Flight School: Day 12
Quite an exciting day, both positively and negatively. My first flight was delayed an hour, so I would have been irked had I not passed out on the couch in the school for that time. We left at 8am in IFR conditions because of the fog. We went to the practice field and practiced using the VOR for navigation. It's not so bad, but can be a bit confusing at times.
My second flight was my second solo flight, after the weather cleared while the wind was dead. I went out to the practice field and practiced some of the maneuvers I'll have to do in the FAA Exam. However, while coming back to Kissimmee I ran into troubles. As I came back to a landmark ATC uses as an entrance into Class Delta airspace, I got stuck because the comm was too congested for me to get a word in edgewise. One of the other instructors decided to scare with me and passed by pretty close on my left side, so I had to bank right and pull a 360 while he went towards the pattern (he had called in earlier, so he wasn't hogging the frequency). He posed absolutely no threat, so don't get upset. He was close by aviation standards, which means he was about 100 yards away. After doing some safe circles and traffic checks over the sandpits while I waited for the comms, I finally got some silence where I got my position out, only to have been interrupted by someone in the pattern. I had to do two more circles. On the final circle ATC acknowledged my position and told me to give my call sign.
My position was announced over the sandpits... I was in mid sentence when out from my left some careless British pilot buzzed within 50/100 feet at the same altitude at full speed while DIVING towards me (when he should have been climbing coming out of the pattern like he was). Now, on the road 50 to 100 feet is some distance, but in the air when two planes can have relative speed in the 200 nm/hr, it's too damn close for my sanity. At that point I let tower know where I was so no surprises could happen while I waited to enter Delta space. The landing was quite pretty.
(Post Script: Later that day the pilot called the flight school to complain. Let me reiterate the situation... we zoomed past each other at a speed of over 200 nautical miles per hour, which is around 220 or more mph, but I don't know the exact conversion factor. I barely had enough time to react to the situation. Yet somehow, this guy manages to SPOT MY TAIL NUMBER as he flys past. How is that possible? Luckily, neither my instructor nor the owner was in to take his call at the time, and he never called back because he knew his argument wasn't worth the electricity used to make the phone call. I did the right thing.)
The third flight was a doozy. We're really close to finishing the FAA maneuvers, so now he's just messing with my head and extending my times. Once we got to the practice field he put the blinders on so I navigated, did slow flight, power on/off stalls, high bank turns, and unusual attitude recovery all BLINDFOLDED. Man, that hurt my stomach, especially when he put us in a negative .5G dive/twist I had to recover from. My right leg hurts from mashing the right rudder for so long (you have to for many reasons, but it's tiring after a while).
My second flight was my second solo flight, after the weather cleared while the wind was dead. I went out to the practice field and practiced some of the maneuvers I'll have to do in the FAA Exam. However, while coming back to Kissimmee I ran into troubles. As I came back to a landmark ATC uses as an entrance into Class Delta airspace, I got stuck because the comm was too congested for me to get a word in edgewise. One of the other instructors decided to scare with me and passed by pretty close on my left side, so I had to bank right and pull a 360 while he went towards the pattern (he had called in earlier, so he wasn't hogging the frequency). He posed absolutely no threat, so don't get upset. He was close by aviation standards, which means he was about 100 yards away. After doing some safe circles and traffic checks over the sandpits while I waited for the comms, I finally got some silence where I got my position out, only to have been interrupted by someone in the pattern. I had to do two more circles. On the final circle ATC acknowledged my position and told me to give my call sign.
My position was announced over the sandpits... I was in mid sentence when out from my left some careless British pilot buzzed within 50/100 feet at the same altitude at full speed while DIVING towards me (when he should have been climbing coming out of the pattern like he was). Now, on the road 50 to 100 feet is some distance, but in the air when two planes can have relative speed in the 200 nm/hr, it's too damn close for my sanity. At that point I let tower know where I was so no surprises could happen while I waited to enter Delta space. The landing was quite pretty.
(Post Script: Later that day the pilot called the flight school to complain. Let me reiterate the situation... we zoomed past each other at a speed of over 200 nautical miles per hour, which is around 220 or more mph, but I don't know the exact conversion factor. I barely had enough time to react to the situation. Yet somehow, this guy manages to SPOT MY TAIL NUMBER as he flys past. How is that possible? Luckily, neither my instructor nor the owner was in to take his call at the time, and he never called back because he knew his argument wasn't worth the electricity used to make the phone call. I did the right thing.)
The third flight was a doozy. We're really close to finishing the FAA maneuvers, so now he's just messing with my head and extending my times. Once we got to the practice field he put the blinders on so I navigated, did slow flight, power on/off stalls, high bank turns, and unusual attitude recovery all BLINDFOLDED. Man, that hurt my stomach, especially when he put us in a negative .5G dive/twist I had to recover from. My right leg hurts from mashing the right rudder for so long (you have to for many reasons, but it's tiring after a while).
posted by Benacor at 11:13 PM
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