"It's bumpy up there!" he said with a southern drawl. "I was doing this number the whole time," he said as he grasped imaginary controls and jerked them back and forth like he was fighting turbulence. We talked about the wind and the resulting rough landings for a little bit, then he had to go downstairs to take his written exam. I wished him good luck and sat down at a table to wait for Matt.
"What do you want to do today?" he asked when he walked over.
"I think I'd like to practice some landings in this wind," I replied.
"Sounds good. Go ahead and start the preflight, and I'll meet you out there."
I headed out to the flight line and got N53417 ready for the flight. 417 is what we call her for short, and she's been around for quite a while. Matt said she was already being used back when he was doing his primary training. 417 is a good-looking aircraft, with wheel pants that give her a streamlined look and a white, green, and gold paint scheme. None of the other Cessna 172s at Sporty's have either of those features, and she looks quite glamorous sitting on the flight line. She is equipped with a Garmin GNS430 GPS as well, so she would be my favorite plane out of the fleet if it was not for one tiny little problem. It is a very small problem when you first hear of it, but it gets really annoying really fast. There is always a hissing sound in the pilot's headset. It sounds like the crackling, hissing sound that an old vinyl record makes during the silence between songs. When it first started making the irritating noise, I just shrugged it off. But after a two hour flight, I was millimeters away from going insane. Dear old 417, if it weren't for such a small flaw, she could be my favorite.
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| The instrument panel of N53417 |
We practiced landings and takeoffs in the slight crosswind. Well, it was a crosswind most of the time. The direction of the wind kept shifting, sometimes very rapidly. Once I was lined up with the runway, maybe half a mile from the threshold when the wind direction changed very abruptly, causing the plane to roll to the right. I immediately jerked the yoke to the left to counteract the force, but the wind held us in a right bank, and I could not roll the wings back to level for a second or two. When the wind stabilized and I was able to level the wings, we were above the glideslope and off to the right of the centerline.
"I'm just going to go around," I said.
I applied full throttle, retracted a notch of flaps, and started climbing. After I made the radio call, Matt said, "I'll never argue with the decision to go around."
We made a total of eight landings, then tied down dear old 417 in her parking spot, ending what is most likely the last flight with Matt.
Later in the day, we called off the next flight, choosing instead to review ground knowledge. Matt asked me all kinds of questions the examiner might ask, and I either gave an answer, or he explained the correct answer if I was unsure. There is so much information to take in that many days after completing a flight or ground lesson, I return to the hotel where I sit down and stare at nothing for a while, giving my brain time to process all the information it has taken in.
It definitely has been seventeen days of drinking from a fire hose. Matt said I finished training faster than any of his previous students, except for the guy from Wisconsin who just came down to finish up night and solo flying.
Matt is confident that I will pass both the stage check and the exam, and I am pretty confident of it as well. I know I will not be able to answer all the questions perfectly, but I believe I will be able to pass the exam.
Today's flying added 1.5 hours and 8 landings to the logbook, which brings the totals to 42.6 hours and 128 landings.
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