COM Lessons 1-7

The plane looks exactly like the 172s that I normally fly, just a few more levers in the cockpit that I haven’t used before. There are a few more items on the pre-flight than usual but it really does look like a 172. We taxi out for a right downwind departure. The run up has a couple of extra items, most notably checking that the governor unit works on the ground. After a short delay we are off down 28R and rotating at 55 knots. Bob subscribes to the ‘pull it off the ground’ school of take offs whereas I like the ‘let it fly itself off the ground’ but I can do it his way.

There’s a lot to do on take off. Once we are clear of the end of the runway, we retract the gear. At 1000 feet I need to reduce the manifold pressure and the propellor RPM setting, and of course make the turns to crosswind and downwind. Seems a lot like patting my head and rubbing my tummy. We head to the ‘east practice area’, near Vijeas casino, for some recap of the Private maneuvers. Once we’re in level flight we reduce manifold pressure again and close the cowl flaps. From there we do some slow flight, some steep turns which are mostly ok but not great and a stall which doesn’t go very well. Bob says we will work on those again later. We play with putting the landing gear down and up, and how to manually lower the gear if the switch doesn’t work. It takes a lot of pumping and all whilst trying to fly the airplane. We head back to MYF where there is a large crosswind for which Bob lands the plane.

I don’t feel too great about my performance, not the showing I wanted to make with a new instructor. I am sure he is wondering how the hell I got my Private and Instrument tickets.

A spot of lunch and we are back in the air, this time heading to Brown Field for some touch and goes, yep this really is student pilot time. It was pretty bumpy all morning and it remains that way in the afternoon. The touch and goes go pretty well, I’m dealing with the crosswinds nicely and manage to grease a couple of landings. The workload is pretty high with having to work the gear, manifold pressure, prop rpm and everything else but I am sure that with time those things become second nature. I feel much better about my performance this time.

We get back to MYF and I track a perfect centre line and glideslope, but at the last minute it all goes wrong and we land pretty hard. Bob saves the bounce and lands it without the need for a go-around. Flying is very good at bringing you back down to earth, if you pardon the pun.

In a chandelle the aim is to perform a climbing 180 degree turn such that at the end the airspeed is just above stall. Its what is known as a maximum performance maneuver because you are on the edge of the airplane’s performance if you do it correctly. I messed up the first one by not keeping the pitch of the plane high enough but the second one came out fairly close and so we decided that I had that one well enough to practice on my own.

Next were the lazy 8’s and I was looking forward to seeing those as I could not work out what they felt like from reading the descriptions in the book. Unfortunately I wasn’t much clearer on it after Bob’s demonstration. I think its the hardest maneuver to master as it has to be very smooth and effortless; lazy, in fact. I will definitely need more lessons for that.

Next up were steep spirals. In this maneuver you pick a point on the ground and spiral around it. Its just like the turns around a point from the Private test but you are descending without power. The idea is to do at least three rotations. During the checkride, it is very likely that the examiner will simulate an engine failure at this point so the spirals will be to a power-off landing. I did this ok, I think, certainly well enough to practice my own.

Finally we did 8’s on pylons, another ground reference maneuver (like the spirals) that is designed to test your ability to divide your attention between outside references and the instruments inside. You pick two points on the ground and, basically, perform a firgure 8 pattern around them. The interesting part is that you must keep your wing tip pointing at the reference point throughout the maneuver and this requires climbing and descending at various points to maintain the distance. I did another pretty good job at those so we decided to head back for lunch. It was another blustery day and I was starting to feel a little sick again.

After some lunch we set off for Brown Field to spend the lesson working on my landings and pattern work. We did a soft field take off from Montgomery and positioned ourselves in the pattern for Brown Field. My approaches and landings were a little shaky at first, there are so many things to work at the same time that it takes quite a lot of effort but after doing it a few times the checklist items were becoming more automatic and I could concentrate more on my flying. My crosswind technique really wasn’t that great and I still tended to flare a little too high. We tried some short field landings and these have to be within 100 feet of your intended landing point; right now my landings are way outside that tolerance so a lot of work to be done there. As a way of teaching me how to handle the flare Bob had me try a slow flight over the runway. Rather than land the plane, we keep it in ground effect about 1 or 2 feet off the runway, tracking the centreline. The game is to keep the plane centred and level so that you don’t land. I didn’t do a very good job of it. My crosswind technique really isn’t good.

Getting back to Montgomery there was a good crosswind from the left, I did another nice approach but at the last minute I added a little power and messed up the flare and landing. It wasn’t too bad but I was annoyed that I had screwed up that which was pretty good until then. Ah well, next lesson will be back to Brown for more slow flight down the runway. Bob reckons that once I get the hang of that, my landings will be 100% improved. Let’s hope so!