Aircraft: C4653G
Weather: HOT! Winds 190@8G18 - felt that!
This is the first time with me flying that I actually got to fly somewhere. Normally for training up until this point we just fly around the pattern or go out to the practice area. This time we flew from Chandler Municipal over to Williams Gateway, which is about 10 miles away. Nothing big, but fun because they are slightly busier with some military jets, and some airline activity, and they have a great restaurant. This was the true 100$ hamburger that I got to fly!
I showed up with Joe at about 1030 to pre-flight 53G and Dan was already there. No big deal, did the pre-flight, told Joe a little bit about what I was doing and why. I think Dan is learning to trust me a little bit more because he didn't do his own pre-flight right behind me this time. HA. After the pre-flight, we headed into the air conditioning and talked about the flight we were about to undertake. Dan had a sectional and we went over what all the markings and identifiers meant on and around Gateway. After grabbing some waters, we were off to the aircraft again, this time to FLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With Joe all secure in the back and everyone adjusted, I picked up the ATIS on the speaker before cranking the engine. This saves me a little buck, because why sit there on the taxi-way with the engine turning? I taxi'd up to the tower to make my ground call, and all went well. Got cleared to taxi over to 22R via Alpha, November. Thanks to my excellent night before preparation I was prepared and wrote everything down and read it back like a pro. I had all the frequencies lined up for CHD and IWA with Chandlers on Radio one and Gateway on Radio two. All I had to do was flip a switch and I was ready to transmit on the Gateway frequencies. So... we taxi'd over to 22R and did the runup, made our call and we were off!
We climbed to about 2800ft and leveled off and headed towards Gateway. Since we took off on 22R we were headed SW which is away from Gateway so we turned to set ourselves up to enter their airspace. This is where things started happening fast. We had very little time before hitting their airspace, so I had to pick up the ATIS and call tower. Dan was rushing me the whole time. After getting the ATIS, I made my call to tower and I don't know what happened. In fact I keep playing it over in my head and just can't figure it out. I made the perfect call and she never got back to me. She cleared other people to land and enter the airspace but I didn't get mine. Whatever, Dan said to call again. So I did, and everything was fine. The problem was, were outside their airspace doing circles, and I had accidentally let us climb to almost 4000ft, which was approaching PHX class Bravo airspace. For those of you that don't know... that is a NO NO! So finally she calls out our tail number and we get our clearance into the Delta airspace and set up for a right downwind pattern entry. By this time my head is really spinning because I haven't flown in two weeks, and I need to do a whole bunch of stuff before I can land. So I start my decent, enter the patter too high, pull the power back to 1700 abeam the numbers, kick in some flaps, turn base late, end up being too high, kick in more flaps and FINALLY I am on track for a good landing. This particular runway at Gateway has over 10000ft of runway so that landing wasn't a problem, and was actually relatively smooth. We exit onto taxiway Hotel (I think) and make our call to ground. "C4653G clear of 12R @ Hotel, taxi to transient near the restaurant". We got clearance to go and park at the FBO and pulled up next to an old HUGE navy fighter. I think Dan said it was a T-6, I will add a picture at the bottom and you can correct me if I'm wrong. After I shut the engine down the line guy comes running up telling us we weren't supposed to park there. Dan was trying to signal with him where to park, but the line guy apparently didn't know the correct signals because he was telling Dan to start his left engine. LOL. Needless to say, Dan wasn't moving and we got some chalks to secure the aircraft. Good times!
Lunch was great, it was pretty uneventful compared to the flying, but what can be better than 3 guys flying to an airport to grab a burger. I'll tell you..... NOTHING. There is NOTHING better than flying with some friends to an airport for some food. I can't frickin wait to get my certificate so I can do just that. Take a Saturday morning and go fly for food.
Anyway, after lunch we decide to head out and do some pattern work at Chandler. I did a total of 4 landings there, all of which sucked! You could really tell that it had been a while since I landed. Dan was on the controls more and I was getting extremely frustrated. Once again I sucked with my rudder control and kept cross controlling while turning crosswind and base. Dan thinks I'm trying to kill myself. (the airplane can enter a spin if you are not careful and cross control. A spin itself is not dangerous, but when you are close the ground in the pattern, you just don't have time to recover. I think next lesson we are going to the practice area to once and for all fix my problem with the rudder. Dan said he has some special exercises to fix it. So landing 1 not so hot, I didn't flare very well and we landed on all threes. Landing 2 not so hot, I landed HARD. BOOM! Landing 3 Dan was trying to show me how to stay 3 ft above the runway for a flare and ended up having to just land himself because we would of had a hard time getting up enough speed w/ a passenger in the back. Landing 4 not so bad, I finally flared good and put her down on the main gear first and did it semi-correctly. BUT... the airplane is not broken, and we are alive so.. SUCCESS!
My radio shyness is gone, every time I get on the radio I know what to say and thank god, because that is what used to give me such a heart-attack. Things are good now that I am able to fly again, but they need to improve. I wish I could go twice a week, but at least I need to get up there once a week so I don't forget things and waste my money.
Joe if you are reading this (and you better be) thanks for riding along. I hope you can get into this at some point yourself. I would love for you to take a lesson and let me fly along. You are welcome on any flight that I take as long as we aren't stalling the airplane cuz even though it would probably be ok... I like life. :) ---- Oh and thanks for lunch!
For everyone else.. thanks for reading! You know what to do.... click those adds! MONEY MONEY MONEY!!!! I will return the favor if I can.. just tell me where to go!
This flight: 1.2
Total time: 13.3
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