Pwhew, Back in the Air!

After getting about five hours of sleep last night, I wasn't too enthusiastic about getting out of bed, let alone going flying, but it was a little late to cancel, and I was anxious to get into the air, anyway.

After all of this crappy weather, the sky was finally clear and blue. I hustled down to Chino Airport, borrowed a kneeboard and headset, and learned how to pre-flight the Cessna 172. The Cessna has a high wing, necessitating funky electric flaps (presumably it'd be tough to have a mechanical linkage to a lever in the cabin) and gas caps that are up on top of the wing, reached by a couple narrow steps. It also has a strange throttle -- you just pull out and push in on a knob.

Within five minutes I'd managed to bash my head on the wing strut, and nearly fell off of the little steps while checking the fuel. I think maybe I'll stick with the (cheaper) Piper Warrior for future flights.

I was just delighted to get a chance to fly again, finally. C. turned out to be an okay instructor in the air, although he didn't let me use the controls as much as K. did. Of course, Chino is a bit busier than Brackett -- while waiting to start, we saw a P-51 and a P-40 take off and circle around, along with some sort of Albatross jet.

Anyway, we headed out to the practice area, identified the other planes out there, and practiced the basic maneuvers. C. always emphasized watching for other traffic, which I found reassuring, and was generally pretty good. We had to do a quick 360 when we found a little experimental jet crossing our path (to avoid the wake turbulence), and almost immediately afterwards, C. dove, err, descended quickly to get some extra separation between us and a plane coming at us head-on, just 300 feet above us.

Fortunately, there was a trick-ass Garmin traffic detecting device in the dash of the Cessna. The Piper doesn't have one, but hopefully I'll learn how to look out for traffic, since it is unlikely I'm going to be able to afford one.

All in all, it was an okay flight, and I'm enthusiastic about going up Wednesday. Hopefully I'll be feelin' better by then -- when I finished the flight I was already feeling lousy enough that I just went home and spent the day resting.

Denied, Again...

Argh -- Wednesday, the fog was too thick to fly, so I didn't even drive down to Chino for that lesson. Today, things weren't lookin' so great either -- I saw a few drops of rain on my windshield on the way down -- and they turned out to be pretty bad. As soon as he saw me, C. said, "I've got some bad news for you..." Apparently, he'd had to get an IFR vector back from the practice area to the field at the end of his last lesson, so that just wasn't gonna work.

The big deal with learning to fly is that you're supposed to learn to fly by looking out the window first, rather than looking at the instruments all the time. You're supposed to be able to look at the horizon to see if you're straight and level, and having clouds all around means no horizon. Bummer.

I'm scheduled to try again tomorrow (they only had a Cessna available, but I'd kinda like to try out the high-wing aircraft anyway) and then again on Wednesday morning. Hopefully it'll work at least one of those days.

It's all kind of a bummer, 'cause I keep reading and reading and reading, but doing a little bit of flying would probably give me a bit more of a mental hook to hang all that knowledge on. Dad has reassured me that, in the Navy, they spent months doing nothing but classroom work before they were allowed to touch a plane, but I'd still like to get out there and fly.

In the meantime, I've been haunting the Internet, reading the weather reports from Chino, and looking at aeronautical charts for LA (thanks to T. for the hint about those!). My instructor seems to understand my cheap-ass nature -- he suggested I wait until December 20 to buy all new charts and airport directories, since that's when the new stuff comes out and the old stuff has to be discarded. There's no sense in spending bucks for less than a month of use...

Oops, Not So Much

So, I picked up the Jeppesen Private Pilot textbook the other day, figuring that I needed to get going on learning the background information I'd need to pass the FAA's written exam. My buddy, T., from work, had suggested it, and the school I wanted to switch to seemed to use it exclusively.

Imagine writing a flying textbook for folks who haven't yet graduated from high school -- keep the vocabulary simple, keep the math simple, and just make it as basic as possible. Argh. And then, just when I'm getting used to being spoon fed, the book takes something like four pages to explain the million and one details of how to read an aeronautical chart, or the insanely complex arrangement of different classes of airspace.

Oh, well. I'm fascinated by this stuff, so I'll tough it out, but I'm just saying.

I headed out to take a lesson with a different instructor on Sunday. We were spared the Santa Annas, thankfully, so I could actually fly. The new instructor, C., seemed cool, and spent a whole bunch of time with me, going through a complete pre-flight on the airplane.

He let me prime the engine, and try to start it. At which point a whole bunch of blue smoke started coming out of the front of the plane. We shut it down, and hopped out to check it out. There was still a wisp of blue smoke, snaking its way out of the air intake. Doh. C. tried one more time to start it, but then decided that maybe we should have a mechanic take a look at it.

Bummer, but I guess I don't want to take any chances with powerplant failure. Better to be on the ground, wishing you were in the air, than in the air, wishing you were on the ground. I've got another lesson scheduled for Wednesday morning.

Boy Scouts, Too, Into the Air[*]

Well, I survived my second flying lesson.

This time, we did a complete pre-flight, according to the voluminous checklists, gettin' down to examine the tires and hinges on the flaps and the pitot and static system flushing mechanism. Yeesh. Apparently, nobody really bothers with this stuff for most flights, but I'll need it for the check ride.

I figured that as long as we were poking around, looking at everything, I'd ask every stupid question that came to mind. My instructor, Kris, who is a moderately mellow guy, didn't really know why there was a vent at the top of the vertical stabilizer, but the owner of the place did -- it vented air into the rear of the cockpit for the passengers.

Then we hopped in, and I got to run through all of the checklists to start the plane myself, taxi out, ask for clearance to taxi to the runway, go through the runup just short of the runway (where you throw open the throttle and check things just to make sure that nothin' will break under pressure), and get approval for takeoff.

I was kind of nervous about the whole radio communication, but managed it with a little coaching. I definitely need to study this.

Anyway, I even managed to steer us out to the runway and take off. Since this basically involves throwing the throttle wide open and pulling back on the yoke at 60 knots, you shouldn't be too impressed by it. We headed out to the practice area, and practiced a whole bunch of turns. Sadly, I continue to have problems pulling back on the elevator enough, and I tend to wander a bit, to the dismay of my instructor -- "Gee, we're at 30 degrees bank, now 45 degrees bank -- can you see how as you get to 55 degrees you have a hard time pulling up enough on the elevator to keep us from loosing altitude?" Well, yeah. :-(

We ran through a couple of power-off stalls and a power-on stall, and headed back, bopping into the pattern, fiddling with the flaps, and landing. I didn't actually do the landing, as I'm still mystified by the sort of controlled crash that is arrested at the last moment to result in a soft touchdown.

I'm still not sure about training with these folks. Kris is a reasonably instructor, but I'm a bit put off by his lack of professionalism. I was on time for our 9AM meeting. He was a few minutes late. Then he fiddled around with the schedule book, took a cell phone call, chatted with the owner, and finally took me out to the plane about 15 or 20 minutes late.

While we were pre-flighting, he took another cell phone call, and just generally wandered off a bit. Then, he made sure to charge me for half an hour of instructional ground time.

I don't mind the charge for the time, as we messed around quite a bit with the pre-flight, and I don't mind the cell phone calls and the dawdling around, but the combo is kind of aggravating. If I'm paying him $40/hour to instruct me, it seems like he oughta just turn off the friggin' cell phone. Or, if he's gonna be a slacker, then he oughtn't to charge me for the ground time. My pilot pal at work confirmed that this seems like kinda sketchy behavior.

I'll give him another chance Friday, then possibly contemplate trying out the more attractive flight school that is down at Chino. It'd suck to drive twice as far, but given what I'm paying to learn, I ought to learn from someone who is fully involved. (Which, of course, assumes that they are any better down there.)

[*] The titles of the last two posts came from a song I learned at me ol' dad's knee which mocks the Air Force. I can't seem to find any references to it on the web (just references to some Captain Video song), but I suspect ol' dad wasn't makin' it up on the spot.

Up Into the Air, Junior Birdmen...

I went ahead and took a single lesson from the folks up at Brackett, and it was okay. I have to admit that I didn't step out of the plane with a great big shit-eating grin on my face, but I suspect that I also didn't hop out of my car with that grin after my very first autocross.

I had some trouble scheduling the lesson, despite the school insisting that it had plenty of planes and plenty of instructors -- I wound up having to fly Saturday, despite the fact that we have a buddy visiting us for the weekend. I was concerned about losing my momentum, so I went ahead and took the lesson, anyway (after a quick hike up into the Verdugo Mountains with our guest).

The instructor turned out to be friendly and pretty casual, which worked for me. We spent some time in the classroom, talking about the parts of the plane and the instruments and the rest. I had a pretty good grip on it all already, but learned a bit about the standard "six-pack" of instruments, including the difference between the pitot-and static airspeed, altitude, and climb-rate and the vacuum-powered attitude and heading indicator and the electric turn coordinator. Cool!

We carefully pre-flighted the aircraft (a Piper Archer), and discovered that it was low on gas, so we had to fill it up before going further. The instructor showed me the radios and controls, started it up, and let me taxi over using the rudder pedals and the steerable nose wheel. He made all the calls to ground control, but given how quick it went, that was all for the best.

We taxied across the two runways and pulled up to the gas station, shut it down, and my instructor filled the tank in the right wing. Then, he let me fill the left wing. It filled up mighty quick, and, unlike the nozzle at your average gas station, the return spring was pretty weak. I wound up spilling gas all over the wing and down onto the ground. Great -- I'm a bit worried about the environmental impact of flying, so I spill some extra gas. :-)

Anyway, we sprayed water on the spill on the wing, and hopped in the plane and taxied down to do the runup. This is a quick test of the engine at high power to ensure that there aren't any problems. The instructor taxied the plane out to the runway and got it centered, then let me control it as we rolled down the runway. I got to rotate the plane as we gained speed and we were off! The Archer required a whole lot of more control input to do anything compared to the TR2 I tried last weekend, but I see that as kind of a win -- I'd like my training aircraft to cut me a little slack.

We flew over to a big practice area and tried some simple turns and climbs and descents. As the instructor explained, learning to fly is all about getting a feel for the plane and flying visually, so I was supposed to avoid looking at the instruments and just note the aircraft's position relative to the horizon.

Unfortunately, with all the fires out here in California, there really wasn't too much horizon -- it was all just kinda of smudged. About this time, the instructor pointed this out, and we headed back, lest we lose all visibility altogether. Oh, well.

He coached me through the descent and lined us up on the runway, bringing us in for a landing while describing everything as it happened. We stopped quickly and I got to taxi us back again. I bought a log book and got my first entry. Woo hoo! (And the owner was ready with the bill almost before I got my feet on the ground. :-)

All in all, it was a good experience -- the instructor was pretty mellow about answering my constant stream of questions and letting me do things myself. As is occasionally the case, I'd read too much, which led to a bit of cognitive dissonance as he explained things like the pattern around the airport that I'd just read about the day before.

Normally, I'd be smart enough not to read ahead, but I have to admit that I was just too excited to learn more. Hopefully I can just chill out before my next lesson, Tuesday.

Learning to Fly

I've always been interested in aviation, but I always hesitated to learn to fly. I guess I was worried that I'd spend the money to get trained up, and then find myself unable to afford to keep up with the flying.

At this point, I'm going to have to keep paying on my mortgage, so I might as well be playing on a flying habit, too. I'm gonna go for it. If nothing else, it'd be pretty cool to be able to fly in to work, instead of driving now and then.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) has a whole bunch of (what seem like) solid suggestions for picking a flight school. I figured that I wanted to train at an airfield with a tower, so that I can get used to dealing with air traffic control. I'd love to fly out of the closest airport, Brackett Field, although I guess I'd be happy to fly out of Chino, as well.

I checked out four different flight schools:

• I started by checking out a pleasant place down in Chino; the owner is a retired teacher and coach, and seemed to have a similar philosophy to many of my favorite driving instructors. This was probably the most expensive place, but it seems like a strong possibility.
• Next, I checked out a place at Brackett that seemed to cater to international students. When the front desk staff showed up in a Mercedes with an iPhone, I kinda wondered if maybe the profit margin in this flight school game wasn't a little high.
• Across the runway was another school. Their prices were reasonable, and their aircraft fairly new, although the owner wasn't particularly charismatic. I was kind of disturbed when he spent some time trashing the other nearby flight schools; I'm not usually comfortable dealing with folks who bad-mouth the competition -- it doesn't seem very classy. This was an inexpensive school, though.
  
• Finally, I checked out a non-profit flight club down in Chino; they weren't very organized, but they were certainly friendly, and cheaper by far than any of the others. I even took a 'discovery' flight with this school.

The discovery flight was a blast -- we went up in a Grumman TR2, which is a two-place, low-wing monoplane. I enjoyed helping remove the tie-downs and preflighting the aircraft, but I have to admit that I was little put-off by the bald tires ("Oh, yeah, we keep running them until the cord shows. We'll throw on new tires with the 100-hour inspection.") and the fact that the vertical speed indicator showed that we were losing 60 fpm which taxiing (apparently this is the only instrument on the plane that actually can be adjusted, but dude was all, "Gee, we'll have to zero that some time -- for now, just remember that it's off by 100!).

OTOH, as we pulled up to do the motor run-up, a vintage P-51 slid up next to us, just behind us for take-off. Chino's a pretty cool airport.

I knew that flying required a light touch, but the TR2 was incredibly sensitive -- when the instructor let me make a turn, I managed to put us into a 45-degree bank with what I thought was the tiniest, most delicate of movements. The instructor let me fly the plane a little bit, although he kept a pretty tight hold on the controls (after that bank, I guess I couldn't blame him).

I'm not really sure which school to hook up with -- I had some doubts about each of the different folks I talked to. I'd love to fly out of Brackett, but I don't think that the international folks are the right match for me, and I have some lingering doubts about the trash-talking owner of the other school. I don't want to make the extra drive to Chino (given the eight hours a week I already spend on the road), but the two schools down there definitely seemed cool. Argh. I think I'm gonna just take a single lesson from the folks at Brackett and see how it goes...