I get one thing, and let another go.

Aircraft: C172 - 4653G

Weather: Cool, rainy, 7500 ceiling, minimal wind.

Today we had a great flight! The weather is not typical to this area, low clouds, humid, cool, and a little rain. Perfect for flying though, it was so nice and cool!

Again I got to the airport early, but Mike was close behind to open up the school and get some fuel in the airplane. After we had the fuel I started the pre-flight. Everything was in check, so Dan and I went in to the training room and went over the maneuvers we would be practicing today. Basically it would be a review of the last flight, w/ stalls, but this time adding one more. Steep turns. Steep turns are a lot of fun. Basically when you fly normally you use 30 degrees of bank, to keep the passengers comfy and because you don't really need anything more than that. With a steep turn you use 45 degrees. The procedure goes like this-

Clearing turns, flow check, start coordinated turn (aileron and rudder - my weak point of course) in either direction, after 30 degrees of bank add 200 rpm and trim the back pressure off. Now continue the turn for 360 degrees and roll out on the heading you had assigned all while maintaining altitude and 95 knots. Seems easy right? NOT. First I attempted one to the left, and that went rather well. When I tried to the right, that is a different story. It's a completely different picture outside the airplane and for some reason I just couldn't get it. We tried a few more times and had to move on. I'll probably be doing a lot more of those in the future!

This week was pretty busy for me so I had zero time to study. Better yet, I didn't make time to study, and it showed. Dan asked me to do a power off stall and I couldn't remember the procedure. I need to be doing more chair flying at home so I can get the flow down. It really isn't difficult to do, but if you don't remember the steps... it just won't get done correctly. So, I've learned my lesson there. Chair fly at home for free, and don't spend hard earned money while the engine is running to learn something all over again in the air!

Now for the title of this post. As you have read in the past, the one major hurdle I was trying to get over was talking on the radio. Well, I think I'm past that. Today I think I sounded like a pro. I think my only slip up was when I called ground and forgot to add the ATIS in my transmission. Other than that, I read back everything well, and remembered what I read back. I did minimal instructor assisted takeoffs, and did rather well in the pattern and on landing. Granted I had more assistance on landing, but according to Dans syllabus, I should be landing fully unassisted in a couple lessons. In fact, after my next lesson, all we do is solo prep. Which will probably landing after landing after landing, which.... I'm okay with! :)

As for the things that I let go... Basics. For some reason this lesson I couldn't maintain my heading, mostly because I was too busy chasing my altimeter. I don't know if this is because I'm trying to be a perfectionist or what. I do know one thing, and that is that I need to keep my head outside the airplane. Again I kept trying to chase down my altimeter so I was focusing on it instead of looking outside. Next time I will just keep my head outside and see what happens.

Next week we are working on ground reference maneuvers. Dan said these are fun because we are close to the ground and we look outside and fly around stuff. That is the very basic description, but basically the idea is to fly around a point, and make sure that I stay the same distance away from it. This sounds a lot easier than it is because the airplane is effected by the air mass that it is in. If the wind is blowing at all, you need to turn (crab) the airplane into the wind so you don't stray from your course.

So today was fun, but it became a little more stressful than I would have liked. I got 2 landing under my belt, and another 1.3 hours in my book. I have to look but I think that puts me at 11 hours even. 1.3 in the plane is getting up there in price for me.. 125$ but.... that is still less than one hour at Angel air! And of course... if you are still reading.. click the adds. I think I'm almost to 30$ right now and google won't pay me until it reaches 100$. I will pay you back with more detailed write ups of my adventures in the sky. I enjoy writing this, and I hope you enjoy reading it. And please, if you are reading this and have had some similar experiences or whatever, please leave a comment! Thanks everyone!

~Joe

This flight: 1.3 hrs

Total time: 11 hrs