onto the runway and lining up with the center line, I set my directional gyro for the centerline heading (which is almost exactly 170 degrees), put on the foggles, and off we go. I think I kept it pretty much on the center line (I of course, don’t know, but Willis didn’t say anything). I rotated very smoothly (much better than many months ago), almost immediately hit Vy, and climbed out. We did some simple turns to various headings, climbs, descents, and turns while climbing and descending. Also did a couple unusual attitude recoveries, which I nailed. One was a pretty viscous turn after I think he had come pretty close to stalling it and making some nasty turns to confuse me. Took slightly longer than I would have liked to recover, but no issues and he was quite happy. We then did a practice VOR approach to 17, which was interesting because we only discussed for about 5 minutes while preflighting at the plane and VOR approaches aren’t standard material for private pilots (they are for instrument rating, but that’s a different topic). Anyway, at first, I was having a really hard time getting the plane lined up — I was tracking the VOR fine, but the DG had me at almost a 45 degree crab angle, which didn’t seem right (did I mention the air was dead calm?). After about two minutes of this (far too long, but I was on the VOR, so I wasn’t too worried), I finally asked Willis for a compass reading (with the foggles on, the view of the magnetic compass is blocked). Sure enough, when Willis was setting up the unusual attitude, the DG gyro tumbled and it lost its marbles. Resetting the DG made the path much more sane, and off we went. I hit the rest of the course pretty much spot on, and was apparently exactly where I needed to be for the approach. I flew the missed approach and that was the end of simulated instruments.

Unfortunately, that was not the end of my flight. We then worked on short field landings. To say I screwed this up would be a royal understatement. I made the three worst approaches and landings I’ve made since I started being able to put the plane on the ground. I was flaring high, approaching too fast and too steep, and sucking it up. It was miserable. I think Willis was worried something had happened to my brain. I was having a bad day and it was time to get out of the plane, so we did.

Sunday, April 23rd

It was time to redeem myself. I went out solo for 1.2 hours early on Sunday morning to get the feel of 591 again, hopefully to fix whatever was broken the day before. The wind was blowing slightly from the north, so 35 was in use (oh well – at least I won’t cheat with the VASI this way). Started out with some simple, normal approaches. Made 2 nice touch-n-goes and was beginning to get my grove again. Switched over to short field landings (no obstacle) and was making fairly reasonable stabilized approaches. Still a little slow bleeding off power in flare, but was getting 591 on the pavement within the required distance. Switched to short field over obstacle and was fine. Starting to get the hang of power usage again, and am getting 591 on the pavement with some authority (which you are supposed to do for short field landings). Switched to soft field landings, and did ok. I’m never sure exactly how these are going, since, well, 35 isn’t exactly a hard surface. Left BMG happy that I was back in touch with 591 and could put her on the runway again.

Monday, April 24th

Simulated check-ride with Willis. We go out and do slow flight and steep turns west of the airport. I’m ok on both, but come damn close to blowing the check-ride three or four times, mainly due to slow power reaction in slow flight. I think I need a dummy in the plane with me when I’m solo – this is stuff I know I could do solo without thinking. One move I made that would definitely have blown the check-ride was deploying flaps to go from clean slow flight to dirty slow flight without adding power to cope with the extra drag. I let my speed get a bit slow, which is double-plus bad. Recovered quickly and life went on.

Also worked on power-on and power-off stalls. I misunderstood some of his phraseology and he had me stall it out of a banked turn, which he hadn’t done before. It took me a bit longer than usual to understand what he wanted, but I was able to do the maneuvers once he explained what it was he was looking for. This shouldn’t be a problem for the check-ride, because 1) I’ve now heard the descriptions before and 2) I can always ask for more detail if I get too stuck up there. It’s not like I didn’t know how to do the recovery, I just misunderstood the setup Willis was looking for. Anyway, stall recovery is a pain, but I can do it with regularity now. It’s not the recovery I have trouble with — it’s the entrance into the stall in the first place ;:).

I mentioned that we never did spin recovery (which he said we would do at some point), so we did some spins on the way back to the airport. 591 is quite docile in a spin, and recovers quite nicely. Full opposite rudder is all that is required to break a fully developed spin, and then elevator to neutral to break the stall.

All in all, a much better day than Saturday. Willis suggested I schedule my check-ride for next week!

Tuesday, April 25th

This morning was limited IFR conditions, so no flying for me. I worked through the oral section of the check-ride with Willis. Much was new – exactly how to know the plane was airworthy from a requirements standpoint, how ADs were set, where to find the list of ADs for a plane, etc. Some was just finding numbers for 591 – the weight and balance requirements, stuff like that. Going through the systems one by one (which we hadn’t done since almost 6 months ago, so I was rusty). I think I have that all covered, and at least know where I’m weak. Don’t know where I have to plan a flight to for the check-ride, but I should hopefully find that out in the next couple of days.

While we were reviewing the maintenance records for 591, we discovered that the transponder was last inspected in April 2004, which meant it was due by the end of this month. A problem, since I check-ride on May 1. Technically, I dont’ need a transponder for the flight and we could have had it marked inoperative and continued on, but it would be better if it worked. Anyway, BMG didn’t have any pilots available to fly 591 up to the closest transponder maintenance facility (35 minutes away), so I’m going to fly her up there tomorrow afternoon. Which sucks a bit, because it’s the last time I could get the plane and Willis, so I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get out there with him again before the check-ride, which would be double-plus not good. (Willis is out on Thursday and 591 is out on Friday for the whole day) Still trying to figure out what to do about that one – didn’t realize it until tonight. I can possibly go up Saturday, but it’s supposed to be really nasty, so that might not work out so well. I can always go up on Sunday, but that means no Willis (and probably will go up Sunday, weather permitting, to go through all the maneuvers until I get them right solo, which is a lot easier than going up with someone watching you).