Flight School: Day 6
A word to Cessna Training Video Instructors: your jokes are all-encompassingly and completely horrible. Flight training videos are "Night Court in its fifth season" lame. I'm also getting sick of these stupid jingles whenever you complete a lesson.
Continuing story: After we figured out how to hook up an MP3 player to the radio system a few days back the first song we listened to after I completed some slow flight was "Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gansta." I seriously felt like I was coming out of Office Space. The reason I bring this up now is because the owner of the flight school just got back from his vacation in Hawaii. Everyone told me this morning that he looked and sounded exactly like Mike Lumberg with his glasses on. He got a haircut though, so now he looks more like William Defoe. I introduced myself and he properly referred to FWB as the Redneck Riviera. (If you haven't seen Office Space, disregard this last paragraph).
The first flight today was a review of all our maneuvers, including slow flight, stalls, high bank turns, and, the most fun of all, how to keep your cool in an emergency like an engine shutdown. We chilled and relaxed with the engine on idle while I glided down from 4000 to 500 feet over a cow pasture near a Military Operations Airspace zone. I think I have a pretty good grasp on how to land in an emergency. It might not be pretty, but it certainly wouldn't be ugly. Then I did some instrument flight (he put special goggles on so I couldn't see out the window, just the display panel) and he seriously screwed up my equilibrium by telling me to close my eyes while he turned the plane at some asinine attitude. When I opened my eyes I had to correct it. Then I had to navigate back to Kissimmee, all blindfolded. This type of operation isn't essential but very important when visibility is low or weather goes bad. The landing wasn't too bad either.
We had lunch and went over airspaces at Wing House. I didn't know that place was closer to Hooters than it is to Buffalo Wild Wings. I learned more about how to read sectional maps and determine flight paths and rules through airspaces. Orlando airspace happens to be one of the toughest in the country, but FWB isn't a piece of cake either, so it's good to figure it all out.
My next flight consisted of 14 takeoffs, 14 traffic patterns, 14 high-speed crosswind landings, and one botched attempt with a go around. Needless to say, crosswinds are no fun. A crosswind blows you off path, away from the runway, and you have to point at the runway crooked and cocked to the side, and at the last instant correct when you touch the ground. I'd say half of those landings weren't bad, the other half weren't ugly. I'm definitely getting better, but I still need a lot of finesse. We also did an actual simulated emergency landing (as opposed to hitting the gas when we were 500 feet up like in the first flight). That wasn't bad, but still, it wouldn't be very pretty if it actually happened.
Flights are at 7 and... some other time. If I do well, I'm flying solo tomorrow, so wish me luck! If I don't update tomorrow, well, you can guess what happened (and no, I won't be partying like a rock star).
Continuing story: After we figured out how to hook up an MP3 player to the radio system a few days back the first song we listened to after I completed some slow flight was "Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gansta." I seriously felt like I was coming out of Office Space. The reason I bring this up now is because the owner of the flight school just got back from his vacation in Hawaii. Everyone told me this morning that he looked and sounded exactly like Mike Lumberg with his glasses on. He got a haircut though, so now he looks more like William Defoe. I introduced myself and he properly referred to FWB as the Redneck Riviera. (If you haven't seen Office Space, disregard this last paragraph).
The first flight today was a review of all our maneuvers, including slow flight, stalls, high bank turns, and, the most fun of all, how to keep your cool in an emergency like an engine shutdown. We chilled and relaxed with the engine on idle while I glided down from 4000 to 500 feet over a cow pasture near a Military Operations Airspace zone. I think I have a pretty good grasp on how to land in an emergency. It might not be pretty, but it certainly wouldn't be ugly. Then I did some instrument flight (he put special goggles on so I couldn't see out the window, just the display panel) and he seriously screwed up my equilibrium by telling me to close my eyes while he turned the plane at some asinine attitude. When I opened my eyes I had to correct it. Then I had to navigate back to Kissimmee, all blindfolded. This type of operation isn't essential but very important when visibility is low or weather goes bad. The landing wasn't too bad either.
We had lunch and went over airspaces at Wing House. I didn't know that place was closer to Hooters than it is to Buffalo Wild Wings. I learned more about how to read sectional maps and determine flight paths and rules through airspaces. Orlando airspace happens to be one of the toughest in the country, but FWB isn't a piece of cake either, so it's good to figure it all out.
My next flight consisted of 14 takeoffs, 14 traffic patterns, 14 high-speed crosswind landings, and one botched attempt with a go around. Needless to say, crosswinds are no fun. A crosswind blows you off path, away from the runway, and you have to point at the runway crooked and cocked to the side, and at the last instant correct when you touch the ground. I'd say half of those landings weren't bad, the other half weren't ugly. I'm definitely getting better, but I still need a lot of finesse. We also did an actual simulated emergency landing (as opposed to hitting the gas when we were 500 feet up like in the first flight). That wasn't bad, but still, it wouldn't be very pretty if it actually happened.
Flights are at 7 and... some other time. If I do well, I'm flying solo tomorrow, so wish me luck! If I don't update tomorrow, well, you can guess what happened (and no, I won't be partying like a rock star).
posted by Benacor at 3:52 PM
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