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.

Flew my first cross-country flight today (note: not a solo – Willis was in the plane with me). Route was KBMG (Bloomington/Monroe Airport) to KRID (Richmond, IN airport) by way of Franklin, IN, then KRID to KOKK (Kokomo) direct, then KOKK to KBMG by way of North Salem. The two non-direct legs were to avoid the Camp Atterbury restricted airspace and Indianapolis International class C airspace, respectively. Total distance was 257 miles and total time in flight was a bit over 4 hours, although that includes two stops (Richmond and Kokomo) to warm up a bit before heading on our way.

Weather was reasonable, but cold. Winds aloft were 11 knots from 230 degrees at 300′ and 15 knots from 300 degrees. We cruised the first leg at 3500′ MSL and the second two at 3000′ MSL since we didn’t want to climb to 4500′ and fight an even less favorable wind. At 3000′, the outside air temperature was about 15 degrees Fahrenheit, and the heat in the Cessna 150 isn’t up to that fight, so we could see our breathe for a good chunk of the flight. Visibility was probably 20-25 miles when we started, but slowly got worse as the day went on. It was probably only slightly above 10 miles when we arrived back in Bloomington. Sky was clear for most of the flight, so we at least had some sun to try to warm up the plane. Indiana is still a bit dead, since it is winter and all, but the view was pretty impressive the whole flight. It’s amazing how many trees we have in this state.

Willis has his students do the first cross country flight by pilotage and dead reckoning, meaning no radio navigation and no GPS to help us on our way. Indiana has a decent number of roads and towns, so it’s not too bad – about every 5 minutes we had a landmark to verify our position. And the winds were calm enough that most of my estimates were +/- 1 minute arrival time. There’s no center console between pilot and copilot in the C-150, so it is a bit cramped trying to juggle sectional maps, a wiz-wheel, and the flight log sheets. It took some trial and error before I had a decent handle on the juggling act, but I was pretty comfortable with it in the end. I was worried about being able to do calculations on the wiz-wheel, as I can never figure out the complicated ones when I’m trying to practice with it. But since all I needed was basic time/distance/speed conversion and wind correction angles, it wasn’t too bad at all. And navigation by pilotage (ground reference) was much easier than I expected. After four hours in the air, however, I was extremely happy to spot the airport, and even happier to be able to make a direct approach from the north onto runway 17, skipping the whole time-consuming pattern thing. The warmth of the FBO was calling to me and 17 has dual color VASI lights, so it’s a pretty hard approach to screw up, even when not flying a downwind or base leg.

I’m not yet an expert in Google Earth, so I don’t know how to make perdy lines, but here’s a fairly simple map of our intended route. I didn’t have my GPS running while I was in the plane, so I don’t have a more accurate flight path. Maybe next time.

A couple of important lessons were learned during the flight, which I will hopefully remember in the future:

• Always write down the runway configuration at airports you don’t know by heart when preflight planning. It’s kind of embarrassing to have to announce over the radio “7 miles to the southwest for a landing to the southwest” because you can’t remember if KRID’s runway is 23 or 24 (it’s 24, by the way).
• Woven running gloves do not have enough grip to easily use a wiz-wheel.
• N66591 cruises at about 110 *MPH*, not knots. Recalculating wind correction while trying to climb out of KBMG because you screwed this up is a pain.
• If you don’t see chocks on the tarmac, look for them hanging on the fence before asking the FBO manager or he looks at you like you’re blind.

Today was absolutely beautiful – clear skies, visibility of 10 miles, winds from 290 degrees at 10 knots. I was a little worried about the wind, as it’s close to the envelope of what Willis set as the wind maximums for my solo flights. I tracked down Willis and he said it sounded within reason to him, so off I went. I headed out to the west, where there are some good fields for doing ground reference maneuvers.

Once about 20 miles out, I worked on turns about a point. The wind was a little weird, but I think I made reasonable enough circles. On the trip back, I worked on power-on stalls some more. Much more comfortable with them than when I first started working on stalls. I think most of it has to do with my better use of the rudder and much more coordinated turning. Yay me! Worked in three touch-and-goes and the final full stop landing on runway 24, which were much smoother than my previous cross-wind landings.

I took my hand held GPS up with me today to record my flight and make perdy pictures. It reads altitude by pressure rather than 3 dimensional fix, so it isn’t as accurate as the properly installed GPS in 66591. However, it does have the nice property of making it easy to download tracks onto my laptop.

Flight profile from the top. The airport is on the right, the field with the turns about the point on the left.
Flight profile from the side. This view is from the North, so the airport is on the left and my ground reference work on the right.

[update:] A couple people have asked what the colors mean. They signify the current rate of climb. Positive climb is blue, negative climb is red, and level flight is white. The color intensity is stronger with increasing rates of climb.

I apparently forgot to write a journal entry for flight 22. A week later, and I’m sure not going to remember now.

This morning was an absolutely beautiful flying day — 40 degrees, high pressure, 5 knot winds out of the North, and turbulence-free air. The only downside was that visibility was right at student solo minimums (5 miles), due to fog that formed after last night’s rain. Thankfully, the visibility remained on the right side of the 5 mile limit, so I never got in trouble with the visibility. But it was kind of spooky looking as the sun was coming over the horizon.

Flew out to the west for 15-20 miles, both to enjoy flying in the brilliantly smooth air and to get far away from Bloomington airspace so that there was minimal chance of traffic while I was working on steep turns. The haze was sitting fairly low to the ground, but I climbed to 3500′ to make sure that I was well clear of the haze and could see anyone pulling out of the haze and into my flight path (again, steep turns, as people don’t expect a plane to do that). The steep turns when much better than the first time i worked on them alone. I still had some trouble controlling speed, but it was overall much improved. I’ll probably work on one or two more turns the next time I”m out, then back to other fun things to work on (like turns about a point and rectangular ground tracks). It’s amazing how far I’ve managed to come since I started flying — I remember when controlling altitude and speed was difficult and trimming was near impossible. Now, I don’t even think about any of the three.

Four more hours of solo flight around Bloomington and it’s on to cross country flights!

Today was clear up to 12000′, a bit chilly, and surface winds of 8 knots out of the southeast. What I didn’t know was that winds at about 1800′ MSL and above were over 50 MPH. It made going where I wanted kind of entertaining. Most of the flight was over the lakes, working on my slow flight skills, Slow flight involves, as the name implies, flying very slowly — close to the stall speed of the plane. The plane’s airspeed was about 55 MPH, and the wind speed was definitely faster than that. So when heading directly into the wind, my ground speed was, um, negative. So when I looked out the window at the ground, I got to see the ground going the wrong way, which was a little disturbing. Made a couple nice landings at the end, so that makes me happy. Still floating a bit more than I would like, but nothing too horrible.

UPDATE: Changed title to be flight 20 after realizing I skipped the flight on Jan 16.

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…