Did the requisite 3 landings with Willis, then it was off to the wild blue yonder. The wind was from the south, so I needed some nice east-west lines on the ground to practice s-turns. On Willis’ advice, I went west for about 10 miles, where the hills level out a bit and farm country starts up again. Farm country has very nice squares on the land, dividing up the various fields. Great for doing work close to the ground — nice markers and not a lot of people to get annoyed / worried. The wind was reasonable — probably 10 or 15 knots aloft, so it was perfect for working on s-turns. The first attempt went pretty ugly, but with a couple of practices, I feel comfortable with how they looked. With a bit more practice right before my checkride, I don’t think they will present any problem. I need to remember to roll out shallow when heading into the wind. For some reason, I roll out of the shallow turn into the wind, then make the next turn off the line as a steeper turn.

Steep turns, however, presented a definite challenge. The plane was much more responsive in the steep turns than when Willis was in the plane, so I had to adjust by adding much less power than normally needed. The turns were super ugly and I missed the checkride requirements on two counts: I picked up more than 10 knots speed and lost more than 100′ altitude. Definitely need to spend another day working on these bloody turns.

Thursday was flight 18 in the quest to get a private pilot certificate. The goal of the day was more solo pattern work. The weather was pretty nice – clear, low 40s, and wind at 9 knots from due south. Started with two landings with Willis, then off on my own for the rest of the hour. Did 5 solo landings, 4 of which were touch and goes (the last obviously being a full stop to get back to the ramp).

Still having some trouble coping with the behavior differences of the plane with and without Willis. I’m getting better, but I still let myself get a bit slow on approach because I’m not trimmed as well as I should be. As the day went on, I improved on my trimming of the plane for the approach speeds, so that’s good. I was also coming up a bit short on the first few landings and having to apply power during final because I wasn’t compensating for the wind coming directly up the runway. The last couple of approaches, I shortened the length of the final (as I should have done in the first place) and the approaches didn’t require so much power to make the runway. The one possible problem for my checkride was that I was too slow getting off the extra power when I had the long final and wasn’t smoothly getting off the power once I started the landing flare, so I was carrying too much power (and therefore too much power) on flare and floating it down the runway. Not a big deal when the runway is 6500′ long and the goal is a safe landing. But can’t float the runway on a checkride.

Next time up, the wild blue yonder calls. Which is good, because I desperately need to work on turns about a point with a wind. On one of the landings, I had to circle while on downwind to give a plane on instrument approach time to land and clear the runway. My turn looked like a joke — I was not happy about that.

Today was a miserable day for anything but pattern work, as it was 45 degrees and the cloud cover was overcast at 2500 feet. Thankfully, the winds died down from the 30 knots they were hitting last night to a placid 5 knots out of the North/Northwest. We started off with a soft field takeoff, and I still wasn’t aggressive enough with the back pressure on the elevator, but I mostly got it. Did a couple of landings of a variety of setups (normal, soft, and short) and felt pretty comfortable with them. Second to last one with the instructor, we did a full stop landing and taxied off the runway and back to the takeoff end of the runway. Took off, entered pattern, came in for a normal landing (although I turned onto base way too early, so it became a short final landing…), and taxied to the ramp. Willis got out at the ramp and told me to fly 3 landings to a full stop and taxi back to takeoff. Off I went on my own. Woo hoo!

The taxi out to 35 was a little nerve racking. Since we didn’t shut down the engine at the ramp, there really wasn’t much to do on the 2 or 3 minute taxi down to the runway. Carb heat off: check, flaps up: check. Nothing else to do but admire the Cirrus SR22 as it taxis from the southwest hanger for 35 (and it is a pretty bird). Takeoff was pretty routine – lineup with the runway, one last check that everything looks ok on the instruments, and smoothly apply full throttle. The plane accelerated to rotation speed in about 300′ less than usual, and climbed much better than usual. I was at almost 750′ AGL by the end of the runway, and was at traffic pattern altitude (1000′) long before I turned onto downwind. Overshot 1800′ MSL (~1000′ AGL) by 100′ or so and carried too much speed when leveling it off, but quickly got back to 1800′ MSL and 80 MPH by the midpoint of the downwind leg. First landing was fairly reasonable, but I was a bit slow (~65) coming over the threshold. Since I was slow, it didn’t float much at all. I was unhappy with the speed, but did have a nice wind correction — probably the best yet. Thankfully, Willis wanted me to taxi off the runway to go around for the next takeoff, so I had a nice minute or two break between the landing and the next takeoff to decompress a bit.

Second flight around the pattern was pretty uneventful, as they usually are. The approach was better than the first approach at maintaining speed, but I didn’t correct for the wind drift very well until the last minute. I didn’t jolt it too bad, but it could have been smoother. I think I had too much rudder correction and was over-banked, and then corrected and got all screwy. In hind sight, it probably would not have been a bad idea to do a go-around on that particular landing –it wasn’t particularly bad, but it wasn’t exactly what I expected. Willis is a strong believer in just going around when the plane isn’t exactly how you expect. Off the runway and taxi back to the takeoff end I go.

Third takeoff was directly behind a LearJet, so I had a minute to pause while the jet wash dissipated a bit. A Cessna 150 will blow over like a cardboard box if it catches the full power of a jet wash as the pilot tries to taxi onto the runway, so it’s a good idea to hang back of the jet until it’s rolling down the runway. Once on the runway, there was no need to worry about wake turbulence, as the LearJet has a longer ground roll than the Cessna 150 (especially with the climb rates I was seeing without Willis on board) and I was going to reach traffic pattern altitude and turn off the runway heading in a shorter distance than it took the jet to reach pattern altitude. Anyway, the rest of takeoff and circling the pattern was uneventful. Did much better at controlling speed on the approach, although I was still slow coming off the turn from base to final. The landing was so-so – I thumped it a bit more than I would have liked, but well within acceptable range and handled drift much better than the second landing. Overall, it was an interesting experience, and one that I can’t wait to repeat.

Next time up, Willis will fly with me for a couple approaches and then leave me to do some more pattern work for the rest of the hour. If I’m feeling comfortable, I’ll be able to do touch and go landings instead of taxing off the runway and back to the takeoff end of the runway to do it all over again. And the flight after that, I’ll finally get to leave the pattern again and go out into the wild blue yonder, where wild blue yonder is defined as anywhere within 25NM of the airport.

For those into that kind of thing, pictures of me and the plane are at my photo gallery.

Worked on both short and soft field takeoff and landing today. I had worked on the soft field takeoffs last time up, and did one more today. Not too difficult – keep the nose off the ground, release back pressure on the yoke as necessary to avoid driving the tail into the ground, takeoff ASAP, get in ground effect, speed up to normal climb speed and off you go. Short field takeoffs are entertaining – the plane is held on the ground for a bit longer than usual (about 5 knots more in the 150), and V_x is used for climb speed. Nothing difficult at all, but just have to remember what is going on.

Short field landings are almost the exact opposite of soft field landings. Rather than coming in flat, the approach is steep, with max allowed landing flap and (hopefully) power. The idea is to clear the obstacle and get on the runway with power, so that the power can be removed, limiting the “float” down the runway. The contact with the runway should be a bit of a “thumper” — strong enough that the plane can immediately be slowed down with the brakes.

Anyway, neither the soft nor short field landings were as smooth as I would have liked. I was coming into the turn to final too high, which meant I was short on power to remove for the short field landing. This should be easily correctable with some more practice on approaches in general. The soft field landings, I was hitting the approach ok, but wasn’t applying power when I was shallowing out, so I was getting too slow, and that was going nowhere good. More things to work on for Monday…

With the results of my eye exam last week in hand, I returned to the AME’s office today. The AME was satisfied that my eyes were not going to cause any issues for flying and that I met the requirements for a class III medical certificate. I now have my combination Class III medical and student pilot certificate. At some point in the not distant future, I should be able to do my first solo flight. Woo hoo!

Today was supposed to be soft field take-off and landing (either snow/slush on a paved runway or a soft grass runway). Due to a medium but gusty cross-wind, we mostly worked on cross-wind landings.

Soft field take-offs are a little different than normal take-offs, but nothing horrible. In a normal take-off, you taxi from the run-up area (generally, the big slab of pavement at the end of the taxiway, right before the runway) at a slow speed (since it’s almost all turning), line up with the runway centerline, stop for a second to double check instruments one last time (since one should know the runway heading, it’s a good time to sanity check the directional gyro* one last time), run the throttle up to full (for a fixed-pitch prop, anyway), pull back on the stick when rotation speed is reached, feel the wheels leave the ground, climb with an airspeed of V_y (or V_x if there is an obstacle to clear), and off you go. For soft-field take-offs, it’s a bit different. Because the wheels may sink into the mush / ground, the taxi speed is slightly higher and there is no pausing in the transition from taxi to take-off — you just run up the throttle and go. For a tricycle gear aircraft, the elevator is held back all the way from the start, so that the front wheel almost instantly comes off the ground. The elevator pressure is released slowly as speed increases, keeping the front wheel off the ground, but keeping the nose down enough that the tail doesn’t slam into the ground. The plane will take off before stall speed due to ground effects, and the plane is held in ground effect until normal rotation speed is obtained. The rest of the takeoff (reaching V_x and all that) is basically the same as a normal takeoff.

Soft field landings are very different than normal landings. In a Cessna 150, a normal landing has an approach angle of at least 3 degrees, usually more (since one usually flies a C-150 in a tight pattern, as the thing can practically descend vertically for a landing, compared to other planes). With soft field landings, one comes in on the shallow end of things (a bit under the standard 3 degree approach angle) and a bit short of the runway (not much). When close to the ground, the plane is “pulled” onto the runway, using more power than normal to land the plane at a shallow descent angle. The shallow descent angle reduces the impact pressure at touchdown, reducing the drag instantly added by the wheels. Because of the shallow approach, soft field landings are pretty difficult to learn in a cross-wind when normal cross-wind landings are still a bit of a challenge. So for most of the flight, we worked on normal cross-wind landings. I did better, but still need a lot more work before I’m really comfortable. I think I’m to the point where Willis is confident in my ability to land safely, but would prefer I be a bit more refined in the effort.

*The Directional Gyro (aka Heading Indicator) is a gyroscopic instrument that gives a directional heading similar to a compass. Unlike a compass, it only provides change of heading indication — it only gives an accurate heading indication if it is aligned with a real compass heading at some point. The advantage of the DG over a real compass is that the readings are stable and accurate in a turn (unlike a compass which is nearly unreadable in turbulence, as it bounces around, and can give false readings when in a turn).

Since hopes are high that my medical issues will resolve themselves (or be resolvable), I decided not to cancel today’s flight lesson. Today was bitterly cold (22 degrees) with winds out of the south/southwest at a bit under 20 knots. In other words, blowing like mad. Took off on 24 for the first time in a while, headed out to the south to practice some slips. Slips aren’t anything too difficult – bank one direction, full rudder in the other direction, use bank to control direction. The point is to cause the airplane to go slightly sideways, greatly increasing drag (and therefore rate of sink). Slips are generally used on approach to lose altitude if flaps aren’t available (either because they’ve gone inoperative or the plane doesn’t have them). Actually slipping to lose altitude on the approach was pretty easy. For some reason, my final approach (after coming out of the slip) onto 24 was a bit tougher than I expected. I don’t know if I was just improperly compensating for the nice head wind or what, but I don’t think it was a big deal.

The second half of the flight was cross wind landings. I did better than the last time — I actually put the plane on the runway once. I decided to go-around once and needed help on the last approach of the day. The last one was really nasty, with winds at about 22. We were right at the max of what one can do in a Cessna 150 — in order to slip to wind correct, we were using nearly all the rudder to correct for the bank necessary to compensate for the wind. For slips to lose altitude, one uses full rudder all the time and does not point in the direction of travel. When slipping to compensate for a cross wind, the airplane is always aligned heading down the runway, bank is altered to compensate for the wind by controlling direction of travel, and rudder is altered to keep alignment. So yeah, you land on one wheel – it’s great fun.

Next up, sorting out the medical mess. And when I get back to Bloomington from winter break, a lesson on short field / soft field takeoffs and landings. For soft field takeoffs, the idea is to get off the ground below stall speed by taking advantage of ground effect, build up airspeed in ground effect, then begin the climb. Should be interesting.

Today was cold (no surprise there), clear, and absolutely no winds. Flew simulated instruments from take-off until the last two miles of approach. Take-off was much smoother than my last simulated instrument take-off. Overall, felt much better than the last time I was up. Flew some VOR tracking, some steep turns, altitude adjustments, and the like. Nearly drilled the steep 360 turn, but gained too much altitude returning to level flight. Oh well – next time. I’m still not great at those in visual flight, so it’s no surprise I have trouble in instrument flight. Willis simulated an AFR approach onto runway 35, so that I would have some idea what it was like before we ran one with the tower at Terre Haute during our cross-country flights. Didn’t setup too horribly, although I was a bit high for most of the approach. Landing was smooth and pretty.

Now I just need a slightly windy day so I can get some cross-wind approaches in.