Aviatrix Logbook

I've moved my blog to its own site. Find it here. I've just been getting tired of livejournal's lack of flexibility. So please update your bookmarks or feeds -- I know it's a pain in the butt. As an incentive, you can find out how Student A did on his checkride retest. Also, I unlocked a bunch of my previously restricted and private entries. I usually restricted things because they were rantings that didn't accurately reflect reality, and sometimes, I did it just for political reasons. The more pathetic entries and ... uh ... personal rants are still restricted, though. Maybe one day.

For now, I'm busy categorizing past entries, writing additional new fun pages, and fixing up the rather sparse layout. It's strange to look back at the older entries -- I had real difficulties with some of my training, mostly unnecessary. It's kind of surprising that I've stayed with it. I also can't believe how much has happened since I got my CFI-A last August.

Maneuvers went well for Student C last time, so today, we're going to do pattern work at CBG. I mostly want to sit back and observe how he does things. Student gets everything set up just right on the ground, including setting the frequencies for weather and CTAF at in standby. I like seeing this very much. We go over the GPS on the way -- I tell him that this is about the only time I'll be allowing use of the GPS when I'm in the airplane. Usually, the thing is turned off. But I want to make sure he basically knows how to use it. For some reason, he knows how to enter a flight plan, but he doesn't know about the "nearest" function, which I would consider more useful to a VFR pilot. Even with all this talking, Student remembers to get the weather and make a radio call ten miles out. Very, very, very good.

He confuses the direction of the traffic pattern, and we end up overflying the field and doing a lot of maneuvering that I don't like to enter downwind. There's a stiff crosswind here today, and Student is flying really close to the runway. Really close. But he rounds out his base leg and doesn't overshoot final by one inch. He does the exact same thing with the second pattern. I find out that he does this on purpose. I say it's fine to fly very small patterns, as long as you're doing it on purpose and are capable of losing altitude quickly enough for a stabilized approach and landing. He also claims that he was taught to always climb to 1,000 feet before turning crosswind, which pretty much contradicts the "small pattern" story. I say that from now on, we'll turn crosswind at between 500 feet AGL and 300 feet of pattern altitude.

Student's procedures are very good, and his radio technique is exceptionally good. He's always looking for traffic and aware of what's going on around the airplane without getting fixated. We still need to do some more pattern work -- emergencies, no flaps landings, slips, and so on. But I have no doubt that he's going to be fine for soloing right afterward.

But in general, I don't have the feeling that this is going well so far. Student is rather quiet and withdrawn during our lessons. I'm going to continue trying to find some common ground between us so I can present things better for him. He's maybe also just getting used to flying with someone new. I think that he really got along well with his former instructor, who went to UND. I also have the feeling that Student may think I don't know quite as much about how to fly as someone who went to UND. This is possibly true, but it may also be my inferiority complex coming out to say hi.

Student B is going to have his first lesson all in the pattern. The wind is about 10 kts coming right down the runway. He has to be done by 5pm, so we're staying at KANE. It's busy, so this isn't ideal. It's also cold -- IFR Warrior has been stranded up in KLXL for several hours because it didn't want to start. They were able to get it going in time to get back for Student's lesson. The airplane is out on the ramp, rapidly cooling off. We hurry to get it started up again. The only problem is a short in the starter switch that makes the engine not actually start running until you move the mags from "start" to "both." Irritating, but it starts.

We fly about four patterns in an hour -- there's a lot of sitting at the hold short line and waiting for landing traffic. Student A is also flying patterns to prepare for his retest on Friday. As for Student B, he's way behind the airplane. I'm doing all the radio work, and I have to prompt for pretty much every action. For the last pattern, I just prompt for what's coming up next, and Student is mostly with it -- just a bit slow on the execution. He thinks this is an absolute blast. I'm glad, because he hasn't shown any real excitement about his flying up until now. The maintenance delays didn't help in the motivation department, either. I've tried to relate the early maneuvers like slow flight and ground ref maneuvers to the traffic pattern, but I think it really clicked with him today. That's fun. Student leaves the skool with a "woohoo!"

Next time, we're going to review ground reference maneuvers on the way to a nontowered airport and do a couple patterns there. I think the slower pace will help out a bit. Today, tower ordered us to fly extended downwinds, a close pattern, and a go-around. When it's busy like that, it's a major distraction that Student doesn't need right now.

In other news:

Shortest TAF ever: KMSP 071733Z 071818 27010KT P6SM SCT250

Gmail targeted ad of the day: "Fly a jet or CFI?" In all honesty, I'd rather be a CFI right now. Flying a jet would be super fun, obviously, but silly. I would be mostly a burden to the jet captain. I can hardly process how much has happened since I started instructing -- there's still so much to learn here, and maybe if it ever gets boring or too repetitive, then I'll think about how I can maybe go fly a jet. Anyway, I'm more interested in turboprops.

My attempt at reassignment was rejected, so I meet my new student tonight. Student C is a line worker at one of the FBOs on the field, so I totally have the hookup with the fuel truck now. He definitely wants his pilot's license, and beyond that, he's trying to figure out if he wants to go to UND after graduation and do aviation for a living. He's not a new student -- he almost soloed last November, but his instructor quit to go fly shiny Barbie jets for a regional airline. This means in order to solo him, we have to do everything in the list of Fifteen Things as well as new presolo written test. Which isn't so bad, since I would want to see the Fifteen Things at minimum anyway before signing someone off to solo.

Student is flying a 172, as students often do. We have to shovel the ramp, because it's been snowing all day. Literally all day. It started snowing before dawn, and it stopped a couple of hours before Student's 4pm lesson. I don't like snow on the runway, because it makes landing too easy. I watch the preflight sort of closely -- he does forget a couple of things, and it gives me a chance to see how much he knows about the airplane. He uses the Sporty's ground skool, and his logbook is filled with entries saying "Sporty's lesson x" and so on. I have no clue about the content of Sporty's lessons, so I'll have to do some extra work to see what Student's done already.

Anyway, his radio work and procedures are all very, very good. The ball stays pegged in the middle during climbout, and he levels off at 3,000 feet. Not 2,900 feet, not 3,100 feet, and definitely not 3,900 feet as sometimes happens. We do slow flight, basic power on and off stalls, steep turns, turns around a point, an engine failure simulation, and that's enough for one day. Student's flying is superb, not at all like someone who's been away from flying for almost three months. We need to work on his procedures, but no big. His landing was good. Next time, we'll do pattern work, and I give him a presolo quiz to take home. He's doing his FAA written exam on Sunday. No screwing around here. I'm looking forward to throwing all sorts of emergencies and situations at this one.

Student B:

• Trying IFR Warrior again -- it started
• -26 degrees windchill
• Review crabs, slips, slow flight
• two traffic patterns
• Wow, Student is rusty.

Student B's lesson is cancelled because IFR Warrior won't start. This is the 4th lesson in a row cancelled for him because of a non-starting airplane. The skool finally broke down and fixed the other non-starting Warrior -- the primer system was getting full of air, and there was also a short in the starter switch. This Warrior won't start due to a faulty ignition switch -- a problem that has been known for a few weeks now. The bright side is that real, provable mechanical issues make me look less incompetent. According to the rumor mill, the skool is considering getting rid of all the "old" airplanes and buying new ones. I'm sure that will solve all the mechanical issues. In the meantime, I've started discussing other options for Student's training with him.

Student A:

• -10 degrees windchill
• Stop & gos
• Rwy 27 PAPIs are in service!
• Nice and consistent landings after a few warmups
• In the hangar, heated air blows by the wall next to the helicopter's tail

Student A cancelled for weather. I was going to cover another instructor's flight when he couldn't go, but that was also cancelled.

Students A and B cancelled for snow.

Former student is all signed off for flying the 150. But we're going to do a few landings, anyway.

• Cold
• Oil cap stuck on
• Lots of traffic
• Fun with 40 degrees of flaps
• Pretty sunset

Student A:

• Nice steady xwind
• 36, then 27
• It's all mental.

Being in a rather low point can help remind you of the good things. Like all the people who supported and helped me, went out of their way to send me instructing business, listened to ranting, were generous with their time, put things in proper perspective with kindness, and made me laugh. I like my task -- instruct to gain experiences, use whatever resources I have to help others further their own goals, try to contribute rather than detract, and maybe move on to a different flying job myself one day if I can. Because otherwise, it can be hard to cope with some of the other goings-on -- how people go around behind your back and tell others not to fly with you. The greedy desperation of people clawing for every flight hour. Illegal 135. I don't want to get caught up in any of that. It's only flying.

Here's a fun question -- What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

It's pretty surprising, but Student A failed his practical. The ride started out bad, with the examiner being almost two hours late. The areas of failure were takeoffs and landings, about the last things I expected. Student made a bad pattern entry at the diversion airport, got behind the airplane, and just wasn't able to recover. On top of that, there was miscommunication between Student and DE Barb, which lead to Student making the wrong variety of short field landing. So, we'll go up for some practice, I'll sign him off again, and he'll go up another time with DE Barb. Not a huge deal, but all his training has gone so incredibly smoothly that this is just very surprising. This leads to quite a poor record on my part. I was going to start working with a new student in two weeks, but I assigned him to another instructor.

I'm going to spend some quality time alone with the flight club airplane today. I wanted to do airwork, but the weather is just too bad. There's a low layer that can't make up its mind whether it wants to be scattered, broken, or overcast, and visibility is rotten. So I'll stay in the pattern. It's weird to just go up and fly outside an organization like the flight skool. If I have a problem, there's really nobody to ask about it. Oh, well!

I pack about twelve T&Gs into an hour. The runway is so long that the landings end up being more like stop & gos. I have to do a nice slip to comply with a short approach instruction, I get sent off on a couple of ridiculously long downwinds, and I taxi back for another runup after getting a weird engine vibration after landing. The main point of this practice is to experiment with different strategies for pattern work with this airplane, so I can teach it better. It doesn't need much power on the downwind leg after reaching altitude. In fact, the power setting for 90 kts seems too low, and the RPM needle waves around a bit. I like two notches of flaps better than three. The traditional 1500 RPMs for the descent to landing seems like it might be about 50 RPMs too much. It's not like this airplane is hard to fly or anything, but I can't quite fly it around the pattern with no hands yet like I can with a Warrior. Soon!

This airplane is going to be a truly badass instrument trainer. It only has two VORs and an ADF. It has a turn and slip indicator. Now, that is hardcore. I can't wait to go up and practice some approaches! I'm hoping to do that maybe this weekend.

You can meet the airplane at the club's web site (follow the "Our Plane" link). It's fabulous purple and silver racing stripes make it look all flashy, like Freddie Mercury dressing up for a show. Or maybe like his older, chunky brother dressing up in Freddie's jumpsuit. You can expect to see many more pictures of this airplane here as I take it to all the local exotic destinations.

It happens again with Student B -- we can't get VFR Warrior started. This airplane is really pissing me off. It just won't turn over. Nobody's flown it since the last time we were unable to get it started, and the battery is super weak. After three tries, the battery is just ready to give up. I felt so bad that we couldn't get it started last time, so I took some time off of work so we could fly this afternoon. And now it's happening again. I call the mechanic, who isn't super happy about this. He thinks there may be something wrong with the primer. Apparently, there's now some sort of new magic primer action we have to use to get fuel into the cylinders. It would have been nice to know this before we got 45 minutes into Student's lesson. Nobody is schedule to fly IFR Warrior, so we theoretically could fly that. But wait -- someone's up flying it unscheduled. The desk person, listening to the tower frequency, heard it taking off. OMFG.

Student is all excited about doing pattern work, and he's just been grounded again. This is ridiculous. I tell him that I am more than happy to devote this and next weekend to flying two lessons a day until he feels caught up, or we could even do that on a weekday. He's not sure of his schedule yet, so we'll hold off for now.

---

Student A's checkride flight is Friday afternoon, so we'll take this opportunity to go fly. He hasn't been up for a week or so. We hit steep turns first. They're very good except for some rolling out of bank angle halfway through the right turn. The engine out sim is fun over a frozen lake. S-turns are ok, except he tries to start them at about 1,500 feet AGL. We go back for landings, and the good ones are great, and the poor ones are due to poor airspeed control. But when it's on, they're very nice. The soft field landing would have sank the airplane up to its struts on a real soft field, but he has the procedure down. He'll do just fine on Friday.

Student A aced his oral, but the ride ended in a discontinuance due to weather. They'll try the flight portion on Friday. His oral was very short, in my opinion, and I'm guessing DE Barb could tell that Student knew what he was talking about. It's been very odd preparing for a checkride with little to no gouge.

I don't get to fly today, but I do get to go ride in a little airplane. J is practicing for his long-postponed ATP checkride -- I get to be safety pilot while he does approaches in his C-182. He wants to focus on the last couple hundred feet of the ILS, because an ATP has to be able to keep the needles in the donut all the way down until the glideslope becomes unusable. It is so very cold outside. I keep warm by chipping packed snow and ice off the ramp while J checks the airplane. Winds aloft are 30-some kts, but it's relatively calm at the surface.

We're going to RGK, an ILS that J hasn't flown yet. The ride couldn't be smoother on the way down. J gets vectors for the ILS-9. This approach is messed up from the start, because the glideslope is flagged. J asks ATC if the glideslope is notamed, but they say it ought to be working. J switches to the localizer approach, and over the marker, the glideslope comes in. Since he wants to practice following the glideslope, he switches back to the full ILS and plays catch-up until almost DA. Halfway down, J encounters a shear zone where the fast winds aloft start mixing with the calm surface wind. He has to fight continuous light turbulence, which makes it harder to control airspeed. We're going to abandon this airport and try the ILS at Airlake.

Again, above 1,000 feet, the air is super smooth. On the first ILS, the shear zone hits again about halfway down, and J's groundspeed increases from about 60 kts to about 80 kts. Fun! He keeps within standards and does a one-wheel touch & go. On the second ILS, the shear zone causes the groundspeed to go from 58 kts to 89 kts. Impressive! The wind correction angle is about 30 degrees, which really seems like a lot when you're watching someone fly a localizer. This approach is also well within standards and ends with another show-off smooth centerline t&g.

Approach won't give us a class B clearance due to departures out of MSP, so we hop over FCM and MIC back to ANE. On the way, J demonstrates an ATP stall. It's done differently than other FAA stalls -- you keep power in, maintain altitude, and recover at the first indication of a stall. In this airplane, that's the stall horn. This airplane also has a STOL kit, and our groundspeed goes to zero a bit before the first stall indication. Funny. The rest of the trip is flown at about 2,000 feet, which provides a fantastic detailed view of the western suburbs with downtown Minneapolis in the background. A couple of freight airplanes depart ANE as we're entering the pattern. J makes another nice landing. His hangar-mate is having issues with his medical, and he needs someone to go with when he flies, so we all exchange numbers. I almost pick up his buddy as a student, but he wants to fly during weekdays. Darn.

There are just a couple of loose ends before Student A's checkride. We're going to get the aircraft logs, make copies of performance charts from the POH, and make sure the MNDOT weather computer's printer works. The ride is at 8:30 am, and Student A won't be able to get into the flight skool until 8 am. So we're just making sure he can get to everything he'll need for the checkride. The FBO is open 24/7, so he won't end up freezing to death if he gets there early. The ground portion will be at DE Barb's hangar, which apparently has a nice view of the runway and is full of very cool airplanes.

We also go over some last minute topics, but nothing major -- weather reports, runway incursions, LAHSO, airspace minutae, and other random stuff. B is there to help quiz, which is doing him a favor, because he really likes that sort of thing. It's all pretty relaxed.

I'm moving on with my own stuff, too. I received some new books today -- on operating turbine engines, flying in weather, and flying gliders. These books arrived super fast, no doubt thanks to some freight dogs making overnight trips. Speaking of which, I just read an article about how a piece of engine fell off a freight airplane and ended up on some woman's bedroom floor. There are people out there who work all night to bring you all the online goodies you ordered. If you ever find yourself standing outside when it's snowy, foggy, or otherwise not a nice day for fun flying, and if you hear a lone piston airplane droning overhead in that crap, it's probably a freight dog. Woof!