Lesson 11 - Traffic Circuit

My usual instructor disappeared today so I flew with a newer instructor. We did more patterns around Pitt Meadows and showed me an easy way to get down to speed in the approach. Just before turning into base, bring down the RPM from 2100 to 1900 while maintaining pattern height. That should bring the speed down just to the bottom of the white ark. Once establish on the base, bring down 10 degrees of flap, start descending and bring the RPM to 1500. That should give a speed of 60 knots.

Now all I need to do is get used to the houses in front of me constantly growing bigger.

Lesson 10 - Review

It's been five weeks since my last flight so we reviewed a few things such as slow flight, stalls and some pattern work around Pitt Meadows. I was a little rough and got ahead of myself on a few of the maneuvers. My instructor also said he's been getting all his students to focus on attitude control. Maybe he's just tired of being ill from all the ups and downs.

4th Annual Boundary Bay Air Show

Lesson 9 - Traffic Circuit

My usual instructor is out of the country so I flew with someone else today. We practiced the traffic circuit around Boundray Bay Airport witch is a little lower than standard at 800 feet. It's a little harder to work a lower pattern as you have less time time to do all your maneuvers and checks, but once you get over that it's convenient to be able to complete more patterns in the same amount of time. We did about seven touch-and-goes with varying flap settings. Looking back I can note the variations in the approach with the different flap angles, but while flying I was focusing on keeping the plane "on the numbers" to pay attention to the exact angle I was coming in at.

As usual I rushed a few things, particularly the flair and hold off. I'd flair right away, a little too much and then try to hold, only to have the plane drop the last ten feet. Near the end I paced myself and started touching down lightly just as the stall horn sounded.

I'm proud to say there was no floating, no bouncing and no drifting, but I was lucky today as I had stiff wind straight down the runway the whole time. I'm going to need a lot of practice on the crosswinds. There was one shaky takeoff today when I was distracted, talking to my instructor. I wasn't paying attention to the precession and after I lifted off I lightly touched down the left main again. My instructor didn't seem to notice so I just leveled and pulled back a little more.

No pictures today, as the weather wasn't the best and I had no time to take any shots from the plane with the high workload environment of the pattern. There were about two to three other craft in the pattern and had to wait a little while to get into it in the first place.

Over all it was an excellent day.

Lesson 8 - Spins and Patterns

Today we did more spins and I didn't want to stop. I'm starting to enjoy them and I think I should practice them once and a while so I don't start to fear them again. We also started doing pattern work, covered stalls again did an introduction to spirals. I'm getting close to the point where I can go solo.

It was a perfectly clear day with not a cloud across half of Canada. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera. Next time I'll have pictures.

Lesson 7 - Spins

Every time I'm at the airport there's some new and interesting piece of machinery. Today there was a Bell 212 doing it's start up.

Bell 212

Today's the day I start doing the entire spin. I need to learn to slow down a little and go though the steps without skipping any. Below is a video if my instructor demonstrating a spin over the "blasting zone".


Spin

Lesson 6 - Power-on Stalls and Over the Top

First I'll share with you the first thing that caught my eye on the apron today, a Boeing Kaydet. We saw this guy take off during our preflight checks and it rocketed out of there like a bat out of hell. It must have been climbing at around 1500 to 2000 feet per minute. I guess having two sets of wings has it's advantages.

The ceilings were a little low today (broken at 2200 feet) but it seemed a bit clearer out east so we took off with our fingers crossed and hoping we wouldn't need to go any farther than Hope.

Near Abbotsford we found a hole in the cover big enough to squeeze though and circled up above the clouds. Very beautiful and surreal indeed. The pictures don't do it justice.

We practiced some more power-on stalls with their gut-wrenching drops that even my instructor admits he still doesn't enjoy. Just as I was starting to get used to the feeling of negative Gs we needed to head back and my instructor suggested demonstrating spins to get back below the clouds. I didn't feel like any more roller-coaster moves, but I had to do them eventually. I can endure the ground spinning around, falling towards me, but my stomach trying to switch places with my lungs is what gets me apprehensive.

There was a long lineup of craft trying to get back to Boundary Bay and we ended up doing a holding pattern over King George Airpark for a few minuets with four other planes. There was one in particular that kept getting far too close. At least twice we were within one-hundred feet of each other. Good practice for traffic spotting none-the-less.

I feel this was my best flight so far as I wasn't rushed and handled the plane confidently.

Lesson 5 - Power-on Stalls

I told myself that for my next flight I'm going to take the initiative and do what I know I should be doing without pausing on every item for conformation from my instructor. I'm going to fly the plane.

Before ground school I've been practicing my checklists on the ground in parked planes and I've been running through the whole routine from inspection to cruise. I became quite comfortable with it and I knew I could do it mostly myself the next time.

Lucky, the Saturday was beautiful and strangely there weren't too many people in the air. Unfortunately, the airport was extremely busy. It took about ten minutes before I could squeeze in a request for taxi and another ten minutes before I could repeat myself because ground control missed it the first time. When we got to the runway I noticed I had forgotten to put my seatbelt on. As I'm fumbling with it the tower asks us if we want to go, but by the time I had my belt on, there was someone on final.

Finally we get on the runway and I can do my thing: full power, check RPM, right rudder, check oil pressure, right rudder, check speed- "Speed alive!", right rudder, 55 knots "Rotate!", slowly pull back... slowly... and we''re up. Nice and smooth. Turn to left to Blackie Spit at 400 feet and increase speed to 90 knots at 1000 feet. Level off at 1500 feet. That's as far as I got practicing on the ground, so now what...?

My instuctor guides us over to the practice zone and we set up for maneuvers and he demonstrates a power-on stall. Seems simple enough. It's like a lot like a power-off stall, but with more rudder control. So I pull up, and pull up until the nose starts to drop. I let it drop a bit, but then it really goes down. The slip indicator is showing the ball to the left so I "step on the ball" and give it some left rudder. Wrong. A low nose and turning into the low wing and we have now entered a spin! I do a 180 degree spin staring straight down at Stave Lake. My instructor calls "I have control" and as soon as I center all the controls the plane stops spinning. All my instructor needs to do is pull up. Good thing the people at Cessna have anticipated newbies like me and have designed their planes to have lots of positive stability.

I did a few more stalls without as much drama and puttered on over to Pitt Meadows for a touch-and-go. I let my instructor fly us there as I took some pictures.

Boundary Bay Pictures

Lesson 4 - Power-off Stalls

The whole week everyone was talking about how nice it was going to be on Saturday. I started getting worried the airport would be extremely busy and stressful. When I got to the airport, it was dead quiet. Odd, I thought. Then I realized that the airport is dead because no one is stuck there doing laps around the pattern. No one is forced to do touch-n-goes and are all out and about, doing Cross-country if they can.

I get there a little early as planned, so I start doing the paperwork and inspecting the plane as soon as I can get the documents (I wasn't sure if I could inspect without them, but next time I will). Walking around the craft I notice a missing screw on the engine cover, and a missing cover on the ELT antenna. I'm also not too sure about the gas level as this particular plane has long-range tanks. The level is up to the cuff like my instructor said it should be, but I still feel it's low.

My instructor comes up and I point out these things to him. I'm told the gas is actually a bit over the standard tank, the ELT cover isn't important and he'll notify maintenance about the screw when we get back. I know none of these things are deadly, and I trust my instructor, so we move on.

Today the wind was coming from a different direction then every other time I've flown, so this was my first time using runway 25. I asked for clearance, slowly taxied all the way down to the holding point, requested take off and waited. There are a couple planes on final and after they are down, tower will tell me to get into position. When I least expect it, I hear "Juliet Kilo Echo, Line up on the runway." Bah? What's that mean? Is that the same as- "JULIET KILO ECHO, LINE UP!" Gah! I call back: "In position! ... Juliet Kilo Echo..." Great time for them to change the terminology on me.

Taking off from runway 25 means we follow the King George departure that takes us along highway 99, to the north of the airport. There always seems to be a lot of birds just north of the airport, so I'm watching them closely. After my turn onto the downwind leg, a few eagles soar just in front of us to the right. As I get closer, all but one move aside. The stray comes slowly in front of us and glides just past the left wingtip. It's huge! I didn't know they were so big. I never want to hit one of those.

When we get into the practice area we go over slow flight again and then prepare for stalls. I go over my "HALT" check (Height, Aircraft, Location, Traffic) and I'm a little slow again. Now we're ready to stall.

For those who don't know, a "stall" in an airplane is not like when your car engine stalls. We call that the engine quiting. A stall in the airplane is when lift is no longer being generated. You are no longer an airplane; you are a rock.

Anywho, my instructor demonstrates by cutting the throttle, and constantly, increasingly pulling up to maintain altitude. Eventually the speed drops to about 45 knots, the stall warning goes off and a stall is immanent. My instructor drops the nose, adds power and we're back at straight and level with minimal altitude lost.

My turn. Throttle to idle. Nose up. Nose up. I'm dropping. My instructor tells me to pull up more, but the controls are getting heavy. I strain to pull. He grabs the yoke and yanks! The speed drops to below 40 knots and we completely stall. The nose drops down abruptly, but I'm not worried. I'm just staring at the ground thinking "do I nose down more, or put in full power first". My instructor is about to interrupt my deep contemplation so I do both at once.

We level off with me forgetting to use the rudder till the last moment and my instructor reminds me to nose down before adding power. Right. He also reminds me, as he adjusts the throttle, to bring back the power back to cruise as redlining the engine isn't a good idea.

All the slow flight and stalls have eaten up a lot of out time so we head back to the Boundary Bay without doing a touch-n-go at Abbotsford. Langley Airport keeps calling us telling us that our transponder is stuck on ident (constantly flashing on their radar screens). My instructor plays with it a bit saying that he needs to "tell maintenance about this too; this plane always does this". Great, another thing wrong with the plane.

At Boundary Bay runway 25 is still active so we're given a long, long, straight-in approach. Awesome. This should be easy. I've done this sort of thing hundreds of times in the simulator. We start descending, spotting the craft in front of us on final then taxi off. We're cleared to land. Little high... little low. I'm doing okay... We're near the threshold and I start leveling off. "Keep going down" I'm told. It's a common mistake to start leveling off too early. It's natural, really, to not want to dive into the ground, but I should know this. Damn instincts! I correct... I'm doing good... I hold off.. nose high... can't see... What's our altti- BAM! That was a hard landing. Wait! The left main is up again! SQUEEK! Now we're down.

I chuckle and say "Heh. That was a bit hard", but the smile drops of my face when I hear a churning, grinding noise off the right of the plane. "Do you hear that?" I ask. "Yeah, it's just the bearings. Lots of hard landings in this plane". I'm glad to hear I didn't break anything, but that's another thing wrong with the plane. These training craft really have "character".

We get back into the briefing room, I get drilled on the frequencies (which I know none of), pack up and I'm done. Another day at three-thousand feet over.

(Next time I must remember my camera!)

Ground School - Meteorology

The scheduling was tight but I made it to class and back. Today's class was about something I used to find a bit boring: weather. It's a topic with a fairly simply theory, but remembering what does what and why is a bit complicated. For example, nearly everything comes back to the fact that high-pressure areas are usually cool and dry while low-pressure areas are warm and wet. When a high pressure area moves into a low, the warm air cools down, meeting the dew-point and you get rain (or any other of various precipitation). Where it gets complicated is in things like in the day the ground is warm and the air moves up while in the night things are a bit more stable because of inversion and water warms and cools slower than the land so at night the cool air comes in off the ocean making fog, but only if blah blah. Anyways, it's something I'd really like to learn well so one day I can look out the window and say, for example, that there's going to be hail in two hours.

The most important thing I learned today was a new term for an airplane: windbuggy. Really, that's what it feels like in a small craft. I once described it as ridding a moped in the sky.

I got a ride to the bus loop from the instructor. He's an interesting man who's spent a lot of time in the Air Force. Hopefully I'll be seeing him again for Thursday's class.

Lesson 3 - Slow Flight

Today we practiced slow flight again. This time I was to practice being more accurate in maintaining altitude during transition. On my first try I climbed 200 ft; the maximum tolerance on a commercial flight test. It took me a while to make sure I was doing everything right and I moved through the process quite slowly. My instructor demonstrated entering slow flight again, this time showing how quickly and smoothly it can be done. I tried again and this time I only climbed about 50 ft. No matter how slow or fast I do it, I always forget when to use carburetor heat.

Exiting slow flight is something I'm going to need to get used to. When adding full power with the nose already so high it takes a lot of forward pressure on the wheel to maintain altitude and get the nose back down.

After doing these maneuvers it's hard to tell if my instructor is impressed or not. I think that even if he is impressed, he’s not making a deal out of it because he wouldn't want to let my ego get too big. If I start to think I already know how to fly I might try to do something I'm not yet ready for, creating a dangerous situation.

We did a touch-n'-go at Abbotsford, passed a plane that was approaching head-on, flew into Washington and tracked the "whatcom" VOR. I assume whatcom is short for something like "Washington Communicator", but apparently the FAA has at least a little sense of humor; the morse-code designator for the unit is ···· ··- ····, or in English, "HUH". Get it? What-com? Huh? It's not much, but I smirk every time I look at the chart.

Approximate flight path for third lesson

Before the today’s flight I inspected the airplane myself while my instructor watched to see if I was capable of doing it on my own from now on. Now I can come in early, inspect the plane and do the calculations saving us both time. That means more time in the air! It’s hard to explain, but I quite enjoy inspecting the plane before each flight. Being outdoors, examining each part of the craft and knowing that it could mean your life if you miss something; it’s cathartic. I booked some extra time with the plane for next week to make sure I have enough time to inspect and maybe spend some time in the cabin memorizing checklists. Memorizing a checklist doesn’t seem that hard, but memorizing five to twenty of them is a little different. Hopefully the extra time won’t make me feel as rushed in the air as I have been so far.

While walking to the bus stop a large silver car with an older gentleman pulled up along side me and asked if I needed a ride. At first that might sound a bit creepy, but really, I expecting this sort of thing to happen and was just wondering when it would. It seems like in the aviation community, if you're involved, you're suddenly a friend. It makes sense considering that if you work with aircraft in anyway you're probably responsible as lives are on the line. In any case, he was heading to Vancouver so I accepted. I soon learned that he had his own Cessna 182 and was returning from his second home on is the island. I explained to him that I had just started my training. Even with such an age and wealth gap, two pilots always have something to talk about. I hope I run into him again.

Tuesday I have a hearing test in the morning as per my medical exam and in the evening I have my first class of ground school. I’ll tell you how it goes.

Lesson 2 - Slow Flight

It’s the Easter long weekend and I had two flights booked as well as a lot of other things planned, but I end up getting sick and spend most of the weekend at home. Monday I’m feeling okay, so I’m sure to make it down to the airport as to not make the long weekend a total waste. The school's schedule was booked solid, so I wouldn’t have much flex room for the flight. As my instructor debriefs his previous student I go ahead and start calculating the weights for the craft and get the ATIS (weather). We quickly cover what we’ll be doing today and head out to the plane. Twenty minutes to do an inspection and we’re ready to go.

Now I’ve been reading up on the radio protocols and I’ve even been doing a bit of practice at home on Microsoft Flight Simulator, but working the radios is the part I’ve been most anxious about. Today I'm to call for taxi clearance. I go over it with my instructor three times before trying to make the call; all the while the engine is burning my money. I push the button and call “Cessna one-five-two golf charlie lima echo on apron requesting taxi for east-bound departure.” I’m too amazed that I didn’t forget a word or stutter to bother listening to the reply, but I'm given a thumbs up and we start rolling. I request to take off and we’re up.

We head over to a practice area near a valley in the mountains, north of Pitt Meadows. It’s a beautiful view down the valley and there are all types of weather around us. Where we are is mostly clear, but to the east, above Mission, there’s a big, black wall of storm clouds trying to suck us in with their convection. To the north, clinging to the mountains are white puffy clouds gently sprinkling snow. To the west is the city, covered in the usual ugly overcast and smog. We practice slow flight as well as some climbing and descending turns. Advanced stuff considering I’m only on my second lesson. We do a touch and go at Pitt Meadows Airport then head home. I do one last call to report our position to CZBB and we complete another awkward crosswind landing on runway 07. We debrief and my instructor tells me that I have good airplane control, but that’s the easy part. I need to start ground school soon and need to get my medical. I also made note to myself to work on my radio and landing skills more. Not to mention get a headset that actually fits me.

Boundary Bay at the end of my flight

Lesson 1 - Climbs & Descents

I had my first lesson booked for eleven o’ clock but as I bussed down to the airport the sky was dark and wet. I had to fill out some forms, so I thought at least the trip wasn’t going to be a complete waste. When I got to the airport the rain had stopped and the clouds seemed ever so slightly lighter. Maybe there was hope. I filled out the forms and met up with my instructor a bit early. We did a long briefing about climbs and airspace then went to check the weather. As we sat on the computer my would-be instructor for my familiarization flight asked if he could take up my current instructor's next student since he likes to meet all of the students at the school. I believe he's the head instructor. It was agreed and we spent the next block of time going over the weather charts in detail and talked about the aircraft documentation. It was now about one-thirty and the sky was a couple notches clearer, but still quite spotty. It was suggested that it might be nice enough to go up after lunch -not to mention I was starving- so I grabbed a club sandwich at the Skyhawk Café in the airport.

After lunch I'm told that since the weather was so bad in the morning the rest of my instructor's students had cancelled their bookings. We spent the next hour going over things like the pre-flight inspection and then I spent some time alone in the cockpit memorizing checklists. Finally, at about three o’ clock, we went up. We practiced turns near Mission and did a touch-and-go at Abbotsford International. I earned another 1.2 hours for my logbook but compared to the rest of the day I felt like we were in the air for less than five minutes. My instructor apologized for delaying the flight for so long but I was glad that I could spend the day at the airport learning about my new passion; flying.

Familiarization Flight

Josh and I went down to Boundary Bay Airport as we had familiarization flights booked for 1:00. When we checked in we found my instructor had the day off so we both went with Josh’s instructor to calculate our loads for our flights while the front desk worked out the scheduling. We soon found that Josh was just a bit too big for the 152 (two seat Cessna) so we upgraded him to the 172 (four seat Cessna). Since we now had a bigger plane, we decided to all go together. We're shown how to do the preflight inspection but it goes a little slow as Josh and I ask about the workings of every part of the plane. It doesn’t bother our instructor though, and he’s glad that we’re asking a lot of questions.

Josh is the first to fly. We took off from Boundary Bay (CZBB), did a touch-and-go (a maneuver where as soon as you land you take off again) at Pitt Meadows (CYPK) and then landed there. We used the washrooms there and then I got in the left seat (where the pilot in command (PIC) normally sits) and took off. I did a touch-and-go (T&G) at CYPK then slowly flew back to CZBB. We requested to land on runway 07 because it's closer to the apron, but it was a harsh crosswind. Our instructor had been letting us handle most of the T&Gs and landings so far but this time he was operating the controls firmly as he crabbed his way down correcting just above the threshold. Josh and I bought logbooks and I was signed me on my first 0.6 hours of flight time.