clumpinglitter (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} clumpinglitter) wrote,@ 2006-12-24 19:21:00 |
|
xmas at the airport
It's going to be a long day -- two lessons and a mock checkride. Student's checkride is in two days, so we're going to go to MGG and get familiar with the airport. We go over the GPS a little bit on the way out. It's not too hard to find the airport from this direction. Student does some short and soft field landings, and then she flies the first couple checkpoints on the xc. She doesn't believe the groundspeed calculation, so we check with the GPS. We are indeed only going about 73 kts -- there's a nice headwind. Student does a couple of stalls, and everything looks just great.
On the way back, she goes under the hood for the remaining .6 hours. We do unusual attitude recovery, and then I have her take off the hood when we get close to MGG. I point out the references for finding this airport -- the nuke plant, the lake, and the town. Student can't see it, and I am completely sympathetic. I remember my biggest problem doing the VOR-A into here is finding the damn runway. She sees it when we're about a mile out. After that, she puts on the hood again and I have her fly to GEP. This all goes great, even with my quizzing her about weather reports at the same time. ANE is completely dead, and the controller clears us to land when we just get inside the airspace.
I know we won't be able to get the airplane back into the hangar -- the ramp is glare ice again. So we taxi to the east side, Student gets out and drives back in her car, and I taxi the airplane back to the skool. I plug the airplane in -- it's going to be outside for two days. People aren't going to like this one bit, but there's nothing I can do except prepare for getting a lot of crap. And believe me, I'm quite prepared. Student stays at the skool for a while to study. I definitely think she's ready and going to do great, but I feel all edgy, like I'm the one who's going to be tested. It's dumb.
Anyway, on to the next lesson. Student doesn't want to fly today, so we'll do ground. I'm going to do his checkride prep by going through the PTS. We get through the first three tasks, which is good progress. It's so much easier with Student, because I pretty much know every detail about his training.
Last thing is the mock checkride. Student's ride is on Tuesday. He's going into the Air Force -- they paid for a bunch of his flight training, and he does this full time. I haven't gone to the examiner he's using, so I don't really feel up to this task. Someone else would have been better, but nobody else is working today. For the oral, I go through the PTS for a while, and then we talk about the xc he planned. He pretty much knows everything he needs to know except for being a little weak on airspace, which is predictable. But from what I understand, this is one of the DE's favorite areas, especially SVFR. We've only been doing this for about 40 minutes, but we have to go fly while it's daylight. We're flying the 150 today. He's mechanically inclined, so my quizzing during the preflight doesn't turn up anything. In fact, I learn a couple of things.
We start out on the xc to GRB. Student does a groundspeed check, and then I say there are big storm clouds forming in front of us. He initially wants to divert to RNH, but I say to go to 21D. I specifically want him to go there, because it's closer, and I want to see how he handles an airport with no weather reporting. He spends a lot of time with the A/FD, and I have to hint that 21D is indexed under STP. He is highly distracted by this and figuring out where to get weather. He's flying directly toward the airport, so I assume that he sees it. A couple of minutes later, he points out a spot about five miles away. I tell him to look out his window. He does, and he sees the runways directly below us. He has some confusion entering the pattern, but the landings here are fine. He flies too fast for the short field landings, but the 150 is forgiving about this -- still, 60 works better. We depart for airwork.
Student had an interesting adventure one day. He was up doing power-off stalls with his instructor, and on the stall recovery, the engine quit. And the airplane was going so slow that the prop stopped, too. This freaked Student out a bit. The airplane started up again right away, though, and they were able to fly home. As it turned out, maintenance had installed the carb float wrong. But it's all fixed now. Student's instructor told me that he's still very reluctant to do stalls. I ask for steep turns, slow flight, and then a power-off stall out of the slow flight configuration. Student has no problem doing or recovering from the stall, except he doesn't add full power on the recovery.
We do a power-on stall, descend for S-turns, and I pull his engine. There's just barely enough daylight left for this. I'm pretty sure he's planning on landing in the field when I finally say to go around. He was waiting for me to say it, so we'll have to discuss that later. It's really too dark for ground reference, so I have him climb back up for hood work. This is all good except for some momentary confusion over TO/FROM, and we go back to ANE to debrief. Unfortunately, Student has to go to a xmas party, and there isn't time to do any of the remaining PTS tasks that we skipped before flying. But I think he'll be ok -- we spend about half an hour talking about the flight. His flying was great, and the only real issues I saw were task prioritization and a couple of procedural nitpicks.
No flying tomorrow. Sad.
It's going to be a long day -- two lessons and a mock checkride. Student's checkride is in two days, so we're going to go to MGG and get familiar with the airport. We go over the GPS a little bit on the way out. It's not too hard to find the airport from this direction. Student does some short and soft field landings, and then she flies the first couple checkpoints on the xc. She doesn't believe the groundspeed calculation, so we check with the GPS. We are indeed only going about 73 kts -- there's a nice headwind. Student does a couple of stalls, and everything looks just great.
On the way back, she goes under the hood for the remaining .6 hours. We do unusual attitude recovery, and then I have her take off the hood when we get close to MGG. I point out the references for finding this airport -- the nuke plant, the lake, and the town. Student can't see it, and I am completely sympathetic. I remember my biggest problem doing the VOR-A into here is finding the damn runway. She sees it when we're about a mile out. After that, she puts on the hood again and I have her fly to GEP. This all goes great, even with my quizzing her about weather reports at the same time. ANE is completely dead, and the controller clears us to land when we just get inside the airspace.
I know we won't be able to get the airplane back into the hangar -- the ramp is glare ice again. So we taxi to the east side, Student gets out and drives back in her car, and I taxi the airplane back to the skool. I plug the airplane in -- it's going to be outside for two days. People aren't going to like this one bit, but there's nothing I can do except prepare for getting a lot of crap. And believe me, I'm quite prepared. Student stays at the skool for a while to study. I definitely think she's ready and going to do great, but I feel all edgy, like I'm the one who's going to be tested. It's dumb.
Anyway, on to the next lesson. Student doesn't want to fly today, so we'll do ground. I'm going to do his checkride prep by going through the PTS. We get through the first three tasks, which is good progress. It's so much easier with Student, because I pretty much know every detail about his training.
Last thing is the mock checkride. Student's ride is on Tuesday. He's going into the Air Force -- they paid for a bunch of his flight training, and he does this full time. I haven't gone to the examiner he's using, so I don't really feel up to this task. Someone else would have been better, but nobody else is working today. For the oral, I go through the PTS for a while, and then we talk about the xc he planned. He pretty much knows everything he needs to know except for being a little weak on airspace, which is predictable. But from what I understand, this is one of the DE's favorite areas, especially SVFR. We've only been doing this for about 40 minutes, but we have to go fly while it's daylight. We're flying the 150 today. He's mechanically inclined, so my quizzing during the preflight doesn't turn up anything. In fact, I learn a couple of things.
We start out on the xc to GRB. Student does a groundspeed check, and then I say there are big storm clouds forming in front of us. He initially wants to divert to RNH, but I say to go to 21D. I specifically want him to go there, because it's closer, and I want to see how he handles an airport with no weather reporting. He spends a lot of time with the A/FD, and I have to hint that 21D is indexed under STP. He is highly distracted by this and figuring out where to get weather. He's flying directly toward the airport, so I assume that he sees it. A couple of minutes later, he points out a spot about five miles away. I tell him to look out his window. He does, and he sees the runways directly below us. He has some confusion entering the pattern, but the landings here are fine. He flies too fast for the short field landings, but the 150 is forgiving about this -- still, 60 works better. We depart for airwork.
Student had an interesting adventure one day. He was up doing power-off stalls with his instructor, and on the stall recovery, the engine quit. And the airplane was going so slow that the prop stopped, too. This freaked Student out a bit. The airplane started up again right away, though, and they were able to fly home. As it turned out, maintenance had installed the carb float wrong. But it's all fixed now. Student's instructor told me that he's still very reluctant to do stalls. I ask for steep turns, slow flight, and then a power-off stall out of the slow flight configuration. Student has no problem doing or recovering from the stall, except he doesn't add full power on the recovery.
We do a power-on stall, descend for S-turns, and I pull his engine. There's just barely enough daylight left for this. I'm pretty sure he's planning on landing in the field when I finally say to go around. He was waiting for me to say it, so we'll have to discuss that later. It's really too dark for ground reference, so I have him climb back up for hood work. This is all good except for some momentary confusion over TO/FROM, and we go back to ANE to debrief. Unfortunately, Student has to go to a xmas party, and there isn't time to do any of the remaining PTS tasks that we skipped before flying. But I think he'll be ok -- we spend about half an hour talking about the flight. His flying was great, and the only real issues I saw were task prioritization and a couple of procedural nitpicks.
No flying tomorrow. Sad.
