As I mentioned in my last entry, a FAA check-ride in Indiana was not in the cards for me. Since I’m going to be flying something significantly bigger than a Cessna 150 when I’m out west, I went up with Willis today in BMG’s 172. It felt huge compared to the 150 — it actually felt like something that you could stay aloft in for more than an hour at a time. Firing her up was a pleasant surprise. Instead of the puttering, sputtering pounding of the 150’s engine at 1,000RPM, I was greeted with a smooth whisper from the engine. Moving around the ground was perfectly normal, once I got used to the new sight lines (did I mention she felt as big as a tank?). Flying was actually not bad at all — the hardest part was getting used to having to be more aggressive with rudder when at full power. The 100HP engine in the 150 requires some right-rudder to stay straight, but not much. The 160HP engine in the 172, on the other hand, took quite a bit of rudder. Oh well – that’s easily trainable. The landing approach is a bit different, in that the normal landing is made at 40 degrees of flap (the 150 is at 20), so every landing is a short field landing. However, unlike the 150, 40 flaps on a 172 doesn’t feel like you just launched a parachute out the back of your plane. The extra weight of the 172 makes the approach feel really stable – she doesn’t dance just above the runway like the 150. I have to get used to the new sight lines for maneuvers, but I’m not as concerned about the switch to a bigger plane now that I’ve flown one. Overall, I wish I could have afforded to fly the 172 the entire lessons — she definitely would have made cross-country flights more enjoyable. I don’t think I even want to consider flying in one of the 172SPs until I have a real salary, as they are supposed to be even quieter and smoother. Of course, they’re also bloody expensive to rent.

In other news, since it’s likely that the rental places out west don’t include headsets with the plane, I’m looking into buying a headset. After reading a bunch of reviews, I’m thinking I’m going to buy a refurbished Lightspeed 20XL. It’s only $300 refurb, and the reviews all say they do a nice job of refurbing the units. Willis has one and speaks highly both of the unit and of Lightspeed, as does everyone else on the web. I’ve now heard multiple people say that they’ve returned out of warranty headsets for repairs and Lightspeed hasn’t charged for repairs — how can you beat that? I’ve tried Willis’ headset for one trip around the pattern, and I loved it. Understanding the tower was so much easier than the passive headsets BMG supplies with its planes and the aircraft noise was much lower. It must be nearly silent in the 172s (I tried it when flying in 591, the 150).

I got a call this morning from the FAA designated examiner that I was supposed to fly my checkride with on Monday. He hadn’t called by Friday afternoon to go through the pre-checkride information, so I had called and left a message yesterday afternoon. He was a bit confused because apparently his schedule had me for the 8th instead of the 1st (which is really strange because I confirmed the 1st with his secretary three times that we were talking about Monday, May 1). Anyway, he couldn’t reschedule for any time I was in B’ton before I left for the summer. He recommended another examiner that was located at Indy Metro, who unfortunately, was also unavailable for the two weeks I could fly. That pretty much eliminates the reasonable choices, so it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to do my check-ride before I head out to Los Alamos for the summer. There are worse things that could happen, but I’m a bit disappointed that I won’t be private pilot Brian when I head out to New Mexico.

From here, my focus for the remaining two weeks in B’ton will change slightly. Rather than trying to cram for the check ride, I’m going start transitioning into the Cessna 172, as it looks like there aren’t many Cessna 150s available out in NM. Once I get out there, I’ll start working on finding an instructor I like and trust to teach me about altitude differences and mountain flying. Then, I’ll find an examiner out there and do my checkride, hopefully early in June (May looks pretty shot and all that).

As I mentioned in yesterday’s marathon flight blog entry, I had to fly N66591 up to Columbus, IN today so that the transponder could be inspected before my check ride. No problem – it’s a short flight, and free time in the airplane is good time in the airplane! It’s just too bad that Columbus isn’t on the other side of the 50 NM radius from BMG so that I could count this as cross country time. But I like the opportunity to deal with as many airports as possible, so I gladly jumped at the chance to fly this ferry run today.

Flight out of BMG was uneventful – a bit bouncy, but nothing to worry about. Made horrible time the entire trip – had calculated a ground speed of 93 knots and the GPS said I was making 80 – 82 knots. I think some of it is that I’m calculating based off ideal cruise speed and need to knock off 5 or so knots for “reality check” – I always seem to be about much too slow on calculations. Anyway, finally got around the Camp Atterbury restricted airspace and found the airport right where it should be. Active landing runway was 5, and I wasn’t far off, so I was instructed to line up for a final approach. I started line-up just fine. The pattern was a bit nutty, but no big issues (BMG does the same thing from time to time). All the sudden, I brain farted when I looked at my DG and saw a heading of about 45 degrees. 45 != 5, so I was suddenly convinced I was lined up for the wrong runway. There was someone acting weird in the pattern, so I announced that I was possibly in the wrong location. Tower was kind enough to point out I was right where I should be and to please not do anything drastic ;). Thankfully, he and I both came to the conclusion that all was well and the brain fart ended. Then tower announces that I should prepare to go around because it’s quite apparent that the damn twin prop on the runway lined up for takeoff is in no hurry to get going. So around the pattern I went. It was the most wretched pattern I’ve ever flown. Since I was forced to go around, I was now in the back of the line for landing. The two planes in front of me got on the runway, and I was clear to land. Got my butt in the right location, ran through landing checklist on base, lined up for final a tad high, got on the glide scope for the VASI, and was good to go. There was about a 50 degree gusty cross-wind, which was entertaining. Made a good approach, but floated a bit, which made the cross-wind truly suck. But kept it straight on the float and put her down with no drift at touchdown.

There was much confusion with taxing — I didn’t know where the communications shop was, and neither did the tower. Some circling around taxiways and I was finally where I needed to be. Or so I thought. Turns out I did find the communications shop, but he wanted to work in the big maintenance hanger. So I had to start up 591 and taxi over to the hanger. Unfortunately, the engine in 591 really doesn’t like being shut down and then started up shortly afterward. Give it 15-30 minutes to cool down and it’s happy. 5 – 10 minutes makes it mad. So it took a couple tries to get it fired for taxi. Oh well, so I thought.

* Brian now chills out in the Columbus FBO, happy they have wireless internet. Actually gets some work done. Gets call that I should come over to the plane. I think I’m done and can go home. Ha! *

Turns out the altitude encoder for the transponder is nuked and needs to be replaced. Of course, he doesn’t have one in stock. Call up Bob (BMG owner) and get him and the tech talking. They decide to order a new one and have it overnighted. I figure 50/50 I get to do this again tomorrow (which is true). Ok, so we’re done now, I preflight very carefully, because I have this bad mojo feeling. Everything looks ok, so I hop in and go through the startup checklist. Get to the “turn the key to crank engine” step and discover that the battery doesn’t have enough charge to crank the engine. At this point, I should probably talk about the electrical system in small planes. So, it turns out lead acid batteries are heavy and unreliable. So the engine on a plane does not fire its plugs from power from the battery (as a car does), but from magnetos (2 independent sets, wired to 2 independent sets of spark plugs per cylinder). Almost every airplane engine can run with the battery totally removed without any problem at all. Because of this and the fact that the engine normally runs at medium to high power, the battery in a plane is small and weak – just enough to deal with preflight and starting the plane. The rest of the time, the alternator is providing power for accessories and the mags are firing the spark plugs. Anyway, back to the story at hand. Since I had cranked the starter to try to restart to taxi (and then didn’t get to cruise power or run the engine long) and the tech had to run the electrical system to work on the transponder, the battery drained. So when I hit the starter, there wasn’t enough left to turn the engine over. The tech offered to hand prop the plane, which I tried to politely let him out of (hand propping a tricycle gear plane isn’t as safe as a tail dragger because the prop is lower). He insists, and we go through the hand prop sequence. I swear to god, it fired on the first try. It’s never fired on the first try when using the starter, but an 80 year old man pulls on the prop and it fires the first time.

Flight back to BMG was uneventful, and the wind was straight down 35, so the landing was boring. Ran into Bob on the way into the FBO and he asked if I’d fly 591 back tomorrow. I’m a sucker for free flight time, so I’ll get to repeat the task tomorrow afternoon.

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).

Today was a beautiful day in Indiana, and due to a cancellation yesterday, the plane was available from 3:00 on, and with sundown now after 8:15, that’s plenty of time for a cross-country flight. Illinois was looking pretty gusty due to the front that is moving in (which will make Indiana pretty windy tomorrow), so I needed a new flight route. I figured one good stop was Muncie, which is the home of the FAA designated examiner that will do my checkride. So it makes sense to 1) know how to find the airport and 2) have landed there before checkride day. With the winds not too bad, that was borderline on the 2.1 hours of cross-country flight I had left. So I needed another stop, which was 50 miles from both Bloomington and Muncie. Willis suggested Crawfordsville, since it has a runway that was reasonably aligned with today’s wind, not too busy, and wouldn’t charge a landing fee. Crawfordsville sounded reasonable to me, so the course was KBMG -> KCFJ -> KMIE -> GEZ -> KBMG. GEZ is a VOR west of Indianapolis — useful in this case for getting from Muncie back to B’ton without getting close to Indianapolis International’s class C airspace.

591 made two trips to Muncie today – the first was by one of the other students going up to do his checkride. Due to a scheduling snafu up there, he was a bit late getting back, but no big deal at all – I still got out well before 3:00. All three legs of the trip were completely uneventful. A bit bouncy, but nothing to cause any problems. I made 1 bad approach and 2 not-so-smooth landings (the bad approach led to a good landing, of course). I think my slightly rough landing at B’ton was because for once in my life I flew a perfect 3 degree approach angle and carried a bit too much power into flare because while I reduced it, I wasn’t used to having that much power on in the first place. Usually I seem to make a slightly steep approach, so I’m way low on power crossing the threshold, so there isn’t much more to remove during the landing flare. Such is life – I’ll take the smooth approach and work on the landings as time goes on :).

And now, the geeky maps from the GPS:

 

After way too many attempts, I finally was able to fly my first solo cross-country flight. The flight was basically the same route that I did for my second cross-country flight with Willis — Bloomington to Mattoon, IL to Lawrenceville, IL back to Bloomington. The only major difference is that I wouldn’t be making an approach at Terre Haute to practice instruments. Figuring out winds aloft was going to be a bit tricky, as they were all over the place in the winds aloft prediction charts and rapidly changing throughout the day. Since I was going to be using VOR and GPS navigation for most of the flight (using the charts to ensure I knew where I was in case of instrument failure), it wasn’t a huge deal. But it meant that I was going to be guessing a little bit about how fast I would be going. Of course, these days there’s a GPS to give you accurate ground speeds, so that isn’t too big of a deal either. An almost complete route is below. I forgot to turn my handheld GPS on while preparing to depart at Lawrenceville (the handheld is basically backup for complete airplane power failure and (mostly) to make pretty pictures when I get back. Primary GPS navigation is from the unit mounted in the airplane).

Takeoff from BMG was uneventful. Just enough traffic to make me happy BMG has a tower to sort everything out, but not enough to cause any major delays. I initially planned on cruising to Mattoon at 3000′ MSL, low enough to avoid the assigned altitude restrictions and (hopefully) avoid some of the winds aloft. However, turbulence was moderate from about 2800′ to 3500′ and I didn’t want a bumpy ride the whole time. I climbed to 4500′ and found perfectly smooth air. Winds were a bit stronger than I hoped, but I still made reasonable time out to Mattoon. Mattoon had a couple people in the traffic pattern, so the choice of runway was easy. My timing was almost perfect and I was able to fit right in between traffic that was doing pattern work. Made a fairly good landing in Mattoon and taxied over to get my logbook signed (on solo cross-countries, students must get signatures that they went somewhere). Thought about stopping for lunch at the restaurant on the airport, but wanted to do some pattern work when I was done with the cross-country flight, so decided to press on. Before I departed, two planes clearly flying together departed from a different runway (there was no wind, so while everyone was landing on 11, people seemed to be taking off in the direction they were heading). No biggie – everyone was talking on the radio and no chaos was apparent. Anyway, after I departed, one of them called back saying they had a fuel leak and needed assistance. They got down ok, but the fire department was called out. Kinda glad I took off *before* they reported the problem.

Flight from Mattoon to Lawrenceville was uneventful, although I again had trouble finding smooth air. I was hoping to fly the leg at 3500′, but ended up having to climb to 5500′, which is a bit of a hike for a Cessna 150, especially when the leg is only 50 NM long! There was absolutely no one in the traffic pattern (or anywhere near the airport) when I was within 15 NM, which is unusual for KLWV — even at 10:00pm last night there were people in the traffic pattern. There was no defined runway in use (KLWV is not towered) as winds were variable at under 5 knots and UNICOM didn’t seem to care which runway was used. With little course change, I could make a direct approach to runway 18, so I decided to do that. Flying a final approach without a traffic pattern is always interesting because you don’t have the pattern references for setting up, so you kind of have to guess how far out you are and extrapolate that into what configuration you should have the plane in at that time. I like practicing them because it’s more of a challenge than flying a pattern and being able to land on a direct approach can save oodles of time if the winds are favorable to it. I made a nice approach and landing on 18, although I floated it just a tiny bit on flare.

Finally caught some calm air at 3500′ on the final leg of my journey, so I didn’t have to climb to 5500′ for the leg back to Bloomington. The traffic pattern at Bloomington was nuts, as there were a bunch of planes and the winds were strong enough that the light planes wanted to land on 24 and the heavier birds wanted to land on 35. I ended up flying an interesting turn onto downwind, which was extended out a ways for a landing on 35 (my favorite runway….). Made a reasonably decent cross-wind landing, but nothing to write home about. On the other hand, I was back in Bloomington and the plane still worked, so it was a successful cross-country flight.

The winds were light enough that any of the runways were usable and it was a beautiful day out, so I did 3 more landings at BMG to work on my short and soft field approaches. I tried to make the first one an approach on 24, which turned out ok, but it’s hard to do a decent short field touch and go due to the obstructions at the end of the takeoff end of 24 — leaving with flaps down much isn’t an option, so if you float any, you can’t take off without taxing back. Did a short field and soft field landing on 35 after that. The short field I hit pretty much spot on, which was nice because I normally don’t do well with any cross-wind and flaps down all the way. Made a nice adjustment at the end and hit the runway pretty close to where I wanted. Still need to work on power control for those landings so that I don’t float as much (I don’t float much on short fields, but I need to not float at all). The soft fields didn’t go as well. I kept the nose up after landing (good) but floated both of them too much. Something to work on with Willis during the simulated checkride (whenever that is).

All that is left before I’m ready for my FAA checkride is a second cross-country flight (at least 2.1 hours long) and a practice check ride or two (which must include at least .5 hours of simulated instrument flying). Getting closer!

Finished off my night training with a flight to Lawrenceville airport (52NM from KBMG). Due to reasonably strong winds aloft, the flight to Lawrenceville was slow — at times we were going less than 60 knots. The tailwind on the way home helped a bit, and we made pretty good return time. Overall, the flight was uneventful. Had a bad takeoff at KBMG — didn’t deal with the cross-wind as well as I would have liked (it was almost 90 degrees to the runway), but at least I know what I did wrong and how to improve for next time. Landing at Lawrenceville was trivial – there was almost no traffic in the pattern and they have a nice four light VASI to provide glide-scope information. Landing in Bloomington was also pretty easy – the wind was out of the west at less than 5 knots, so landing on 24 was pretty simple. We probably could have landed on 17, but 24 was just as quick. 35 would have been faster, but I really don’t like landing at night without a VASI. 35 doesn’t have a VASI, but it does have an ILS glide scope antenna. Unfortunately, 591 doesn’t have a glide scope indicator in its instrument pack, so that isn’t exactly helpful to me. So 24 it was. Made a nice adjustment for a bit of wind right on the runway and kissed the runway smooth as could be.

It was amazing how far we could see last night. Once we climbed to 3500′ on the way home, we could see Bloomington, from almost 50 miles away. It’s also amazing how hard it is to identify landmarks at night. I don’t think I would be able to navigate based on pilotage at night. Without instruments, I’d pretty well be lost. I really hope I can do some night flying in New Mexico this summer — the sky is supposed to be amazing from altitude in the desert.

Night flight requirements are now met – I’ve accumulated 3.3 hours of dual instruction time, made 10 landings, and a cross-country flight.

Tonight was my first attempt at flying at night. Many countries prohibit pilots from flying at night without instrument ratings, but not only is the United States not one of those countries, they require you to do 3 hours of dual training at night to receive your private pilots certificate. Tonight was some maneuvers work over the lake (read: black, super dark — it’s a new moon right now), followed by a bunch of pattern work, as I need 10 landings for my certificate.

The weather was beautiful – temperature was hovering around 50 degrees, light winds on the surface, clear skies, and no moon. Got there a bit before 7:30 so I could preflight with some light, then waiting for it to get dark. Another quick preflight before we took off and we were almost ready to roll. Then came problem 1 – our landing light and starboard nav light were both out. The plane had just been in for its 100 hour overhaul, so it was probably ground connections working their way loose. Bob (the owner) was out, and figured out where the wires were loose. So in the plane we go – a little late, but no problems. Off we go to taxi to 17 and the landing light starts flashing on us. This isn’t so good, so back to the ramp we go. Bob thankfully is still there and has a spare bulb, so a quick bulb change and we were off (with a much brighter landing light — Woo!). That was the last of our issues for the night, and not a big deal, but it did mean that we didn’t get off the ground until 9:00.

Maneuvers over the lake went well enough, and it was amazing to see how the darkness eliminates any horizon at night. Lots of talk between Willis and I about emergency landing strategies at night. Not nearly as easy as during the day, since you 1) don’t know where the ground is exactly and 2) can’t see what’s down there. After some fairly reasonable maneuvers, back to the pattern we went. Landings were all fairly reasonable. I was slowing up too much on approach – need to work on that some more. There was almost no surface wind, so we ran approaches into all 4 runways, which was nice. Of course, I had never made an approach onto 6 in the daytime, so that was a bit entertaining. Blew one approach into 24 because I didn’t run downwind long enough, had a short base, and was way too high on final. Since aborting with 40 flap towards the west is a bad idea with the hill at the end of the runway, I aborted early and did a quick trip around the pattern rather than try to save the landing. One of the landings onto 17 was without cabin lights, which was a little freaky at first, but nothing too bad. Interesting flying at night with no instruments and no light other than the radio numbers in the cabin. The next landing was without cabin or landing light, which was even more interesting, since you had to judge based on runway lights how far off the ground you are. It’s not bad on 17, since you can float a *long* way in a C-150 and still be ok, but it would suck on a short runway.

Definitely learned a lot tonight and can’t wait until I get to do my night cross-country. I hope the skies are clear on Monday!

Went over to BMG this morning to try to catch Willis and take the practice FAA knowledge test he gives all his students before he’ll sign off in their logbooks to let them take the FAA knowledge test. Did well enough to get the sign-off. Weather sucked, and I didn’t feel like working on my thesis proposal, so I made an appointment to go up to Greenwood and take the real deal. Didn’t ace it, but did well enough that it won’t be an issue. One less thing to do before I have my private pilot certificate.

That’s right, after almost a month of having bad weather in my attempt to fly my second dual cross-country flight, I finally got up in the air today. According to the 1200Z (7:00am EST) TAF (1)for Bloomington Airport, it was going to be good visibility (6+ miles), with a cloud ceiling at 3500′ and winds under 6 knots. The ceiling was a bit low for enjoyment purposes, but well within what we can fly. Can’t pass up smooth air with low winds, so off we went.

Usually, the instructors at BMG don’t have student pilots file VFR flight plans for cross-country trips because we don’t fly in remote areas and the staff is going to initiate a search if we’re late in the rental anyway, so why risk forgetting to close a plan and starting a real search? Keep in mind it’s hard to be more than 2 miles from a human being in this part of the country, and this time of year, it’s really easy to spot the plane sitting in the middle of the field. Anyway, I’m going to be flying in the middle of nowhere this summer, since I’m going to be in New Mexico. I made Willis walk me through filing a flight plan for this trip, which was quite simple. But now I know what I’m doing, so I’m less likely to screw it up out west. With flight plan filed, we headed out to fly.

Today’s flight was Bloomington (KBMG) to Mattoon, IL (KMTO) via Terre Haute (KHUF), then direct to Lawrenceville, IL (KLWV), then direct back to Bloomington. So we headed out from BMG towards Terre Haute, climbing to 3000′ MSL. I messed up my VOR radials when I wrote them down, and was off by 180 degrees for the radial to fly on on the first half of the trip, when we were on Hoosier (the VOR at Bloomington). No biggie, and quickly fixed, but something to remember for next time. The flight was absolutely smooth for the trip to KHUF.

KHUF has an approach radar system, so I flew an ASR approach under simulated instrument conditions so that I would know what to do should I ever somehow end up in instrument weather conditions. Basically, the guy sitting in the approach room in the tower reads of compass directions and altitudes to guide you onto the runway, correcting your drift (or bad flying) by changing the compass heading you should be flying. I did ok, but was having trouble holding altitude and heading at the same time. I have about a 5 degree drift either way, which is not good for instrument conditions. I need to work on this with Willis in the plane sometime — I still need .5 hours of simulated instrument, so that won’t be a problem. The approach controller was excellent at guiding me to the runway – I was right where I needed to be when I was at decision height. Since we didn’t need to land at Huffman, we aborted the approach at that point and headed out to Mattoon.

Once we were out of the traffic pattern, Willis pointed out one of the reasons I was having so much trouble holding a course heading. 591’s directional gyro seemed to be losing accuracy when we were running at less than cruise power. The suction gauge was reading normal, so it must be something in the line after that gauge. With the foggles on, I can’t see the magnetic compass in 591 because it’s at the top of the windshield, so I couldn’t see this happening. Once we were cruising again, it seemed to hold course much better, and we were more careful to adjust to match the magnetic compass at regular intervals for the rest of the trip. We also found out that 591’s transponder seemed to not be sending it’s altitude information back to the radar center. They could see our transponder code, but not the Mode C (altitude) data. Hopefully, this can be fixed before my second solo cross-country flight, as I’d like to fly into Urbana, which would mean going into class C airspace, where I can’t get by with just a transponder. For those wondering why this wasn’t noticed at, say, the beginning of the flight, transponder codes are really only used when on instrument flight or when in Class B/C airspace (big airports, with commercial flights). 591 rarely goes there, so it just hasn’t been used since the last person flew an ASR approach in Terre Haute.

The first half of the flight from Terre Haute to Mattoon was uneventful, and was mainly spent chatting about planes with Willis. About half way to Matttoon, I went to switch from the Terre Haute VOR to the Mattoon VOR only to discover that there was no signal from Mattoon. Some quick checking showed we had the numbers right, so we had an unexpected problem. We called up flight services and found out that a NOTAM (2) had been issued that Mattoon VOR was off the air. Thankfully, the NOTAM had been issued after we left from Bloomington, so it wasn’t something I had missed when getting my pre-flight briefing this morning. Since we clearly weren’t going to use the Mattoon VOR to guide us to the airport, we got some GPS navigation time in during the flight. The airport was soon in sight, and I made a reasonable approach and landing. Because of our approach point, the pattern was a base with a 45 degree turn to final (instead of the normal 90 degree turn one might expect). It all worked out and I made a reasonably smooth approach and landing. The mattoon runway is more narrow than the others I’ve landed on, which didn’t seem to cause me any issues (which is good, because that’s one of the places you can get in trouble regarding depth perception).

From Mattoon, we headed out to Lawrenceville. Lawrenceville only has a terminal VOR, so we had to use some dead reckoning and GPS navigation to get us from Mattoon to the range of the terminal VOR (about 1/2 way there). Flight was basically uneventful and was more chatting about planes with Willis. He spent a good deal of that time trying to convince me I should buy a classic fabric skinned plane when I finally get a real job. I’m going to enjoy plane shopping, I think. Lawrenceville is the home of the Vincennes University aviation school, and the pattern was nice and full of student pilots. I had a little more trouble with the radio than I would have liked (I keep stuttering when I speak – need to stop that), but the pattern work, approach, and landing were all pretty good. Since everyone was doing touch-and-goes, we did the same. We needed to leave in basically the opposite direction we took off, so around the pattern we went and off we went.

Since the pattern was pretty full and we didn’t stop, I didn’t get a chance to get my bearings, refold my map for the next leg, or get the directions for the next leg until we were a bit away from the airport. Next thing I know, Willis turns off the GPS and tunes the VOR receiver to dead air so I’m back on pilotage and dead reckoning. Unfortunately, I didn’t know *exactly* where I was at the time, so that made life a bit tricky. I knew I was on course, so that limited it a bit. Unfortunately, I drifted a bit while trying to pinpoint my location on the map, so it took a bit to get things worked out. Soon, I found a landmark, got back on course, and was able to fly from there to Bloomington without any issue. But lesson learned – always be ready to lose the electronic navigation aids and have to revert back to map and compass.

For some unknown reason, I was way too high on approach to Bloomington. Even more weird since I flew two approaches at foreign airports without problem. But get back home and screw it up. I entered the pattern a bit before midpoint on downwind and was at pattern altitude at that point. I was a bit fast (but only by 5 knots or so) parallel to the end of the runway, still at the right altitude. I think I just didn’t begin the descent fast enough on the last bit of downwind, then flew a really short base for some reason (I drifted too far during the last part of the downwind), leaving me too high after I turned on final. I lowered the flaps to 40 degrees and flew a steep approach (god bless those Cessnas) to correct. Ended up hitting the IFR touchdown point on the runway, which is a bit long for my usual approach, but no biggie). There was a bit of a cross-wind, which I corrected for without too much issue. Made a nice one-wheel landing, kept her straight while the other wheel came down, and we were home. I wasn’t happy with the approach, but I was really happy with the landing. The cross-wind caught me a bit by surprise because it was the first wind I had dealt with all day and I wasn’t as ready for it as I should have been (hence the short base). But even with 40 flaps acting as a giant sail, I still made a nice smooth landing. There’s hope for my cross-wind landings yet.

All in all, a good flight. Learned a lot, and was able to correct some things I didn’t like about my flying the last cross-country. I now get to do two solo cross-country flights. One will be KBMG -> KMTO -> KLWV -> KBMG, so basically the same thing I did minus the Terre Haute approach. The next one gets to be my choice of destination. I’m hoping I can head to Urbana to have a quick lunch with Anne and then fly back. The time and distance both look like they’re almost spot-on for what I’ll have left. I also need to do some night flying, which I’m hoping to do next week, as there’s a new moon and Willis likes doing them when it’s *really* dark outside. After that, it’s just practice for my checkride and then do the checkride. Woo!

(1) TAF: Terminal Aerodrome Forecast. A report giving the weather prediction for the next 24 hours for the area within 5 miles of an airport. They are updated 4 times a day, at 0000Z, 0600Z, 1200Z, and 1800Z (7:00pm EST, 1:00am EST, 7:00am EST, and 1:00pm EST). They include things like predicted cloud cover and ceilings, visibility, precipitation, etc

(2) NOTAM: Notice to airman – a notice from the FAA that something is out of the norm. Things like hardware (VORs, runway lights, runways, etc.) being out of service, flight service stations being down, etc. are all published via NOTAM for the period that the issue exists. Other NOTAMs include flight restrictions, like listing the prohibited airspace that is setup when the president is out and about the country.