I was able to have Sunday off from flying due to the way the flights are scheduled, which was very nice. I dropped by a local church, and I was very blessed by their warm welcome and the pastor's sermon.
Today's first lesson was at 4 pm. After preflighting 45F, Matt and I headed out to the practice area. We began by practicing steep turns. Before I began training, I was afraid I would never be able to master the steep turn, because no matter how many times I tried, I could not fly one properly in the simulator. Today I proved myself wrong, and both of the turns I did, left and right, were within standards. Following the steep turns, Matt had me do several power-on and power-off stalls. Most of them turned out alright, but a little more practice definitely wouldn't hurt.
After the stalls, we were in level flight when Matt pulled the throttle all the way out and said, "Your engine just died. What are you going to do?"
I immediately tried to recall the procedure for an engine failure in flight, which he had me memorize earlier, and at the same time began scanning the ground for a suitable landing site. "First I'm going to establish a glide at 65 knots." I began pulling the nose of the aircraft back to keep from losing altitude. "Now I'm looking for a place to land. Since there are no airports close by, I'm going to look for an open field."
"Are there?
"Well let me look again. Oh, that's Georgetown over there," I said, looking off the right wing. "They have an airport." In a few seconds I saw the runway. I pointed the nose directly at it as we began to descend to keep the air flowing over the wings. "So I've got my landing site picked out, and I'm flying toward it. Fuel selector is on both, fuel shutoff is in, mixture is rich -"
"You don't need to turn on the fuel pump."
"Ok, fuel pump would be on, magnetos on both."
"The engine's still dead."
"Ok, I would squawk 7700 and make a call on 121.5, and I'm pulling out the checklist," I said as I grabbed the paper to verify that I had done everything and to go through the procedure of shutting down the dead engine. Since it was just a simulated emergency, we wanted the engine to stay running, so I just pointed out what to do to shut down the engine.
By this time, we were about 2 or 3 miles from the airfield flying perpendicular to the runway.
"Do you remember what the winds were?" Matt asked.
"Two-four-zero, so that means we'll use runway 36... Actually runway 18."
"There you go."
"That's the one that goes this way," I said, pointing to the right.
"Does it?
I glanced at the heading indicator. "Nope. This way." I said, pointing in the opposite direction. Matt nodded.
We set up to fly parallel to the runway in the opposite direction of landing, then make a 180 degree turn to land. As we were about a mile away from the runway, I asked, "Do I turn my base now?"
"You tell me."
"Yeah I'm turning now."
As I completed the turn lined up with the runway, I realized we were higher than we should be. I lowered full flaps, but we still were not coming down fast enough.
"I'm going to slip it," I said.
"Go ahead," Matt replied.
I swung the nose of the airplane to the right and rolled the wings to the left. This causes the airplane to fly sort of sideways. Instead of flowing smoothly around the streamlined body of the plane, now the air hits the side of the body which creates more air resistance, helping the plane come down faster. Even in a full slip, it was obvious we were not going to land until we were near the far end of the runway.
"Were never going to get it down on this runway," I said.
"Are we?"
"If we do, we'll roll off the end of it."
"Come out of the slip." I did. Now we were over top of the runway. "Full throttle, go around." I retracted the flaps and began climbing out.
"You're right." Matt explained. "We could have landed, but we probably would have gone off the end of the runway. But we would have survived. Now, show me a short field landing."
We made a few short field landings at Brown County, then we returned to Clermont County where we made a soft field landing and parked the plane. The time was now 6 pm, and most of the airport employees and linemen were leaving. But not us. We still had the airplane rented from 8 pm to midnight. We had supper together at the cafe inside the terminal while I did my pre-solo written exam. After he graded it and we went over the incorrect answers, we still had some time before the next flight. Matt was going to fly some instrument approaches in the simulator, and he said I could join him.
The simulator is very realistic. So realistic, in fact, that you can log time in it. It has a real Garmin G1000 cockpit in it, the same system that is used in many light aircraft, but instead of getting information from sensors on the aircraft, it gets its information from a computer. Matt flew several approaches into Lunken airport, and soon it was time to get in the real plane again. After preflighting, we had to wait for some time, because night landings can only be logged 1 hour after sunset. When it was time, we took off and circled around to land again.
Night flying is incredibly beautiful. The darkness makes it feel like you are closer to the ground, so when you fly over a lighted area, the objects on the ground look like they are miniature models of the real thing. Toward the west we could see the lights of Cincinnati glimmering in the distance, and below us the small town of Batavia. Out in front of us flashing lights indicated the presence of another airplane that was landing ahead of us.
We landed, turned off the runway, and taxied back to do it over again. We took off and landed 7 more times before parking the plane for the night. With that experience in the logbook, tomorrow night the plans are to fly a night cross-country to an airport about 55 nautical miles away.
Today's flying added 2.8 hours and 12 landings to the logbook, which brings the totals to 17.0 hours and 50 landings.
Love keeping up with your progress.
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