08.Apr.2017

Flight 1
1.2 flight hours
1.6 instructor hours
Cessna 162 Skycatcher.

Pretty little sport plane. A bit cramped but I like small things (sport cars, motorcycles).
I thought today I'd sit in the right seat and take over the controls once we were in the air.
I thought wrong. The only things I didn't do was talk on the comms and land the plane...more on that later.
Did the pre-flight. Man, there's a ton of stuff to check before you do anything on a plane.
Got in and did the pre-engine start checklist.
Started the engine...holy crap...shit's getting real.
Rick, my instructor, did the radio chatter. This is an uncontrolled airport (KGVL)  so you don't HAVE to talk on the radio but it's considered good practice and damned smart.
Taxiing is a challenge in the Skycatcher but we made it to the runway without hitting anything or going off into the grass.
At this point you do a pre-takeoff checklist to make sure everything is working and decide how to abort if the SHTF.
Onto the runway...power up...roll roll roll...more fun trying to keep the plane in the middle of the runway (NO steering wheel) and all of a sudden we're off the ground!
The sky was clear and blue, low winds on the ground. All good. The exciting addition today was thermals! You're going along nice and easy and the plane suddenly shot up 50 feet or one wing takes a dive. Kind of like a roller coaster except you can't see the track! Small planes feel the winds much more than larger planes. Kinda scary but kept the day from getting boring.

We did:

• A straight out climb to our cruising altitude
• Straight and level. Lots of updrafts today so S&L was...interesting
• Hand off and exchange control of the plane between me and the instructor
• 180 left turns
• 180 right turns
• Climbs
• Descents
• Climbs with turns
• Descents with turns
• Turn to a heading
• Slow speed descents
• Back to KGVL and landing. I screwed this one up since I had the plane way too high. Rick did something called a slip which causes the plane to drop a lot, very fast...wheeeeee.

Not a surprise:

• The takeoff and general maneuvering was about what I expected. I've used MS Flight Simulator since version 1.0. The big difference is that today I had actual controls, you can feel the plane move under you, and the 'weather' was real. In some ways this was easier than sims.

Surprises:

• How much time you can spend not looking out the windows and it's OK. You're flying along and need to do some checklist so you basically let go of the controls, go head down, find the list, and do it...holy crap it's like texting and driving but in 3 dimensions and IT'S OK!
• Lake Lanier from the air is pretty cool. The lake is about 10' below normal level. From the ground the mud banks are just ugly. From the air, it looks like the lake has a red outline so it's actually kind of pretty.
• Radio towers...from the ground they're pretty easy to see sticking up into the sky. From the air, they blend into the ground and are REALLY hard to see. There is one in the area we were flying that is so tall we were actually at an altitude we'd have hit it if we didn't climb a bit. Kind of a whack on the side of the head that you can git kilt pretty quick if you screw up.
• Climbing. When you pitch the plane up to climb, you can no longer see what's in front of you. This is actually not a big deal; you're supposed to make sure there's nothing around you when you make a maneuver but still...you can't see! Imagine if every time you changed lanes in a car, your windshield when opaque.
• Getting back to the airport...WharDaFuh is it? Getting into the pattern, which way is 'downwind'? This is part of the information overload bit below.

What I sucked at:

•  Throttle control. The throttle is a knob sticking out of the control panel (dashboard). Pull it back, engine slow down. Push it forward, engine goes faster. Just like a gas pedal or a throttle control stick/lever but on a vertical surface. My brain, however, said, the 'more you can see of the shaft the knob is connected to means faster engine speed'. I kept flipping 'go faster' and 'go slower'...durrrr...just remember 'balls to the wall' and pretend it's not a knob but a lever.
• What was a total bust for me was the information overload; 2 control panels, the stick, rudders, throttle, engine richness, 'out the window', what speed you use for takeoff, ascents, descents, cruising, landing, turning...what engine RPM for each...what controls speed and altitude based on what you're doing, voice inputs from Rick. I was, as they say, behind the plane pretty much the whole flight.
• The other thing that is really not very intuitive is that the altimeter is in feet above mean sea level but you need to think about feet above ground level. Hmmm...I need to be 1000 AGL in the approach pattern but the runway was at 1450 feet so I really need to be at 2450 feet MSL. And this is just in an area that's pretty flat. If I'd flown to an airport that was 4000 MSL, I'd need to know that bit of information and make sure I was at 5000 MSL in the pattern there.
• Luckily Rick is a great instructor and was able to give me inputs when I needed them without freaking out; not sure I could do that.

One thing that's going to be interesting is to see how my short term and long term memory react to this training. I tend not to rely on my memory for tasks I don't do often. When I was programming, I had most of the key code elements in my head, rather like an alphabet or dictionary. On the other hand, my 'to do' lists are all committed to paper. When flying, checklists are printed for you to use but the rest of the stuff you just gotta know.

Next steps

1. Go back and review the ground school training I completed over the last few days. Now that I've been in the cockpit, I know what I want/need to review and get stuffed into long term hard coded memory so next time I'm a bit more in control.
2. Schedule more flights (done, 2 next week).
3. Review the three aircraft display manuals (primary flight control, multi-function display, and transponder)
4. Try and sleep tonight. I'm pretty jazzed about the whole thing.

Total flight time 1.2 hours, logbook updated.