Skyhawk

Well, got out to fly again this morning.  An early flight.  I had hoped that the air would be smoother, but an overcast sky kept us below 1500 ft.  I wasn’t as nervous this time, so I thought it was a better flight.  I was using the same plane I went up in the first time.  This is a newer 172 and I kinda like this one.  We took off and after turning toward the west, we were climbing up to 1200 ft and the clouds were just above me.  Because I’m a student I can’t fly in clouds, I fly what is called Visual Flight Rules (VFR).  So I couldn’t go up into the clouds and I had to stay at least 500 ft below them.  As we proceeded to the west, cloud layer went up but we never got above 1500 ft the whole time.  The lesson for today was ATTITUDE…that is the angle of the wings to the flow of the air.  Point the nose up, the airplane goes up. Point the nose down the airplane goes down.  Once I got the airplane trimmed up (Trimming the airplane is the setting of a tab on the back end of the elevators that hold the airplane in a set attitude and it releaves the pressures on the control yoke, aka steering wheel).  Once trimmed up correctly the airplane will fly hands off.  If gives you some releaf and lets you enjoy the ride.  That’s was something else I was working on, was enjoying the ride, looking at the scenary going below me and around.   I have a tendency to keep my head in the cockpit looking at the gauges, need to look more outside.  I’m getting better at it.

On the flight out to the west, we’re at about 1200 ft and there’s this big-ole bird.  Looked like a big crow.  He was just floating along right in front of us.  The instructor said…”don’t hit the bird” .  He flew off to the left then came back again in front of us.  It’s kind of wierd seeing a single bird that high right in front of you doing 110 knots.

Anyway we went out to the “practice area” and starting practicing cordinated turns.  Using the rudders and the wings to cordinate the turns.  This isn’t as easy as it sounds.  Your feet controls the rudders and your hands controls the wings.  So we did a few of these to the left and right along a straight line.  (There’s a pipeline out in the  practice area where the trees have been cleared out and forms a nice straight path).  We then did some slow flight.  Basically slow the airplane down to 70 knots without loosing altitude.  We then did some turns in that configuration.  Turns at this speed are a lot more sluggish then the ones I was doing earlier.  We then went back to cruise speed, or 110 knots without loosing altitude.  I was kinda all over the place.  Up and down a couple of hundred feet.  Eventually I got the basic handle on this. The slow flight is the speed and the attitude you use to set up for landings, so I guess they are kind of important.

We then did a couple of “power on” stalls.  A stall basically causes the airplane to quit flying and starts falling.  We got back into slow flight configuration, 70 mph with the nose high holding altitude.  Then pull back the yoke increasing the nose up attitude until the airplane stalls.  The stall is preceeded with a “stall warning” horn that tells you are approaching a stall.  The airplane then shudders, the nose drops and the airplane starts flying again.  we did a two or three of those and then we headed back to the airport.

On the way back to the airport, I was paying more attention to the scenary and picking out landmarks, like water tower, the pipeline again, other airports, other airplanes landing and taking off at other airports.  I was also listening as the instructor talked to Air Traffic Control and the airport tower.  Eventually I’ll have to be doing that also.  So once cleared to land I put the airplane in slow flight configuration and then turned toward the runway.  The instructor talked me down and we landed.  We taxied off the runway and back to parking.  All in all 1.8 hours of flight this morning.

I’ve included a map below that shows where we flew this morning.  The blue line is obviously my flight path.  The red line indicates where the restricted flight area in Washington DC starts.  To the east (upper right)  of that line you must be in contact with ATC.  To the West your VFR and can basically go where ever you want.

So that was flight number 2, not bad.  I was more comfortable in the airplane this time

later

Barry