12.May.2017
Flight 9
1.3 flight hours
1.7 instructor hours
3 lessons in one week! That's the goal and this is the first week we've been able to make all the lessons.

What we did today:

• Steep turns
• Power on/departure stalls
• Power off/landing stalls
• Climbing turns
• Descending turns
• Take-off/landings
• I've looked at clouds from both sides now. It was very hazy today and there were a lot of low clouds. Staying out of them and away from them was kind of interesting. We had to abort the training because the cloud deck got too thick and visibility dropped too low because of the haze.

What worked today:

• Attitude...flying is still stressful, but today the stress was just with all of the inputs instead of worrying about <insert list of worries here>. I'm a bit over 10 hours in now. Rick says the shortest sport pilot training he's ever completed was 38 hours including the check ride. I had a great conversation with my son about his training and that helped me gain an understanding of the work required to learn the basics. I think I have now accepted and internalized that flying is not easy and it just takes time.
• ALMOST nailed steep turns. When turning, you're supposed to stay at the same altitude all the time. When you're tested for Sport Pilot, you're allowed a 200' change. Private Pilot allows only 100'. The turns weren't perfect but I stayed inside 100'!
• Getting into the pattern today was better. I got the right direction for the right runway first time.

What dinna woik:

• Nothing was horrible today. Nothing was perfect but I wasn't totally screwing anything up.

What I need to work on:

• Rubbing my tummy and patting my head.
• Seriously, what made most things today less than perfect was just data overload. If I kept my speed and altitude under control, say on take-off, I'd wander off course. If I stayed on course, I'd loose track of speed or altitude. 
• Altitude when approaching the field for landing. I tend to delay my descent too long and then have to play catchup near the field which is a bad thing.
• Glide slope management. Today was 'let's be too high and too fast' day. Better than too low and slow but not where I want to be.
• Round out and flare. Rick is letting me have more of the plane on landing but my lack of control over the different landing transitions is making it impossible for him to safely let me land the plane.
• Take-off. Today Rick pretty much stayed off the rudders and let me manage take-off. Getting the feel of how much rudder to put in for how much throttle is a real soft touch kind of thing. I didn't stuff the plane into the woods and stayed closer to the center line so that's a good thing.
• Trim. I have a habit of grabbing the stick and holding on for dear life. The trim control is there to take the pressure off the stick and help you maintain speed. At take-off, I should be climbing at 62 knots. Because I'm not trimming the stick, speed has a tendency to fluctuate between 60 and 70 knots and I spend an inordinate amount of time chasing the speed by moving the stick. If I get close to 62 and trim to that, then my speed should stabilize and fluctuate between 60 and 64 knots and that will be just about right.
• Power off/landing stalls. When the plan stalls at slow speed, you shove the throttle full in, kill carb heat, and pitch to straight. I was dumping the nose below the horizon thinking that was the way to get speed more quickly (you do that in a power on/take-off stall). The thing is that this kind of stall is one that happens most often on landing and lower is not where you want to go! Power up, even with the horizon, build speed quickly, then pitch up to get away from the ground.

Prep for next session:

• Continue typing up the Pilot's Operating Handbook emergency procedures.
• Move forward on ground school. I kind of took a mini-vacation from the book larnin' and need to get back to doing some every day.
• Continue practicing with the iPad and ForeFlight. Managing checklists, airport diagrams, and weather data requires a nearly seamless control of the UI. Today wasn't bad but practice is going to make it better.
• I wish I had a way to practice all the stuff I listed in 'things to work on' but they are all things that involve physically touching and using controls. I'm not even sure if a simulator would help other than maybe with visual clues. The best I can do is visualize each activity and make sure I have the concept down.

Comments:

• Rick is, in addition to letting me have the controls more during take-off and landings, starting to let me do dumb stuff and not immediately correcting me. The idea is to let me figure out I've goofed up and then figure out how to get out of whatever corner I'm in.
• For example, he asked me to execute a 180 degree turn to the left. Cool. I did a 360. He said nothing and asked me to make a 180 to the right. About 3/4 of the way through, some lizard part of my brain kicked in and asked me whaddafuh I was doing. 
• The lesson was 'hear command, think about what the command means, plan out a way to address the command, then execute'. Because Rick has always corrected me at the point I made an error,  I was doing 'hear command, wait for next command'. 
• The workload in a cockpit is intense. I like the way he's gradually letting me pick up tasks as I am able.