I had my third lesson today. I was concerned that the weather might not work out as it has stormed every day this week. When I checked the radar and forcast this morning however, it was perfectly clear. The only thing that worried me was the temperature was supposed to get up to 94. That said, by noon the forcast had changed and it was only supposed to get up to about 90 degrees. Needless to say it was hot and humid.
Since I work at the airport I arrived a bit early. As I was walking up the stairs I noticed that Josh had just gotten back with another student and they were just finishing stowing the aircraft. This coupled with Nathan’s comments about dirty flight instructor tricks made me paranoid. I went on inside and checked in. Not long after I arrived Josh came up and checked the plane in. He told me he needed to finish up some paperwork on the last flight and that I should go ahead and start the preflight.
No big deal I thought. Our airport did fall under the new TSA badging guidelines and since I already have a badge no one needs to escort me. Luckily I still had on my badge as there were TSA people doing a ramp check. I started my preflight and made it as far as openning the door and removing the control lock and pitot tube cover before I was sweating like crazy. I realized when I stepped out from under the wing that my feet were sticking to the tarmac. I pushed on nonetheless, making sure to do a very thorough job. I refuse to get caught out by some dirty trick. I was doing fine until I got to checking the oil. The fact that they had just landed meant that the plane was exceptionally hot. I nearly burned my fingers off pulling out the dip stick. I checked the level as best I could with out something to wipe it off. It looked to be about 5 which meant at some point someone should add some. I made a note to mention the oil and pressed on and finished. About 2 minutes after I completed the preflight Josh came out. As it turned out he had been watching from the window and waiting on me to finish before he came out. He asked me about the oil and then, after also burning his fingers, added a quart.
We boarded the plane and proceded to start the engine. The first attempt was not successful so I primed it and gave it another go. As it turned out the old adage of ‘third times the charm’ applied here. Everything was good to go. We advanced up to the end of the hangar and stopped to radio for clearance to taxi. We were totally stiffed by the controller in favor of Bluestreak (some scheduled air carrier). After contacing the controller again we were given our clearance to taxi. Steering with my feet is beginning to seem more natural, although I still have little issues. The biggest issue is that of mashing on the wrong pedal and having to quickly recover. As we reached the taxiway I did exactly that. After a quick recovery, we proceeded to the hold short line and did the before takeoff check. We were cleared for takeoff and we did so in short order. I’m doing alright with take offs but to tell the truth, I still feel like I lose it just a bit during the first few seconds at full power. I also have trouble feeling the rotation and lift off. I usually end up running it to about 80kts on the ground and leaping into the air rather than gently leaving the ground at about 65kts. Its just not smooth and I wish I did better.
The controller gave us a heading and told us to contact departure and we were gone. Like the last lesson we were headed out toward the practice area over Ft. Loudon Dam although Josh also mentioned Madisonville (KMNV). Once we had reached the practice area Josh had me do a breif run through some of the stuff from last lesson. So for about 10 minutes I did turns to headings, climbs, and descents. These were much harder this lesson because it was terribly turbulent. Then he had me put on the foggles and I did the same manuevers for some simulated instrument time. This was a first and it wasn’t so bad. Josh cautioned me to let him know if I started feeling sick, but it wasn’t a problem so we just moved on.
He had me take off the foggles and gave me a brief rundown on slips and skids. Then he showed me a slip to each side. Slips are an interesting animal. I could see that we were descending at 1000ft per minute according to the vertical speed indicator but the plane appeared to be level and we weren’t gaining any airspeed. This was exceptionally cool to me. So after gaining our altitude back it was my turn. I did a left slip and a right slip. Just one to each side was all it took.
The next thing on his agenda but not even on my horizon was a sidetrip to Madisonville for a little pattern work and landing. He broke it to me gently. I really thought we were just using my limited manuever repertoire for a practical use, namely so that I could see the airport that I would be seeing a lot more of. That turned into us overflying, coming to pattern altitude and entering the downwind. I didn’t have any issues with this and I wasn’t even really sure what we were really going to do yet. That’s when he told me that we would try a couple of landings to finish out the lesson. I hid my shock well, but I was really hoping that he actually intended to perform the landing. We turned our base leg, which I must mention how different this experience is at a small airport versus the larger airport I am used to working with, and quickly turned final. So far I was doing well, but all I had really done was line us up and followed up on Josh’s prompts to perform some sort of action, like putting down flaps. We were doing well. There was a very mild crosswind which was easily compensated for. As we got nearer to the ground I received a bit more coaching and a lot less help with the controls. I had a decent idea of the components of a decent landing but I haven’t ever been in control for those components. My main concern, and the item that I needed the most work on was the landing flare. I was too reactionary, in that the ground appear to rush towards us and I would react by pulling up the nose causing us to gain altitude. Instead I should slow the descent until we are just above the ground, bleed off speed until we descend again, and use the flare for a gentle touch down. That isn’t exactly what happened as the crosswind picked up and we accidentally “side loaded” a little bit. No crash, not a terrible landing, but I’m definitely not a smooth operator with regard to landing.
After we back taxied and took off we headed back to TYS. We came straight in on the downwind and I immediately noticed how much bigger the pattern was. About halfway through our base leg the controller asked us if we would rather land on 23l. We elected to do so as it would significantly reduce our taxi back to the ramp. I lengthened out the base leg to compensate and turned final. This landing was left up to me — less coaching more watching by my CFI. I was allowed to decide how to configure the plane. We were a little on the fast side and I should have used more flaps, but I landed the plane with out any noticable issues. There was plenty of runway we just had a long roll out. Unfortunately, my big mistake would be on the roll out. As we rolled, pretty fast still, I caught myself looking at the turnoff about 350ft ahead of us. I immediately began thinking I had to hit that turnoff despite the fact that we were still going too fast. I pushed on the brakes really hard before I realized, “there is plenty of runway.” I immediately relaxed a little bit and decided to wait on the next one. No harm done but I scared myself with the mental picture of a plane rolled over in the grass and a pissed off mob of people. There is no need to rush if you have plenty of space.
The rest of the lesson consisted of me feeling about my errors and I left feeling a bit disheartened. I hate not being perfect. I’m finally starting to realize that flying is hard and that I shouldn’t feel so bad. I know the mistakes I made and now its time to correct them. Every mistake is an oppurtunity.