Tale of 3 flights

Flight 1 - reprise of the the disaster flight before.  I went back to American Flyers, but deliberately picked a different instructor ( the same one that I did the first flight with).  We flew the same Cessna 172, and did more or less the same routine - GPS 17 at McKinney, followed by the VOR/DME (partial panel), then the ILS 17.  It was somewhat better, but not much.  At that point I decided to jump through the hoops and get my Sundowner approved for instruction in at that school (mostly an inspection by their A&P and some insurance riders).  I think flying in an airplane I know well will take away some of the workload.

Flight 2 - Saturday afternoon, we got the Rocket out the hangar, and with Instructor Anne in the right seat and my Mom in the back, we did a tour of the local NE Dallas airports.  I wanted to practice short field techniques in the Bonanza, as I am going to rent a hangar at AeroCountry, which has a 3000 foot runway - not really short, unless you have been spoiled by a 7000 foot runway for the past several years.  I found the Bonanza to be honest in a slow approach and really fast to slow down if you flare properly.  It still wants almost 2000 feet to take off, however.  It was a blustery day, 20 kts gusting to 35, which the Bo handled with with a disdainful glance.  What a machine!  Only 1.7 more dual hours until I can solo.

Flight 3, today, Monday late afternoon - Flew my "for sale" Sundowner 49C to Addison, and met the American Flyers instructor (I will call her Evelyn).  She grilled me on the "Fundamentals of Instruction", at which I truly suck.  The trouble is they are all just somebodies opinion, written by a professor on a grant, reviewed by a panel of lawyers, blessed by the FAA bureaucracy,  and we poor applicants are made to memorize them word for bloody word like they are gospel truth.  Still, it's a problem I must surmount eventually, or not become a CFI.  The flying went much. much better, despite 25 kts of wind gusting to 45.  I flew in my own airplane, for which I know the V-speeds and the power setting for any given flight domain.  My hold was poor, and my steep turns not so good, but it's still strange to be sitting in the right seat and try to read the instruments from there.  Still, I managed 4 good approaches, and to teach while doing it.  Evelyn says I just need to do a good set of steep turns under the hood and do some good holds (at the CFI level they are never SIMPLE holds....), memorize the FOI's, and she'll sign me off next week..........

The Commercial Pilot

I have started training for the commercial pilot’s license, and ultimately flight instructor rating. To do this, a pilot must have passed a written test, meet a long list of experience requirements, and pass a practical check ride with an examiner. To pass the check ride, you must be able to fly all the maneuvers listed in the FAA practical test guide, while maintaining heading within 10 degrees and altitude within 100 ft.

Some of the maneuvers are essentially the same as the private pilot test – you must be able to take off and land under a variety of conditions, simulating short runways, soft surfaces and emergency conditions such as engine failure in the pattern. The difference is that were as in the private rating, an emergency power off landing just had to get down on the runway in one piece, a commercial pilot is expected to touch down within a couple of hundred feet of a designated spot. Everything is more precise.

In the air, the pilot must be able to perform very steep turns (my new instructor likes 55 degrees, just shy of a 2G 60 degree banked turn), a steep power off spiral (also at 55 to 60 degrees of bank), and two performance tasks – the chandelle and lazy eight. A chandelle is an emergency avoidance maneuver. While flying straight and level in cruise, the pilot banks the aircraft at about 30 degrees, and pulls the yoke back to start a climb, while advancing the throttle to full power. The purpose is to reverse direction and climb the most possible while covering very little ground. If that baseball player who crashed in NY had done a chandelle instead of a level turn, he wouldn’t have hit the skyscraper back in 2003 or 2004. A good chandelle ends facing the opposite direction, much higher, with the pre-stall warning buzzer sounding.

The lazy eight involves a start similar to the chandelle, only without adding power, and after turning through 90- degrees and slowing, you let the nose fall through and finish the other 90 degrees in a turning dive instead of a climb. The goal is to end up facing the opposite direction, at the same altitude, but having reduced your turn radius by making it at reduced airspeed. Link several together, and it makes a kind of “8-on-its-side” pattern.

The ground reference maneuvers are the same as the private test (circling a tree in a field, flying a square pattern while adjusting for wind, S turns along a road), but with one new one, “8’s around pylons”. You select any two landmarks (a big house with a pool, a road intersection) and fly around each making a figure 8 as seen from above.

I am not really having any problem with this. I have enough experience now, and I am familiar enough with my airplane that I can make it do all these exercise. Some took a few attempts, such as the chandelle, to find out how much to raise the nose to maximize the altitude gain before finishing the course reversal, but that was about polishing it. I can quite constantly do a 360 degree steep turn, and hit my own slipstream as I level out. The more difficult part is still to come. I have to change aircraft.

A commercial pilot has to have 10 hours at least in a complex aircraft. That means one with a retractable undercarriage, and a constant speed (more efficient) propeller system. So now I will have to learn how to do all those maneuvers again, only on a bigger, faster, and more complicated airplane.