| Lesson 13:
Date: Saturday 2/02/2008 Where: UZA Aircraft: Cessna 172 N517DL Instruction: 1.2/.3 hours (air/ground) Dual Instruction with Derek Alter Are we gonna hit those trees? Derek's back and it's a beautiful day for flying. I complete the preflight and Derek joins me in Delta Lima. I've decided that I may need a pillow or phone book to see over the dash because the seat height adjustment is broken. Therefore when I take off and land I have to sit way up in my seat to make sure I can see. Anyways, I start going over my checklist and start the engine. To maximize my time in air, Derek took the controls and taxiied us to the runup area (rather quickly). I completed the runup and started to taxi for takeoff. Derek asked me to prove him wrong about the "Lefty" nickname. I did pretty well in disproving it. I was just a bit left of center when we took off. We flew to the practice area and on the way I brought us to altitude and trimmed the plane for level flight in a matter of minutes. I think Derek was impressed. I know I was. Derek asked me to show him some steep turns, both right and left. After picking a point in the distance and checking for traffic I completed the turns, without losing altitude and I rolled out on the heading. NICE! My turns looked great. So we made a turn back towards the airport and Derek wanted me to show him a power-off stall. No problem. I slowed the plane and completed the stall with no issues. Now he wanted to move to power-on stalls. I slowed the plane to 65 knots and then gave full power while pulling back on the yoke. I reached the stall and broke it by briefly pressing forward on the yoke. The nose falls off to the left and I go nose down. Damn. I recover, level out, and try again. Once again the nose falls off to the left and drops slightly. I know what I'm doing wrong, I just can't get this maneuver right. Derek demonstrates the maneuver for me and I shadow his movements on the controls. Cool. I think I have it. This time I complete the maneuver slightly better, but not good enough to pass a checkride. Derek decides to move on so that we can practice emergency landings, after all we will be doing power-on and off stalls over and over and over. I turn towards the airport and make a call announcing my intentions. I turned for the downwind leg and just after we crossed over mid-field, Derek pulled the power to simulate an engine failure. I immediately turned towards to the runway (cutting short, the base and final legs of the pattern). We were high for landing so Derek showed me how to slip to lose altitude quickly. Once we were low enough I took over and lined us up with the runway. The landing was good. Pretty smooth. With plenty of runway left, Derek stopped the plane and told me to takeoff from where we were sitting. I tookoff, on the CENTERLINE and stayed in the pattern. I made my crosswind turn, then downwind turn. Once we passed the runway end numbers, just before my base turn, Derek pulled power again. I turned towards the runway. We were high again, and I couldn't get low, fast enough and we were going just over 100 knots. We were running out of runway so Derek said to do a go around. I pushed in full power and turned slightly right. Derek pulled the flaps up 10 degrees and I increased altitude to pattern height. Once we were far enough out I turned for crosswind again. This time Derek pulled power and we were already low and a bit far from the airport. I adjusted for best glide speed of, 65 knots (per my checklist). I looked down and saw trees, not uncommon, but this time I could see birds and bird nests. We were LOW and losing altitude. Derek suggested that I try and glide at 75 knots. That meant pitching the nose down and as low as we were that was scary. Derek asked, "Do you think we're going hit those trees?" I wasn't sure. I was silent. "Maybe", I finally replied. We must've been 15 feet above the tree tops. Instead of going around we actually made the runway and set the plane down for nice landing, with no flaps. We taxiied around so that I could get at least one normal landing in. I tookoff and stayed in the pattern for landing on runway 20. Derek had to remind me of a few things as we were landing (I think I was a bit frazzled by the emergency landings), but I leveled us out and was able to make the landing with very little input, if any at all, from Derek (I didn't ask). The flight was over and we headed back to the ramp, still joking about how close we were to the trees on that simulated engine out. We had lunch and Derek held a quick ground lesson covering the FAR/AIM info that I'd need for the written test. We didn't finish, but I'm sure we'll make it up. Both Derek and David mentioned that I should be soloing in the next week or two. COOL! I feel confident as long as I can do some more landings. Conclusion: We made it! We landed! The word "Solo" was mentioned. My neighbor, who often bikes around the airport, asked me if I was flying the red tailed plane on Saturday. I told him I was and he said, "Boy, I thought you were going in the trees on that one landing. That was close!". I explained that we were working on emergency landings. He just laughed. What I learned: The Cessna will glide for a good distance, if you know the correct glide speed. I still want a lesson of just takeoffs and landings. |