Flight Log 02-16

The weather has not been cooperating at all, I think 80% of all flights that I have scheduled have been grounded so far. Its been a week since I got close to attempting a flight, but just the other night the clouds and rain were pushed out of the area. Today its sunny and clear as could be, a stiff wind from the west though. A quick recap of today's lesson: power on and off stalls, and flying a rectangular pattern. The wind will provide good training for this exercise.

Lots of cool traffic today: as I'm waiting for takeoff at the engine run-up area, a Navy TC-12 jumps in line to head back to NAS Corpus Christi. A NASA T-38 from Ellington is soaring down the runway, and an American Eagle ERJ-145 is approaching after a short hop from DFW. I feel very vulnerable in my rickety (but trusty) 1974 Cessna 172M.

Took off runway 34; with the wind out of the west I needed to hold full ailerons into the wind so we won't get flipped over. As the airspeed increases you slowly ease off that aileron. We headed out west to run through our stalls. Today's altitude was 2500', plenty of room to recover and do some repetitions. The first stall was by the books: flaps down, engine 1500 rpm, pitch up. Wait for the speed to decrease, power back and pull back hard on the yoke. As the aircraft begins to stall, you steer with rudder and not the wings, otherwise you can send the plane into a spin... which is even worse. Relieve back-pressure on the elevators, full throttle, and recover. Next, Dave wanted me to do a 'falling leaf' stall, as he called it, where you don't recover the plane. Instead, you let the plane dive and pick up speed naturally, then let it pitch back up and stall out again and again. That way I would get a good feel for stall warning signs. This manuever was like an out of control roller coaster. Roller coasters are fun because they're smooth and you can see where the track is going to go; in a plane that stalls over and over again, its a big surprise and does something different every time. It took more and more concentration to keep the plane flying straight after each successive stall, which got very tiring.

Dave was satisfied with my performance so he picked out a rectangular field to practice patterns over. Pattern work isn't in the curriculum until flight #5, but I've been finishing up my lessons so fast and proficiently that he's been throwing previews for the next flight in so we can get more air time. This task proved to be just as easy as it is in my computer world, so we headed back to Easterwood. As I'm turning onto final approach, another plane calls in not too far behind us, saying he's on a straight in approach. Due to the heavy traffic today, he offers to abort his approach and go around, but the tower knows I'm just a student... with a fully qualified instructor. So the tower tells us to 'speed it up' and get in fast. Dave takes over and goes full throttle, up to 120 kts (twice our landing speed) comes in real low and then (essentially) hits the brakes. Not his best landing ever I'm sure - he bounced - even I haven't done that yet, but I'm sure for how fast he had to bring the plane in and slow down, it was an adequate job.

Flight #4b: 1.0 hrs
Total Log Time: 4.4 hrs