For lesson #4 I got another 18 minutes of instrument flight. It was a very nice day outside today, but it was also relatively warm outside, thus creating a lot of turbulence due to heat rising off these West Virginia hills. Its pretty easy to start feeling nauseous during instrument flight I guess. I mean, they always tell you to focus outside the car when you're getting carsick, right? The same principle applies. Only, I don't get to look outside for instrument flight.
So imagine riding in a car on a curvy windy road hitting all sorts of potholes and dips, and not being able to look outside. Intense. Considering all that, I still did not throw up, which means all that ginger and peppermint appears to be doing the trick.
Once again, I got to practice power-on and power-off stalls again. I'm still having trouble with power-on stalls. My mind does not want to pitch the plane forward. I guess the whole purpose of stall training is to train your mind to do the opposite of what it thinks is right. Everyone has something that they have trouble with at first. But I'm confident that continuos training and practice and I will be able execute a perfect stall recovery.
Here is a good video of a power-off stall: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIzG1zSST0Q&feature=related
Today, during my lesson, I did something that is hard to do in a 172. I made it spin. No, that's not a good thing. I was practicing power-on stalls. The biggest difference between power-off and power-on stalls is that for a power-on, you have to pull the plane back almost straight up before it stalls. All you can see is sky. When the plane stalled, it nosed over and I saw the horizon coming back up slanted. The plane had stalled slightly to the right. Most students' first response is to bank left to correct, but stupid me kicked in the left rudder to correct. I wasn't a very big spin, we didn't spin like 8 times or anything. We spun maybe 90-180 degrees before we pulled up to correct. I tried the power-on stall again and used ailerons instead of rudder, and it worked much better. I still need to work on them though. I practiced instrument flight today and I did extremely well (most likely thanks to all those flight simulators I've been playing). I flew the plane better with instruments than I do with visual. I also landed twice. I'm getting better- I think.
In this video, the Cessna spins about 2 times, and I only spun about 0.5 times. But you get the gist of it.
Today I flew the Cessna Skyhawk SP again. We had another maintenance student as a passenger this time, and she wanted to see her house, which was in Buckhannon. Normally, from Clarksburg, Buckhannon is a 30 minute drive. It took us 7 minutes to get there. I did some climbs, descents, climbing turns, etc. I think I'm finally getting the hang of controlling the rudder- I'm actually using rudder pressure to maintain my heading instead of banking all the time. I also landed the plane this time. I did much better than the last time I tried to land- because I was using the rudders. On my previous landing at Yeager, if I started to drift left, I would bank right to compensate. Obviously the correct thing to do is to give right rudder. I was able to stay on the centerline, in spite of the mild crosswind. I landed the plane without bouncing this time. It was a nice smooth landing. I get to fly again tomorrow at noon. P.S. The ginger and peppermint candies worked great for my motion sickness.
I finally got to fly for the first time at Fairmont today. 80 degree heat in combination with 18 knot winds made for a very turbulent ride. Just like my first flight, I lost my lunch. Unfortuneatly this time, I did not have a barf bag. I instead had to barf in my Jeppesen Flight Bag. It is currently in the washer in hopes of being returned to its original glory. I only received .8 hours of flight time today. I am going to visit a doctor and possibly get a motion sickness patch to wear while I fly. On the contrary, I did have a nice view of Tygart Lake and the dam there. I got to watch my instructor land in a 20 knot crosswind which, according to him, was one of the worst crosswinds he had ever seen at CKB. Today would not have been a good day for me to try and land.
Believe it or not, I have most of the rest of my career already figured out. After doing much research about various different airlines and possible employment opportunities, I have set some career goals for myself. Here we go:
Fairmont State University is where I will receive my Bachelors of Science in Aviation Technology degree, with the Aviation Management and Professional Flight option. I will receive all of my ground training and my Private and Commercial Pilot's license, as well as my Instrument and Multi-Engine ratings.
I will then receive my CFI (Certified Flight Instructor) license, and possibly my CFII (Certified Flight Instructor Instrument) and MEI (Multi-Engine Instructor). Fairmont State prefers to hire their students over outside CFIs, so I'm pretty much guaranteed my first job. I will then work as a CFI for Fairmont State until I have attained enough hours to move on.
Once I am qualified, I plan to apply for a job at Comair. Comair is basically Delta's regional airline. Their fleet consists of no turboprops, just CRJ Jets. Comair is only based in two airports: JFK and Cincinatti. So I'm probably going to be living in Cincinatti for a few years.
After I work for Comair for several years, I plan on applying to work for Delta. Since Comair is Deltas regional airline, I will hopefully be a prime candidate for the job. I would like to work for Delta for the rest of my career and hopefully someday fly 747s. The Boeing 747 is my favorite aircraft of all time and I would really like to fly one someday. The reasons I picked Delta are 1) They are the largest airline in the world, and none of their 12,500 employed pilots are furlough, and 2) they have 16 747s in their fleet, and I ultimately want to fly those more than anything. This is one of the reasons I will list FedEx as a backup for Delta.
Alpha Eta Rho is an international aviation fraternity. I have recently joined the Fairmont State chapter. It appears that this chapter is currently having some issues, they only have 5 or 6 members. As soon as I mentioned that I was not a freshman, my pledging period ended there. Our chapter needs at least 10 members, of which 66.6% are upper-classmen, to be considered active again. Some things I noted about the current status of this chapter: 1. When giving the presentation to the class about their fraternity, they didn't have very good public speaking skills, and the only thing they did for the class was hand out a piece of paper for us to write our names and email on. 2. The current leadership seems to be screwed up, the guy running the thing was only supposed to be vice-president. 3. They don't appear to have very many things planned as far as activities go. I figure that if I'm going to use Alpha Eta Rho as a strong point of my resume in the future, I'm going to have to help it get back on track. First things first, I designed a base brochure idea for the frat that hopefully can market us better and attract more members. I also designed a T-shirt online that would be nice for the fraternity as well. We are having a meeting tonight, and hopefully they will be open to some new ideas to draw in some new members.
Before going to FSU I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and fly to make sure I liked it and of course, I loved it. Even though I threw up on my first flight. Before FSU I attained 3 hours flight time. I got them all from Northern Wings at Yeager Airport (KCRW) in Charleston, WV. My first lesson started of course with learning METARs, TAFs, and using the computer terminal to attain such information. For those of you who don't know, that means I learned how to check the weather. I then learned how to do the preflight checklist. The plane I was going to be flying wasnt the best looking plane in the world. It had a little rust in small places on the body, and the interior was in rough shape (cracks on the dash, tears in the seats). The important thing was that everything on the plane worked well, all the imperfections were just cosmetic. So on to taxiing. Taxxing was a little bit difficult for me at first, primarily because I have never had to steer a vehicle with my feet before. I couldnt really stay on the line very well. Taking off was a little bit scary for me, because you have to keep the plane on the centerline of the runway while you gain airspeed, and I was always afraid that one wrong turn might cause the plane to skid on the runway or something. Once I had taken off, the first thing I noticed was how rough the flight was. The plane wanted to jerk this way, pull that way, etc. Every now and then the plane would quickly drop about 10 feet and you could feel it in your gut. The reason the flight was so rough was because it was such a hot day, and the radiation coming off the earth was heating up the air at low altitudes. So once we got to cruising altitude, it smoothed out a bit. From then on, my next two lessons were at 9am when it was cool, instead of noon. For my first lesson, we practiced turns, climbs, and descents mostly. As it turns out, most people are afraid to bank the plane too much their first time, but I was fearless. I was turning 30 degree turns my first time. He tried to teach me how to crab (right rudder, left aileron), which is basically flying the plane sideways. Apparently this a much more advanced move and he thinks that is what made me sick. Yes, I threw up. My second lesson I was a little better at taxiing. We practiced climbing turns and descents, and slow flight. I videotaped some of this lesson, including the landing. My third lesson was the fun one. This is where I practiced power-off and power-on stalls, and steep turns. And, I got to land the plane. It was a sloppy landing, I bounced a little bit. I don't think I was quite ready to land yet. He swears he never touched the controls but I'm pretty sure he did. I got a little overwhelmed when it came time to flare. Needless to say I want to work on better coordination before I try landing again at FSU. The best part about my 3rd lesson was flying about 1000 feet above downtown Charleston when we were approaching runway 3. Its been two months since my last lesson and I am dying to fly again.
This is the start of my new blog pertaining to anything aviation. I have never really written any blogs before but i know that its just basically a journal, right? I just feel the need to share with everyone my experiences in aviation. A little bit about myself: I am currently a student at Fairmont State University majoring in Aviation Administration with a Professional Flight option. Prior to that I already had three hours experience in a Cessna 172. I have also had extensive experience playing with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 with which I've learned several different things including ILS approaches, VOR naviagation, etc. As far as flight theory is concerned, I think I'm pretty well set. Well, this is my attempt at a blog. I'm going to go ahead and create a few entries now and see how it works out for myself.
