Today started with power-on stalls again. Recovery was slightly better than last lesson, but am still not recovering quickly enough. Making progress, so hopefully will get there soon enough.

The second half hour of flight was spent doing simulated instrument flight. Even though extra work is needed to be able to fly on instruments, private pilots are required to receive 3 hours of simulated instrument flight during lessons. When flying simulated instruments, you wear these glasses that are fogged on most of the lens, but clear in the lower 1/3 or so, so that all you can see is the instrument panel. From there, you have to keep the plane flying where you want it to fly, which is harder than it sounds. I did ok, but had trouble with focusing on one instrument, rather than looking at the entire set of instruments. Apparently, a recent study found that experienced instrument pilots will look at 3 different instruments each second. So you really can’t focus on any one thing while flying that way. Today was just straight and level flight, turns, climbing turns, and such — the basics of controlled flight. Next time up, I’ll have to take off with the stupid glasses on, as a way of practicing keeping straight controlled flight. Bloomington doesn’t have the equipment for a tower assisted radar approach, so I won’t have to do an instrument approach until we start cross-country flights and fly out to Terre Haute.

Today was a tad bit windy, but nothing major. Other than that, it was beautifully clear and warm, so everyone was out and flying today. It was a bit busy on landing – there were four plans all coming into bloomington airspace for a landing at about the same time (one of them us, of course. And one a citation). So that was interesting – lots more communication than normal while coming into the pattern. I did ok on the approach, but didn’t hit my targets quite as well as I would have liked and came in a bit hot. There was a bit of a cross wind that I didn’t deal with nearly as well as I would have liked.

Next time up is more instrument flight and some more maneuvering practice. Cross country flight isn’t too far off…

Today was flight #5 for me. Building on last week, we worked on power-on stalls this week, as well as emergency landings. Power on stalls gave me some trouble, but I think I got the hang of it in the end. As one could almost guess from reading about flights 2 – 4, I wasn’t quick enough or forceful enough with the rudder when the plane wanted to start rolling to the left. Had some not so fun moments in there. The good news is that I started getting the hang of it at the end — I think a couple more tries next flight and I should be ok.

Did some high angle (45 degree) turns. Drifted altitude too much, but I think I can master that with a bit more practice.

Also worked on emergency landings. At some random point in flight, the instructor pulls the throttle back to idle and I have to react as if the engine had failed. Step one is continue flying the plane – reduce speed to optimal glide speed (70 knots in the C 150 I fly) and retrim to maintain the glide angle. Then, go through a quick checklist — open carb heat (since the available heat will be going away shortly), fuel mixture to rich, fuel to on (or try another tank if a multi-tank feed system), which is apparently a common problem and people emergency land only to figure out they ran a tank out of gas and could have used a different tank, check the mags, and check that the primer isn’t open. Then comes picking a suitable landing site. By suitable landing site, one of course means a field or something similar. The first attempt was pretty smooth, found a good field, made a nice approach, lined up a bit high but used flaps to adjust my glide and ended up a couple hundred feet above the ground and about 500 feet before the start of the field. Would have drilled the landing perfectly. Second attempt didn’t go so well. I made a bad turn to start the pattern for landing, lost the field, found the field, then discovered the the field had a damned power line running through it. Had enough altitude to push over to a (crappy) but less electrified field. Would have made a bad, but survivable landing.

Flight 6 is on saturday. More power-on stalls and do some instrument flight. That should be completely painful, but should be interesting. Oh, and the Flying Hoosiers meeting is Wednesday – that should be interesting.

[update] I forgot to mention – I managed to land the plane at the end of the lesson, marking the first time that has happened….

Finally starting to get comfortable talking to the controllers – don’t feel like a complete idiot, although for some reason I always miss the barometer reading (the altimeter needs to have the current pressure setting so that it gives reasonable altitudes). One would think I would be better at remembering random numbers, but apparently that is a talent I just don’t have.

Today became a lesson on taxing in high wind, as the winds were out of the southwest at 14, gusting to 22. Managed to taxi without any real problems (had to slow way down a couple of times before turns while thinking about which way the ailerons should be set, but nothing horrible). Takeoff was more problematic – I was too slow in rotating and getting the plane off the ground and didn’t adjust near enough to the cross wind. The first could have been problematic in the right situation, but wasn’t too big of a deal. The drifting all over the place is a definite problem. I think I need to spend some time in the not too distant future practicing maneuvers that require very active use of the rudder – I seem to not cope well with those situations. The climb out was entertaining because it was a bit bouncy and ground speed was much lower than I’m used to (we were pushing out into the wind for our west / south west departure). But I survived and we eventually reached altitude without any major difficulties.

Today’s lesson was power on and power off stalls. I don’t know why, but the hardest part for me was pulling back enough to actually stall the plane – why do something that is definitely going to go badly for you? Anyway, I need to work on recovering – not enough rudder and trying to compensate with aileron led to a couple of secondary stalls, which is not a good thing at all. Today was mostly power-off stalls, which are pretty basic to recover from: reduce angle of attack, increase power, and stabilize the plane (hopefully getting it into a climb somewhere in there so you don’t crash). Of course, when you open the throttle, the plane tries to roll and yaw to the left, so you have to get that under control. Which means using the rudder, which means I suck at it. Hopefully, that will improve in short order.

Landing, well, yeah, we didn’t even try. Between the bouncing and the blowing off course, I was having fun just trying to get to the pattern at some reasonable speed. The final approach wasn’t even an option. Maybe monday.

Today was my third flight lesson. Topics included slow flight and the use of flaps. We spent most of the time flying at the minimum maneuverability speed of the aircraft. At such low speeds, the controls are really soft and don’t react particularly well. Most of the time, we were going slow enough and at high enough an angle of attack that the stall warning horn was blowing. I managed to make a couple of reasonable turns at such low speeds, but I wasn’t maintaining altitude nearly as well as I would have liked — of course, this is true for normal flight conditions as well. I need to work on better coordination of using ailerons and rudder. I’m not using enough rudder when conditions aren’t optimal — slow flight and cross winds being two of the notable examples. I also fail at maintaining heading when I’m working on other maneuvers. The last one I’m hoping will settle down a bunch when I get comfortable with the general flying thing and I have some time to pay attention to something other than not running the plane into the ground. The lack of rudder usage in slow conditions means that I try to get control of the plane with the ailerons, which means that I let the plane get way out of whack and it’s hard to get it settled back down again.

Next lesson (Friday early morning) will be more slow flight, this time working on stall recovery (which unfortunately means stalling the plane, which will be a gut wrenching experience).

There was an article in the IDS about the Flying Hoosiers, a flight club at IU. Of course, the article included no useful contact information (stupid IDS). I’m going to try to get in touch with the group, as it would be nice to be able to talk to other people learning to fly :).

Today’s flight lesson was at 7:00, which is pre-dawn by about 10 minutes. Unfortunately, the sky was overcast, so there wasn’t a beautiful sunrise or anything like that. But it’s always impressive to be up and about when it goes from dark to light outside. Today was turns while climbing and gliding. Turns were much happier than last week, although I still don’t hold quite as nice of an angle as I might like. But from taxi to maneuvers in the sky, things were definitely slowing down from last week, so that’s good. Today I was talking to the tower (as opposed to my instructor doing so). There was actually some traffic around the airport, so it was a learning experience. Don’t think I screwed it up too badly ;). Still can’t land, but I think next time I might get the hang of it. Less confusing than last week, but came in way too high :/. Taxing was much improved – I looked tipsy instead of outright drunk.

I’ve always wanted to learn how to fly, but have generally found some excuse not to get my pilots license (usually lack of funding, lack of time, or not wanting to learn to fly in LAX airspace). Since I’m newly single and need distractions, I decided in September that I was going to learn how to fly. Turns out that Bloomington has an airport and one of the FBOs, BMG Aviation even offers flight school. KBMG isn’t a huge airport, but it has a tower and can get busy around big IU events. So a good place to learn, without all the hell of LAX airspace (last time I looked at flying was when I was in LA – Santa Monica has it’s own tower, but then you get dumped into LAX airspace. No thanks.). Anyway, I had my first flight on Monday, Oct 17. All in all, not too bad. Takeoff was, not unexpectedly, not too bad. I could make some reasonable turns, but tended to overturn and/or lose altitude in turns. Both should be pretty easy to fix with practice. Landing was mostly my instructor, and was moving way too fast for me. I’m sure it will slow down after a couple of flights. Next flight is Thursday (Oct 27) – more details to follow…