Perfection in Turbulence

Developing perfection in turbulence is impossible. I'll spend some time stabilizing the plane in perfect straight and level flight, and because of convective turbulence from the heat, and wind turbulence, the air changes, and the plane is no longer stable. This requires me to give much more concentration than in smooth air.

Today I took off in a 15 knot crosswind. As soon as the wheels lifted off the ground, the plane "weathervaned" into the wind about 45 degrees. I was kind of surprising, I've never taken off in such a high crosswind before. Basically, the plane turned sideways by itself.

I tracked to TYGAR intersection over Tygart Lake, and climbed high to 6500 feet in an attempt to avoid convective turbulence. Convective turbulence results from the sun heating the earth, and then the earth giving off radiation and heating the air around it. So the higher you go, the less effective the heat it is. Think of a fire, and how the air above the fire is kind of wavy. The earth does the same thing on a much larger scale.

Unfortunately, we still had to deal with wind turbulence up there. It was difficult to perfect maneuvers in these conditions, but I was able to stay within 100 feet of altitude and 10 degrees of heading. When flying in this type of turbulence, I'm on edge the whole time. The plane constantly jerks left and right, drops, and banks. I have to immediately correct for these sudden changes. I like to relate flying in turbulence to riding a mechanical bull.

I did slow flight, stalls, and steep turns with all my instruments, then I did compass turns and timed turns with my attitude and heading indicators failed. Once again, these maneuvers required a much higher degree of concentration than usual, thanks to unrelenting winds aloft.

I flew visual for the 10 miles back to the airport. It was nice to be able to enjoy the view again a little bit, even if the plane is bouncing me around. I chose to do a no flaps landing, thanks to the 15 knot crosswinds. I came in fast, mainly because with a crosswind faster is better. Thankfully I have a 7000 foot long runway which gives me plenty of time to let my speed bleed off before I touch down.

When taxiing back to the school, we got to watch someone else take off in their Cessna and weathervane into the wind. It was pretty cool to watch. Here's a video from YouTube, watch how the plane weathervanes and flies sideways immediately after takeoff.



Next lesson is my stage check, and hopefully I can knock it out either Sunday or Monday.

A Beautiful Bumpy Day

The weather was perfect today. Hardly a cloud in the sky, temperatures above 70 degrees, and no wind. Unfortunately, a nice warm day like this brings convective turbulence, so it was still very bumpy. Luckily, this lesson was very short.

I started by tracking outbound from the Clarksburg VOR. Then my instructor had me pinpoint my exact location using the Morgantown VOR. Then I had to figure out my distance from the Morgantown VOR by flying 90 degrees to the course and timing my time between radials and using a formula to calculate time and distance to the station. I did pretty well the first time, so he didn't have me do it again.

Next, I flew a DME arc 18nm around the Morgantown VOR, successfully. Then since everything was done, we headed back to Clarksburg. I was hoping I would get to shoot a nice fancy ILS approach, however, there was traffic inbound and I had to stay at 4000 feet as long as possible and then drop it fast down to the airport. It was a slightly difficult landing due to the turbulence, but I still put it down nice and smooth.

This lesson only took about 48 minutes, which saved me some money.

Crazy Geese

Today's lesson was no different from the last time I flew.

I did slow flight, steep turns, constant speed climbs and descents.

I flew some partial panel, vacuum pump failures and altimeter failures, doing some timed turns and compass turns as well.

The only interesting thing that happened on this flight was when my instructor pointed out a flock of geese flying at about the same altitude as us off my left wing. We were flying at 4500 feet. Typically birds don't fly more than a couple hundred feet above the ground. I guess these geese found some nice winds or something and were flying very high up.

VORs, VORs, VORs

VOR = Very High Frequency (VHF) Omnidirectional Range
It is a small navigation facility that transmits 360 different radio signals in all directions. These are what is used for navigation. I began my lesson today by learning all about VORs.

I learned the different types of VOR stations, and the different ranges they provide. I then learned how DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) measures your distance to a VOR station, and how to measure yourself in case your DME fails. It's a lengthy process that I will have to do for my checkride, but will probably never ever do again.

I then learned how to fly a DME arc. These are important to learn for certain instrument approaches. A DME arc is basically an arc that you fly by staying the same distance from the VOR and flying a constant radius turn around it.



I then hopped in the sim put all I learned to the test. I spent most of my time perfecting the useless method for measuring your distance from the VOR without DME. Basically, you turn to a heading 90 degrees from the VOR and time how long it takes to cross 10 radials. Then you use formulas to figure out time and distance to the station.

I then flew DME arcs around the Morgantown and Parkersburg VORs and then flew the ILS approach into Parkersburg, and practically destroyed the plane on the runway. It's funny how its so much harder to land on the sim than it is in real life.