=============================================================================== LOG ENTRY - 04-MAY-2011 Matt Borland Flight: 3 - 04-MAY-2011 - 1.1 hr - Continuing turns Depart: KCOS ~1115 Arrive: KCOS ~1226 =============================================================================== Today's lesson was scheduled for 10 am but was delayed an hour due the airport having 'Quiet Hours.' Quiet Hours is when the airport stops traffic because of the arrival and receiving of a plane bearing a fallen soldier. I wanted to familiarize myself with the cockpit a bit more and get a better feel for how to properly set myself in what is a fairly cramped position. I took the extra hour to look at the airplane checklist, try to understand why the items in the checklist were present and in the order they were. For example, I wanted to know why the fuel selector is changed from BOTH (both tanks feeding the engine) to either LEFT or RIGHT before fueling or shutoff. Reason: with BOTH selected during fueling, you're basically filling both tanks simultaneously and this movement of fuel could rock the plane. Other minor questions came up that I asked my instructor later. While I was sitting in the cockpit a motorcade came along the road by the flight line. The motorcade was for the ceremony for the fallen soldier. Given that the airport had quieted itself, the procession of motorcycles thundered all the louder. I was reminded of a movie I had watched last year, Taking Chance, with Kevin Bacon starring as an officer escorting the body of Chance Phelps back home. The movie showed the care and honor with which fallen soldiers are treated on their journey home. As we began the lesson, I made sure I snacked on a fig newtown to stave off hunger, and took extra care to make sure that I stowed the checklist away so I wouldn't lose it. As we taxied out I tried to make sense of the directions that ground control gave us to our runway. Each taxiway is given a letter name, so for example the taxiway that goes along the flight line at Colorado Springs is 'bravo.' This means that if you're taking off on runway 17L, the controller may instruct you to taxi 'bravo, foxtrot, echo, echo two' meaning that you take taxiway bravo, turn onto taxiway foxtrot, then taxiway echo, then turn and wait for takeoff at echo two (which is basically the airport equivalent of an on/offramp for a runway). It's good to know the layout of the airport ahead of time and also to have a printout of the airport diagram to help you. I wasn't really familiar with the directions so I had to ask my instructor exactly which ways we had to go. The winds were less turbulent than the last time and I found myself more capable of focusing on the tasks at hand. For the most part, we practiced turns much like we had been. I was doing OK but still not as focused as I'd have liked, especially on ascending or desending turns. One trick when performing a turn is to get the correct angles of bank and pitch and (when flying visually) take a mental snapshot of the angle of the horizon. If you can maintain that picture during your turn and maintain coordinated flight, then most likely you will execute the turn successfully. During ascending and descending turns, if you are going from level flight you are changing your pitch (nose up/down) as well as your bank (rolling left/right with your wings). I was having difficulty mentally combining the two if only because you have to watch both your climb and your turn and most likely end one before the other. So, you may have to stop descending before ending your turn, meaning you have to nose up and power down a little but maintain your angle of bank. Luckily I was not too frustrated even though I was not executing things as well as I'd have liked. After the flight I figured that what I needed was a simple routine that I could practice to make sure the 'snapshot' initial view of my horizon was right. During this lesson I was sometimes taking too long to set my angle of bank, or otherwise I wasn't really paying attention to my pitch before forming the mental snapshot. So since then I've determined that to start the turn, I need to first look down to my attitude indicator, which shows your angles of pitch and roll, quickly place the plane in the proper attitude, then look up for the picture of the horizon. If I can do that quickly I think I'll improve the turns dramatically. I think my home flight simulator may also help in establishing this rhythm (since it doesn't cost any fuel, rental time, or flight instruction time). All too soon it seemed we had to go back. I am not sure if my instructor thought I was tiring, or if it was just time to go back. Either way, I was gladly eager to continue the lesson and only sad I didn't have more time. To go back to the airpoirt, we navigated by using several landmarks as visual cues. Each runway approach has a slightly different path that you take, and my instructor showed me landmarks he uses for going to runway 17L. East of the airport, just south of the highway I take to Schriever Air Force Base, is a set of bluffs, each with some rough outcroppings and topped with trees. Three of these bluffs make a triangle that is a good waypoint for this approach, so we aimed for them and a particular altitude. Coming back to the airport sometimes perks up my senses because you're close enough to the ground to see detail, yet of course you are experiencing flying. At higher altitudes, you are less aware of the detail on the ground and the feeling of motion, visually at least, is not as great. There was a bit of a crosswind coming in, so my instructor had to sort of 'crab' the airplane a little bit to counter it. In this case he had to angle the plane to left of the runway so even though our plane was pointing to the left of the runway, we were coming in pretty much straight down the runway. This is a very common technique in landing planes, and is very noticeable in small planes due to their relatively slow speeds and light frames. All of this seems very complicated to put together, but it seems more than anything a matter of practice. In retrospect, I didn't feel much overall skill improvement, but I am becoming more aware of what I know and what I do not know. I feel a little more familiar with the controls and checklist. On the other hand, I realize I don't quite have the feel for the throttle just yet, and on this flight fiddled with it too long when throttling down (like in a descent). Tasks to work on: * Use the flight simulator to practice a routine for executing turns. * Learn the runway and taxiway layout. * Remember to 'queue up' the next expected frequency for communications.