Yet Another Learning To Fly Thread

[TheAnimus]

So for an awful long time I’ve been wanting to learn to fly, I don’t know when exactly but for me, no matter how many tiresome work related trips to dull cities, the magic is still there, I suppose Since the days of Copernicus, man has dreamed of flight. and all that. (merit mark if you get the quote without googling)

At the moment learning to fly in the UK is quite expensive, and after some thought I figured I could take some time out and go to the states. After the irksome experience that is the US Embassy in London I was off to Florida.

So now I find myself in Crystal River were I shall be spending the next three weeks working towards getting an FAA PPL or yankie doodle private pilots license.

As flying is something that does appear to attract the autistic computer geek type, I figured I’d put up a thread on Hexus for any other people who are thinking of taking the plunge, and yes, this is that thread.

For those of you who know nothing about this kind of thing, a PPL is the license that will allow you to operate at first a single engine piston aircraft, you can carry passengers but not for commercial activities.

The kind of craft we’re talking about are
Cessna 172s

and PA-28s

These things have a cruse speed of anything from around 100-200mph give or take a half depending on engine, propeller and wind conditions.
With a basic PPL you can only fly on nice days with no strong wind, rain or clouds. So it is basically a PPL allows you to piss about in the air. Which is awesome. You can also pretend to do bombing runs on small towns you don’t much care for.

Why go to the states to do this? Well first off its cheaper due to lower fuel prices and lower aerodrome running costs, secondly its less congested so a lot easier and thirdly because the weather, its actually nice. When learning certain important procedures you want to be able to have plenty of altitude, whilst maintaining visual sight with the ground.

In 6 months of trying every Saturday in the UK I managed one day when I was able to fly above 3,000ft.

Before going to the states I’d been trying to have a few lessons in the UK, thanks to the weather few turned out to be the operative word, I managed 8 one hour lessons in the space of half a year, due to only been able to fly at the weekend didn’t help matters either.

In those 8 lessons I’d begun to learn basic flight principles, straight and level, slow flight (using the flaps), ascending / descending turns and 180 turns, landing and takeoff. Having the lessons so spread out overtime was also not helping.

[TheAnimus]

I arrived at Tampa Bay airport about an hour and a half away from Crystal River only to find that my visa wasn’t quite in order. When you’ve arrived on a delayed 10 hour flight, which someone helpfully throw up in thanks to ‘moderate’ turbulence one really can appreciate why the Americans give all their staff hand guns, the sight of a glock strapped to an annoyingly cheerful public servant does help you hold back the urge to throttle him senseless for his chronic ineptitude.

Eventually I managed to make it out of the airport and was greeted by one of the instructors in a minivan full of other students who’d decided to take an afternoon off to drop off a former student and welcome the jet lagged, tired and moderately hung over newbie. That combined with a 90 minute drive at sunset really did make me feel as thou someone else was living my life just then and I was on stuck on cruise control. The straight eternal open road with the constant haze did little to bring me back to reality. Well that’s seven people I’ve been introduced to and three names I remember.

Luckily they are all a very present bunch, even the german student. It’s a diverse gaggle of people who are currently studying here, drawn from all over the globe, some, such as myself doing a private license just for fun, some doing their commercial rating and the rest are mostly working on privileges. These privileges are for the stamp collecting part of you, the sticker/card collecting part of you, the human instinct that leads serial killers to collect trophies despite the obvious evidence and prosecution disadvantages. There are so many different ones to get, but some of the more common are multi-engine, night flight, IR (Instrument Rating, fly in cloud etc).

The school has some accommodation which is at most a one minute walk from the airfield, these are simple prefab shacks which you can share with other students. Luckily the guys I’m sharing with can cook rather well, purchase good quality beer (Sierria Nervada almost makes me forgive the yanks for budwieser…. Almost) and give me advice on my studies.

So after a light bite and some freshers week grade conversation, that was pretty much the end of my first day.

[TheAnimus]

edit: day1, I fat fingered the title of this post, maybe a mod can edit - fixed - Stoo

The next morning was spent entirely doing paperwork and a medical. The medical was pretty much a “yup look fine to me” type of physical blood pressure was fine and no ailments. The entire noticeboard dedicated to mocking Obama reminded me I was in the south, but despite my learned superior European moral view I couldn’t think of a reason why he doesn’t deserve to be mocked by an old Navy Doctor. Least not one who looked just like a character out of Battlestar Galatatica remake, even down to the similar name.

After all the frightfully important and very nesicerry paperwork, and the reading of my fingerprints, twice, proved I wasn’t a terrorist in training (they actually have furr don’t you know). I couldn’t help but feel someone like Tony Blair designed this system, but the yanks are a bit touchy about that whole twin towers thing.

So on to lunch. Dairy Queen. If you’ve never been to the states its hard to imagine what the name might conger up, I’d be guessing some kind of small town hick style titty bar with a curious theme? Well sadly it isn’t. They sell dairy based, and often not dairy based treats. Blend with ice-cream cookies, cheesecake and m&ms to get a feel for the place. I eat a chilidog with a knife & fork with a napkin. I can’t help but suspect some of them know I’m English.

So finally I can do some flying. Well sort off, I’d been using PA-28s in the UK, and now I was going to be using a 172. And as I started to pre-flight the craft I couldn’t help but notice some fool had stuck the wing on in the wrong place, after 8 hours of just starting to feel like I knew the little PA-28 I’d be climbing into something a little different.

Pre-Flighting for those who don’t know is the series of checks you ALWAYS do before flying a plane. Unlike the whole making sure your headlights are working thing with cars pilots are expected to actually take this seriously. So you make sure that nothing is showing visible signs of damage, that all the bolts are looking to be fully on, test the fuel for moisture that might have built up in the tank, check the fuel level, ensure all the uppy downie, side to side bits work and then untie her. This takes about 5 minutes to do properly. Yes that Top Gear episode lied.

The instructor meanwhile has checked the weather, and we’re ready to set off. We’re in so called Class ‘E’ airspace, no tower, no Air Traffic Control (ATC) as such we all just use one frequency. We calibrate certain instruments setting things like atmospheric pressure, which changes the way altitude is read broadcast our intentions and I taxi her off to the runway.

Or rather I would have if the 172 behaved like a PA-28. It doesn’t. The 172 uses just the rudder to steer the PA-28 has a front guide wheel too, making it much easier (no you don’t use the yolk or turny stick, you use the feet peddles). I stagger towards the taxipath then down the centre guideline in the same way a drunked does a sobriety test. Luckily after a little while I begin to think about it, depending on the throttle setting I need to bias with right rudder. The screw of the propeller actually changes the profile of the air hitting the rear rudder, so its not a case of keeping both feet level to go in a straight line. I’m missing the PA-28, at my local club in the UK I’ve even managed to determine a favourite, I think of her fondly as I lurch onto the hold line, just off the main runway.

A quick shout on the radio and its full throttle. Damned 172’s don’t even have a proper throttle lever, its instead a pull push knob like you might find on the choke control on an old car, stupid thing. Immediately I’m having to think hard about my legs to keep her straight, luckily the runway is quite wide! After a bit of staggering hey presto enough speed and I can start to pull back, she actually responded really well and I start to feel less of a hatred for this craft, my moment of weakness, stupid thing has drifted off to the left, I needed much more rudder.

After 45 minutes playing in the air, step turns, level flight, slow flight, all is going rather well, I begin to think that I understand this plane, and it’s time to see if I can land her, the instructor shows the approach at this strip with a touch and go, effectively a landing but instead of cutting power its straight back to full and a take-off. I fly the circuit and begin to land, flaps good, speed good, altitude dropping a little fast, I correct, I overcorrect, I drop the throttle ****ing 172. The silly stick throttle feels backwards to my lever longing hand. No problem I correct, I overcorrect, and everything is fine, just a little high of the numbers, the instructor tells me to correct, I thought I was, I give her a tiny bit more and wow, this craft feels a lot more responsive, as in crash me into the row of trees before the runway responsive, we’re now at about 200ft, it feels quite low, I can feel that the instructor has taken control, we are too close for him to even have time to say it. We come in to land, not a graceful one, but not one that will require the plane to have new shock absorbers. My body starts filling with a mixture of adrenaline and disappointment. Like been caught amid an act of embarrassing self-gratification, full of excitement but with an all consuming sense of disgrace.

And that was just yesterday.

[Rave]

LOL good read so far albeit in your own inimicable style. In for updates. Is this a '40 hours in 3 weeks' type deal? Will you be coming home with a PPL?

What's the max take off weight of a 172 or PA-28? Will you be flying Moby and I to the next Hexus Social?

[TeePee]

Fantastic!

I've found that the 172 is actually easier to do consistently decent landings with a bit of practice. It's very forgiving of imperfect technique, but you'll rarely get a good one. The PA-28 will show exactly how good (or bad) you are every time. Get it right and it will reward you. Be slightly wrong and your passengers will want answers.

Keep up the writing if you can spare that time! I've been waiting for this thread!

[Moby-Dick]

I dont think the 172 was invented as a cargo plane - last time I went in one with a pilot friend of mine I think its struggled to get airbourne!

[santa claus]

Although flying isn't one of my direct interests, I am really enjoying your reports.

Keep at it (the flying and the reporting); great thread even for the uninitiated.

[TheAnimus]

Just when you think that the tedium of all the frightfully important paperwork is done, it transpires there is a little bit more to do. This wastes part of my morning dealing with hopefully the last of the immigration and regulatory paperwork.

The odd thing about being in the US is you can’t sit out on a porch near a small airport minding your own business without all these people coming up and saying hello, how’s it going, really nice day today and other equally benign superlatives. Do they not know I’m British? As I start some of my studies I find one of the instructors has baked some macaroons and is sharing them out with the students and others who happen to be visiting the airport. That’s the problem with these empty displays of kindness and effection, it doesn’t take long before your drawn into it, like a cult member, or someone entering the Apple Store with Daddy’s’ credit card.

The afternoon comes and I can finally do some flying, this time it’s a slightly older model I’m using, I mess up the radio call, taxi to the run-up. For those that aren’t plane geeks, before take-off you do some checks on the engine whilst its running when its facing into the wind, already I can tell that some of this planes horses have escaped over the years. I like it even less than the one I flew yesterday. I taxi her off to runway 27, we’ve got a gentle headwind almost perfectly aligned with the runway, I give her the beans and we pull gracefully off, already I’m doing a much better job holding her straight, in these planes you need to give some Right Rudder to cancel out the rotary effect of the propeller and I manage to do that fairly well, we’re on the centre line of the runway and we hit rotate speed, the speed we can start to take off. I pull back, nothing happens, I pull back harder nothing happens, the instructor laughs and yanks back, we lurch upwards, no grace, almost like a fatty trying to sit up from a low lying sofa, without using their arms to support themselves because a deep fried mars bar is been dangled over their head.
However airborne is airborne and after the mornings paperwork I’m just glad to be up! The mornings sun has heated the earth creating little pockets of turbulence that rock me back and forth, I realise that if I’d paid better attention I would have noticed the birds of prey circling below, that means they must have found a thermal.

If ever your learning to fly in Florida I’d recommend familiarising yourself with how the air vent works whilst the plane is on the ground. It’s much harder to figure these things out when your already in flight, that’s a free tip there you can have for keeps.

I lever off at our cruising altitude and have her on a nice and steady heading, Instructor points and says “have you seen that plane” with just the right tone of voice to make me think it’s serious, I stare out to the left and see nothing. The <person of illegitimate heritage> has put the engine to idle and tells me I’ve an engine failure, what do I do?

I have to get the glide speed, this is the speed which will allow me to travel the furthest in the case of engine failure, I noise forward to prevent a stall whilst trying to find a suitable crash landing site, a nice big empty farmers field should do. No livestock. I trim out the plane to hold the cruse descent whilst starting to try and circle the field, I’d forgotten about the wind. I end up a good half mile away from the point in the field I was aiming for, my slow controlled downward spiral looks more like the locus of two gladiators chained together fighting to the death. The instructor comes in with the power and that exercise is over for the day.

Next up is something special they are called foggles. They are basically glasses with the top half misted out, so you can just see the instrument panel, but nothing else. The idea is that if you accidentally stray into a cloud on VFR (Visual Flight Rules) you need to be able to pull a perfect 180 turn and come out without changing altitude or getting yourself lost.

Imagine if you’re driving instructor asked you to drive continuous circles around hyde park corner at speed whilst having your eyes shut. The Attitude Indicator or Artificial Horizon in this plane is useless, it’s off to the left and angled slightly down, the instructor laughs and reminds me it was not the only source of the information I need to complete this exercise. He spends the next 25 minutes making me perform a series of turns to exact compass headings whilst climbing or descending to a specific height. I start to feel motion sick and incredibly hot and sweaty under these blindfold style glasses.

Finally he takes them off and I’m to take us back to the airfield for a go-around (practice landing). I enter formation in the circuit, left hand rule, I mess up the radio calls but luckily there is no one else about to notice. I turn base, flaps are down speed is good height is good, finally a chance to make up for the last landing. I take her in on the numbers, cut the power and touchdown with only a little bit more right rudder needed. Carb heat in, Power on, and ah yes, the flaps, at the point I remember we’re already a little bit airborn, I kill half them, we do a little bunny hop that fun weightless feeling for a moment, kill the last stage, and wouldn’t you know it rotate speed, time to pull back and take off. We sneak off in to the air, like the anorexic trying to get up from a low sofa because someone is holding some diet pills above her head. We surge up at first, but have a terrible feeling we could faint and noise back down, we’ve just not got the speed. I keep the climb going steadily and slowly we get up to a proper climb, I’ve overshot a little bit, but it doesn’t really matter there are no rules saying you have to make your crosswind turn before the golf course.

I think a small plane at 400ft might have messed up this golfers’ shot, but I remember golf has ruined many an afternoon TV lineup from my childhood, so I feel no remorse. We join the circuit and go in for a fairly uneventful landing.

Back in the school it’s time for some ground lessons, basically I’ve to read almost twice as much as most other students because of my time constraints. It turns out that I’ve got about 6 hours reading to do, tonight.

[TheAnimus]

Unlike previous days, today does not start with any paperwork, finally. Well ok it starts with about 30 seconds worth to sign out a plane, but that is not so much of a drag. Plane signed out, pre-flight checks, I actually make the radio call correctly, or rather I would have if I hadn’t dyslexic up the plane’s number. I’ll pay more attention next time. Take-off goes quite well, I’m still not pulling back quickly enough for my instructors liking, I suppose the more runway I leave, the better if ever I have to abort.

Oh joy of joys, the foggles go back on. Luckily this time for only about 10 minutes and because the Attitude Indicator actually works in this plane I don’t feel quite so motion sick. Also my performance was much better, keeping on the numbers so we quickly move on to something else. This time its turning around a point. After my previous performance in the engine failure exercise it must be quite apparent I need to practice turning around a fixed point. I pick a tiny little puddle of water and in-advertently call it a lake, whilst my instructor mocks my ‘englishisims’ I make a mental note to tell him that we always sing three verses of god save the queen before a train departs from Kings Cross station.

The goal is simple, keep this puddle of water about 50m wide under the tip of the wing at all times. It’s made harder thanks to the wind, and the fact I keep trying to turn too steeply. I’m also having to watch my altitude at all times, at no point must I stray more than 100ft away from 1000ft. This is surprisingly difficult, I put on my deep concentration face usually reserved for plugging a scart lead in the back of a TV / trying to remove a complicated bra. Instructor reminds me that if I don’t watch my pitch we will be having a ‘bad time’…. Guy obviously has watched some south park.

After what can only be described as a noble effort with limited success we move on to the next
exercise. S Turns. Pick a perfectly straight object such as some power lines, and make a series of perfectly symmetrical 180 degree turns along it, snaking along in an S shape. This is made quite tricky by the position of the wind, you have to have wings level as you cross over the target line only for a second at most. Obviously that in itself would be too easy so once again its 1000ft never going below 900 or above 1,100ft.

We practice those two manoeuvres some more before going down for an un-eventful landing and some ground schooling, my landings must be getting better.

The ground schooling might seem odd to someone who was looking in, who didn’t speak the language, grown men playing with not very functional toy airplanes. We go over the theory of the exercises, have some late lunch then head up again for another flight. Oh dear only the older plane with the dodgy AI is available. Well make the most of what is on offer I’ve always said as I pre-flight the old bird. I make the radio calls in my British RP accent rather well and effortlessly (turns out this was a good thing) we take off, again I’m a little late and gentle pulling back, I get a nice climb and on go the foggles for a few minutes.

The odd thing is despite the slightly wrong Attitude Indicator I’m doing a much better job this time and starting to enjoy it, it’s also good to know that if ever I find myself VFR flight stuck in a cloud with a broken AI I’ll be absolutely fine.

We go over the exercises from earlier in the day and they are getting noticeably better, practice some power off/power on stalls and repeat. We do this for a little over an hour and head for home. The wind has picked up a bit and it’s a bit of a strong cross, I’m not losing height as fast as I’d like so I try a little skid.

Whenever you turn a plane you’re meant to do so with the ailerons the flappy bits on the outmost side of the wing, and correct any yaw with the rudder (vertical flappy bit on the back), however Ailerons create drag, which slows you down, and loosing speed with the same angle of the wings will lose you height. A skid is a turn on the aileron with the full rudder to cancel out the turn. I manage to get us in to one, but perhaps a little too much so. We’re about 100ft off the ground now and I’m amazed at the balls the instructor has, if our roles had been reversed I’d have smacked me and taken control ages ago.

He straightens her up and we’re down. I need to work on my landings, but seeing as I’ve not even attempted ten, he isn’t too worried.

However an old Brit who is also at the school saw it and couldn’t resist mocking me, but it was his night anyway, he just qualified as a CFI (Certified Flight Instructor).

[TeePee]

So the downside of that really good weather? Density Altitude! Those higher temperatures will really sap performance, and it's not like those 172's are really swift to start with!

It sounds like you're having fun and making progress.

[handscombmp]

Great little updates. Remind me of when i was learning to fly.
Keep them coming.

I feel now us Hexites have enough pilots to have a Hexus Flying trip

[MadduckUK]

I feel now us Hexites have enough pilots to have a Hexus Flying trip

you haven't seen us try and cooperate in games at LANs, i doubt fling in close proximity would be a good idea.

worst bit of learning to fly for me was the taxiing, by miiles.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

you haven't seen us try and cooperate in games at LANs, i doubt fling in close proximity would be a good idea.

I think trying to fly would be a good start!

worst bit of learning to fly for me was the taxiing, by miiles.

Missing the runway probably does not help either!

[MadduckUK]

I think trying to fly would be a good start!

Missing the runway probably does not help either!

oh no, no problems there, but the delay in you stamping on the rudder and anything happening in a tail dragger is seconds, and feels longer. you can easily end up looking like a female playing a driving game

[handscombmp]

you haven't seen us try and cooperate in games at LANs, i doubt fling in close proximity would be a good idea.

worst bit of learning to fly for me was the taxiing, by miiles.

Would be worth a try though

I you think taxing in a little plane was bad try it in a Boeing 757.
A whole other ball game.

[TheAnimus]

After flying twice yesterday and twice again today you’d think I’d be getting the hang of and everything would be coming together into a ballet of fluidic motions. Not so. I’m still pulling back too gently on take-off, my time in the older 58G has given me a slight fear of losing airspeed. The rotate speed in a 172 of this configuration is about 60-65 knots depending on the weather conditions, if you don’t start to pull back then the noise wheel becomes quite irksome, it wants to lift off, tries to skip, slip and slide all over the runway. Obviously this is not good.
In the morning flight the instructor comments that I am being very tense with the controls, gripping everything rather tightly and generally overthinking the action which often makes it late and means the situation has changed. Thing is I find I’ve never found any rollercoaster or fairground ride scary, so long as I’ve got something to hold on too, and ultimately when I don’t feel like I’m in control I seem to grab at the yoke harder rather than try to understand what it is I’m not mastering.
We head off to practice S turns and turns around a point. At least I’m now keeping altitude.
For lunch we have some Cuban sandwich type thing, once again I’m reminded why Americans’ are so fat, 5$ and it’s massive, even intimidating, like looking up the face of a large mountain, it was quite the struggle.

In the afternoon the take-off is a little sloppy again, I’m slow turning the aileron into the cross wind to try and keep straight. The problem with been slow in a simple manoeuvre like that is you become worse off, your further out from your course and you have to snake back, over-correcting once then levelling off again afterwards, the simplest mistake gets multiplied and increases your workload. As its often when your workload is getting on top of you that you make the simple mistakes it’s easy to understand why this is such a pain.

Foggles On! As soon as we hit 500ft, but at least with Kilo Sierra the AI works. The time off day is about 2/3pm and the heat is something else, part of me fears the backrest material will be starting to rot, as my concentration seems to be a catalyst for the heat and sweat. I stay under the hood for almost 20 minutes flying headings, holding altitudes etc. At least my foggle work is going well.
We do some of the manoeuvres and my turns around a point are now deemed ‘acceptable’ I’d better not let such praise go to my head. Practice some S turns skipping along some power lines before heading back to the airfield. On the way he tells me to hold 3,000ft and cross mid-field, once we’re above the strip he pulls the carb heat on and throttle to idle. Engine Failure! Indeed. I start spiralling above the numbers on the runway whilst holding the airspeed at 65knots the best glide speed. This is both great fun and mildly terrifying to think that I might one day have to do this for real, after-all these single engine planes are quite vulnerable. At 1,000ft its turn out of the spiral and join base for runway 9, I make my turn a little small and we are coming in with too much height and speed, the instructor demonstrates how to slip the plane again by angling the plane in an un-aerodynamic fashion you can lose speed and altitude quickly.

A quick touch and go then it’s back in the circuit for a couple more landing attempts.
Once back on the ground it’s time for a little bit of standardised testing to see how I’m coming along with my ground work. These end of stage tests are just designed to make sure that your up to speed on your written work and will be able to pass the important FAA test later, as such for these interim tests the pass mark is 80%, I score a 78%. Luckily your able to try again immediately, I go over a couple of the questions, mostly regarding air space classifications what you can do and what you can’t, I pass the second time.