Flight School: Day 3
Waking up early for flying is almost as bad as waking up for class. Almost. Even after a 1 hour delay for fog conditions to clear to 3 miles visibility for Visual Flight Reference to take effect for learners.
After the wait, I did the preflight inspection and we were on our way south of Kissimmee. I learned and practiced the 360 around a point, S turns, and rectangles. These maneuvers are pretty much self explanatory from the names, other than the fact that they are much harder than they sound. For the 360, imagine flying around a house (which I did) while holding constant speed, altitude, turn coordination, and bank (with corrections for wind). For S turns... imagine flying in an S shape holding the same criteria. For rectangles... yeah. What makes is harder is the wind changes your ground position by making you drift, and since you have to stay in a path relative to the ground, it's tricky. I wonder what those people were thinking when they looked up and saw me flying around. And when I say "people," I mean "nudists at a nudist colony near Lake Toho."
When we landed I finished the lesson for the next flight, ate lunch, and passed on the couch while listening to heavy metal. It sounds hard, especially for someone like me who doesn't take naps, but I did it. When I woke up at 1:54, 6 minutes before my scheduled flight, it was pouring down rain, so we did some ground school and I learned about traffic patterns and radio communications at different airports. Word of advice: British people stink at flying and don't use American radio standards. Even the French are better, from what I've heard.
Once the weather cleared we went up and did a review of most of the maneuvers I have learned (preflight, takeoff, navigation, turn coordination, rectangles, stalls, slow flight, and slips). Let me be the first to say that slips are horrible. You basically turn the rudder one way, the aileron (wings) the other way, and dive while losing your stomach and about a pint of sweat. If you add too much rudder, you'll flip. If you add too much aileron, you'll spin. No matter what happens, keeping a steady heading is hard, especially when you have to switch which side you slip. I also about lost some body mass through the exit port when doing a power on stall (simulating a takeoff gone wrong) and nearly flipped the plane at 3500 feet. Sure, it's enough time to recover, but I thought we were spinning, which is the worst thing that could happen when flying high. After entering the traffic pattern, we did some touch and gos (that's where you land and then take off again without stopping). Sure, my landings are improving, but I still walk away from that plane with a bad case of swampass.
Next flight is at 10 tomorrow, and it's supposed to be a progress report with the head flight instructor at the school, so I'm hoping to do well.
After the wait, I did the preflight inspection and we were on our way south of Kissimmee. I learned and practiced the 360 around a point, S turns, and rectangles. These maneuvers are pretty much self explanatory from the names, other than the fact that they are much harder than they sound. For the 360, imagine flying around a house (which I did) while holding constant speed, altitude, turn coordination, and bank (with corrections for wind). For S turns... imagine flying in an S shape holding the same criteria. For rectangles... yeah. What makes is harder is the wind changes your ground position by making you drift, and since you have to stay in a path relative to the ground, it's tricky. I wonder what those people were thinking when they looked up and saw me flying around. And when I say "people," I mean "nudists at a nudist colony near Lake Toho."
When we landed I finished the lesson for the next flight, ate lunch, and passed on the couch while listening to heavy metal. It sounds hard, especially for someone like me who doesn't take naps, but I did it. When I woke up at 1:54, 6 minutes before my scheduled flight, it was pouring down rain, so we did some ground school and I learned about traffic patterns and radio communications at different airports. Word of advice: British people stink at flying and don't use American radio standards. Even the French are better, from what I've heard.
Once the weather cleared we went up and did a review of most of the maneuvers I have learned (preflight, takeoff, navigation, turn coordination, rectangles, stalls, slow flight, and slips). Let me be the first to say that slips are horrible. You basically turn the rudder one way, the aileron (wings) the other way, and dive while losing your stomach and about a pint of sweat. If you add too much rudder, you'll flip. If you add too much aileron, you'll spin. No matter what happens, keeping a steady heading is hard, especially when you have to switch which side you slip. I also about lost some body mass through the exit port when doing a power on stall (simulating a takeoff gone wrong) and nearly flipped the plane at 3500 feet. Sure, it's enough time to recover, but I thought we were spinning, which is the worst thing that could happen when flying high. After entering the traffic pattern, we did some touch and gos (that's where you land and then take off again without stopping). Sure, my landings are improving, but I still walk away from that plane with a bad case of swampass.
Next flight is at 10 tomorrow, and it's supposed to be a progress report with the head flight instructor at the school, so I'm hoping to do well.
posted by Benacor at 3:30 PM
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