AvGas

We did a bit of airspace quizzing, and covered wake turbulence and ground reference manuevers. I am anxious to get back in the air, as it has been nearly 2 weeks since our last flight. The plan for Thursday is no ground and a lot of flying…and since it will be late in the afternoon let’s hope the weather agrees.

Looking forward to it. For those of you thinking about learning to fly…caveat: it is a ton of work, with a lot of reading and foreign concepts, as well as mentally and physically draining during flight. But, I am learning an enormous amount and having (most days) a lot of fun.

Finally! Slow flight, steep turns and stalls aren’t quite my best friend(s) yet, but they are fast becoming it. Our morning flight out today was great…a bit windy/bumpy, but that seems to be the norm out of SQL.I got to the airport around 0645 PDT…long before Karl’s scheduled arrival of 0800 PDT…mostly to collect my thoughts and reflect on the lessons so far, as well as pre-flight N2321M (which seems to be becoming my regular plane). Again no comm work today, as the push-to-talk on the pilot side continues to be inoperative. I emailed the owner…so we’ll see what happens.

Takeoff is still hard for me…keeping the wings level and climbing out at Vy (79 kts) is challenging. Karl tells me that it will be burned into my brain by the time we are done with the next few lessons.

We did all of our maneuvers over the coastline today…which (I really don’t like the ocean) is more disconcerting, but vastly superior in beauty than the Sunol gap/Livermore valley area.

Stalls are not nearly as crap-inducing as they were the last time out…and recovery is pretty easy (no turning stalls yet).

I have a lot of reading to do on charts for the next outing (7/13), but have a bit of time over the next few days to devote.

Hey…I am starting to enjoy this more and more.

Oh…and I flew the approach today…just short of landing…which was handled by Karl.

I spent a short time today reading (again) through Karl’s web site, and found the following:”aviation is terribly unforgiving of incompetence”

This will definitely be in my head today as I get ready for tomorrow’s flight.

Well…I flew like crap today. I wasn’t very mentally prepared, hadn’t finished my homework, and was generally stressed out…which doesn’t make for good flying. A couple of planes got very close to us and freaked me out…and I didn’t recover very well from that.

• Takeoffs: Still suck
• Straight and level: Decent
• Turns: Decent
• Steep turns: First few were awful, last few were ok
• Stalls: Freaked the poo out of me, but I’ll do better next time
• Landings: Haven’t gotten there yet
• Radio: Comm was broken on my side today, so after prepping to talk to ground, Karl had to do it
• Pseudo spin correction: Good, until I corrected with right rudder for a right roll and almost sent us into a spin

I must say, Karl is a patient man…I don’t know how he does it.

N2321M again today…back in it on Friday. I am planning on being more relaxed, better prepared, and confident.

I really want to nail slow flight, stalls, and steep turns.