Today's first lesson was at 8 am again, and Matt let me do the preflight. We took off into partly cloudy sky, and I expected a smooth flight since it was a relatively cool morning. But that was not the case. We were bumped around most of the way up to our planned altitude of 3,500 ft. At that point it was a little smoother.
Steep turns were the first maneuver we practiced. The first 360 degree turn went well, but on the second turn, I let the nose get too low, and we came out of the turn 150 ft. too low and about 5 knots too slow. We practiced a few more, then did a few power-on and power-off stalls. Matt showed me a new one - power-off stalls in the landing configuration with a 20 degree bank.
This type of stall is done by slowing the aircraft to 55 knots in a descent and setting full flaps for landing. Then the throttle is pulled back to idle, the wings are banked 20 degrees to the left, and the nose is pulled up above the horizon. This is to simulate a scenario where someone pulls out onto the runway while I am landing, so I abandon the landing and try to climb, but I forget to push the throttle forward. The plane begins to climb, but with the engine still idling, it obviously won't go very far before the wings stop producing lift. At that point, the nose drops, and I push the throttle forward, which increases our speed, and we resume the climb. Since I had already practiced stalls, this was fairly easy to learn.
That concluded our first flight. We returned to the airport and took a break for a few minutes, then once again took to the skies. This time the primary focus was on ground reference maneuvers, the first of which was a turn about a point. We picked out an area of weeds in the center of a field and flew circles around it, correcting for the wind to stay about 1/2 mile away. By this time the wind had picked up, so it was a challenge to keep the proper distance away from the point. After 3 circles, we broke off and flew several S-turns over a power line until Matt said, "Enough of this nonsense. Break off and find a big rectangular field." We began looking, and instead of a field, we found an area of houses that was rectangular-shaped. Using it as a reference, we flew around the edges of this populated area in a rectangular pattern.
Then it was back to the airport to practice landings. Matt switched on the COM2 radio to listen to the weather broadcast at the airport. "Winds two-two-zero at one-zero gusts one-six," the automated voice said calmly. This meant that a gusty wind was blowing right down the runway. It was a bit bumpy while coming in, but most of that was probably pilot-induced turbulence, and my relative lack of experience made the touchdown bumpy as well. We made a total of 6 more landings, and once we had to go around because I leveled off too high above the runway, which would have resulted in a hard landing had we tried to salvage it. After parking and securing the aircraft, it was time for lunch and a 2 hour break before our next scheduled flight at 2 pm.
A line of storms decided to keep us on the ground by moving over the airfield a little before 2 pm, so we used a flight simulator to practice emergency procedures and crosswind landings. This simulator had 3 huge screens, and a Garmin G1000 instrument panel with the controls laid out much like the Cessna 172s I had been flying. I did some steep turns to get a feel for the controls, and as I rolled into the turn and pulled back on the yoke, I waited for the G-forces to build up to confirm I was doing it right. When the Gs stayed the same as in level flight, I was somewhat confused until I remembered that I was still sitting inside the airport building. We did several takeoffs with Matt killing the engine at different times. Then he had me do several landings with different crosswind directions and speeds. These went pretty well except for one when I let the speed get too low. Because of the way the controls are manipulated for a crosswind landing, this caused the airplane to veer off to the right and make a hard landing in the grass beside the runway. Thank goodness it was just a simulator.
Matt says he is impressed with the progress I'm making, but he thinks I will be done with all the training I can do without a student pilot certificate before the certificate arrives. So all the logistics of that will have to be figured out.
Today's flying added 2.8 hours and 8 landings to the logbook, as well as 1.2 hours of simulator time, which brings the totals to 10.5 hours and 22 landings.
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