A trip

The weather has been been crappy in the last six weeks, which has thwarted several of my attempts to fly. As well, there's my ever-present anxiety about the impending solo flight out to the practice area. I've just been waiting to get on with it so I can make progress and perhaps show myself what I can do. But yesterday turned out to be a gorgeous day and, just to break the frustration, we decided to have some fun and do the first of the cross-country flights that are required in the private pilot training. I have to do two cross-country trips, one "short," one "long" (at least 150 NM), each of them twice - once dual, once solo. Today was the short one. We went from our airport, Cooking Lake, to Vegreville and then to Camrose and then back home. It was a triangular route of 105 NM.

I enjoyed learning about flight planning in ground school and was excited to put it into practice. For this flight, I calculated the fuel requirements, wind corrections, and estimated times of arrival and mapped the route, found our headings, and identified suitable enroute checkpoints. We briefed the flight on the ground and then set off.

It was fabulous! The views were amazing and it was so great to go somewhere! It was quite easy to read the map, determine our location, and adjust the heading, although on the second leg, the landmarks weren't as clear so I had to compare map to ground a lot to be certain. I started to get the hang of flying the plane while looking down at the map and using the E6B flight computer (a circular slide rule) to calculate ground speed and ETA. The flight was uneventful except that, of course, it was beautiful and fun! Now, having done this with my instructor, I have to do it by myself, which I expect to do in the next couple weeks, weather allowing. I have a couple of solo excursions waiting for me now but today, I'm not going to stress. I'm just going to remember how great yesterday's trip was!

How to entertain yourself in bad weather

The weather for the last month has been mostly awful, as it was for a week in late November. Low ceilings, flurries, flurries, flurries, wind. We did entertain ourselves with some crosswind landings yesterday, which was great practice, but the real fun during the bad weather periods has been working on some of my instrument time in the simulator!

The simulator is harder to fly than the real plane, in terms of the responsiveness of the controls, but the stakes are a lot lower! At one point, I put the "plane" into a spiral dive and my instructor just clicked something on the control board and I was saved. For one lesson, we set the departure airport as Victoria, BC. For another, we flew out of LAX, although soon after take-off, we were completely in the clouds. I practiced scanning the instruments and making small corrections to keep the plane upright and flying straight. I eventually learned how to recognize and recover from unusual attitudes so my instructor didn't have to just bail me out with the computer settings. I also learned to use radio navigation instruments. It was very cool and interesting and I could see myself getting better at it. It's a helpful way to learn, a lot cheaper than the real plane, and a great option for those days when leaving the ground just isn't going to happen.

Dark comedy of errors

It was a dark comedy of errors at the airport this afternoon. I've been waiting a few weeks for good weather to do my next big solo flight. So with blue sky today, I thought I'd give it a try. But things didn't quite go as planned:

1) The crosswind was so strong today it was beyond my landing skill. So my instructor and I decided to go together but 2) A plane crashed on the runway and we had to wait for the runway to be cleared so we could go but then 3) We couldn't start our airplane because it's so cold and the mechanic couldn't start it even with the battery charger on so 4) We got into another airplane and were doing the pre-take off checks and discovered a dangerous mechanical issue (magneto fault). So, we decided that the flying gods were against us today and we wouldn't push it. 

Flying isn't always straightforward!