26.Apr.2017
Flight 5
1.4 flight hours
1.6 instructor hours

What we did today:

•  Started off with a faked engine failure right after take-off. We discuss abort plans all the time but going through the motions in the air makes it a lot more real. Turns out that there are few to no good options near the Gainesville airport. I asked Rick what would he would do and the response was put down into one of a few athletic fields. None of them are big enough to land on so you're guaranteed to wind up in the trees so the trick is to hit the ground with the lowest possible forward speed. Like I said...it's a lot more interesting when you have to actually execute a plan.
• Lots of steep turns.
• Power off stalls. This is the kind of stall that happens when you're landing so it's good to know how to not hit the ground if you screw up on final. What I didn't realize until the post-flight debrief is that I not only need to know how to get out of this kind of stall but how to got into one correctly for my practical exam.
• Landings.
• Unusual attitude recovery. In this exercise you close your eyes and put your head down then try and execute a standard turn. Open your eyes and...not a normal turn. I was nose down and turned at almost 45 degrees instead of 30. The basic idea is that it's possible to get turned around and be pointing up, down, left, or right instead of straight and level and you have to quickly get thee plane back where it belongs.
• The reality of uncontrolled airports. Gainesville has 4 runways (two pieces of concrete but 4 runways...each slab is two runways). Normally you take off and land into the wind. If the wind is out of the west, you'd use runway 29 and if it was out of the east, runway 11. Easy peasy. Turns out 'uncontrolled' means 'do your own thing. You can take off from any runway and land on any runway. Rick says he's been there on some days and every runway is being used for every purpose...bottom line, you have to pay attention to the radio chatter (which, by the way, isn't required) and REAL close attention to the skies...it really messes up your day if you take off into somebody who is landing.

What worked today:

• Last flight I could hold altitude on steep right turns but not on left. Today it was just the opposite. Maybe next time it'll all come together.
• I spent more time looking out the window. I still want to watch the instruments; I think this is probably from flying simulators on my PC for so long.

What dinna woik:

• Working in the pattern. We did 2 touch and go's and one full stop landing at the end of the session. I was having a hell of a time figuring out where to go and when and how high and how fast. Gainesville has two runways at an angle (pretty common) and I'd get flipped on which runway we were to land on. More of that 3D spacial thing and, according to Rick, I was getting fatigued by that time (and I agree).

What I need to work on:

• Memorize landing altitudes, speeds, throttle settings, and flap settings at each point in the pattern. I probably need a day of just doing landings and coming in from different directions and altitudes.
• Altitude/speed/heading consistency. If I'm supposed to be at some A/S/H, then I need to stay there. If I need to gain/loose altitude, I need to be comfortable making the changes necessary.

Prep for next session:

• Right now, I'm tapped. I'll probably review my notes and try and set a few more basic settings into memory.

Planning:

• I think it's about time for me to have a conversation with Rick about my progress. This is so very different from anything I've done before so it's hard for me to get a sense of my progress. Am I making reasonable advances or am I untrainable? (and I feel both ways, sometimes at the same time).