A Few More Steep Turns

Today I faced my "kryptonite" maneuver again: the steep turn. I suppose everyone has that one thing that seems to confound every attempt to get it right. Steep turns are mine.

I went up with the instructor again, and from last time, we both knew what I had to work on. Aside from the turns, we did a bit more hood work and emphasized the short- and soft-field landings. I think I had an off day the last time, because all of this was much better, as I made a conscious effort to slow down and think things through. The most important part of this, especially under the hood, is to keep the airplane under control and stabilized before you attack other chores, like setting the radios or navigating with the GPS.

But, as has been the case on almost every flight, I can't seem to consistently manage the steep turns. I had a couple of beauties today, but two or three out of about 20 just isn't a good enough percentage to call it anything but luck. The biggest problem by far is my tendency to let the nose drop in a left turn and rise in a right turn. I have tried just looking outside, just using the attitude indicator, a combination of the two, and about everything else short of just closing my eyes and hoping for the best.

I can fly them in my head, and I know what needs to be done, but I just need practice to maintain the precise control needed to keep that nose level.

No-Go x2

The latest in a string of setbacks, including the old standby - weather - has really put a damper on the training. I wanted to really get back into it this week, and get at least one solo practice in before another with the instructor, which is scheduled for tomorrow.

On Monday, the weather actually cleared up, and I called down to the flight school about an hour ahead of time to make sure a plane was available. One was, so I wrapped up the few things I had at work and went over to the field. I caught my instructor, who said, "What are you doing here?" since this was a bit of a last-minute plan. I told him what I wanted to do, and then he pointed out to the hangar, where any one of the three planes I could fly was each stacked behind at least two other planes, including the Twin Star. The twin is a heavy enough aircraft to manhandle around on a good day, but this day had a foot of snow outside the hangar door. Deciding that not raising a lot of tempers on a freezing afternoon (no one else but one plane was flying) was a far better choice than catering to my whims. I also figured that I had two flights already scheduled ahead of time for the week, so I could wait.

And that brings us to today. I arrived on time at the field, wiped some frost from the wings (several times), preflighted the plane, got gas, and was ready to go. I made extra sure to take things slow since the plane would slide around in the snow. I was mentally prepared for a brief practice run (that would have amounted to barely an hour), and had my checklist from before all ready.

I taxied down to the runup area, and was planning ahead to my takeoff, which I decided would be another soft-field practice (pretending that there may have been some snow still on the runway). I pulled into the runup area, and as I straightened out to prepare for the runup, I began to hear a loud whine coming from the front (either the instrument panel or the engine). I let it go for a bit to try to isolate it, with headphones on and off, but couldn't place it. It sounded like a very loud vacuum pump or gyro, but way too loud compared to the typical sounds of this plane. At first, I actually thought I was hearing music over the radio, or hearing my cell phone (which was off anyway), since the tone changed a bit over a few seconds.

I went ahead with the runup, and I could still hear the sound over the engine, with headphones on. I considered that it could be a slipping alternator belt, but that didn't sound quite right, either. In any case, I went through the checklist, and all the gauges checked out OK, including the suction. I idled the engine, still heard the sound, ran it up again, and back to idle, and even cycled the fuel pump just in case. Still no indication of what the sound was or how long it would continue.

I sat for a bit and considered what it could be and whether I wanted to deal with it in flight. The final decision was made..."Ground, I'd like to return to the ramp"

I taxied back, and played a bit with the throttle to see if the sound would change or go away (or get worse). But it just stayed constant all the way to shut down. As the engine cut off and the prop was stopped, I thought I heard it continue for just a second, and then I just heard the normal wind-down of the instrument gyros.

I told the instructor that was there what was going on, and I wrote it up in the squawk sheet, so hopefully someone will be able to figure it out. Even more important to me, if there is a problem, I hope I hear about it so that I know I made the right decision. As it is, I will still wonder if it was nothing (I'm sure it wasn't my imagination), but I know that I made the right choice for the given conditions. I'm still a student, it isn't my airplane, it was near the end of the day, it was 20 below, and I heard a funny sound. That's enough little things that if something did go wrong, I'd feel like a complete idiot if I had ignored it.

Out of the Groove

I suppose that I had to hit a plateau sooner or later. It just happened to settle in now, just before my checkride. Another flight with the instructor today - one that should have been just about perfect - and I just couldn't seem to make it all come together.

The first exercise was steep turns - not surprising since this has been my greatest struggle. My practice is apparently paying off. They were much better today than almost any in the past. My instructor says they are one of the hardest maneuvers in the DA-20 due to the pitch sensitivity, and I have to agree. But I managed to stick to my altitude and effectively manage the nose so that I didn't wallow through them. Like almost everyone else, I have a preference for one direction over the other, and my left turns are smoother than my rights.

Then we did some slow flight (in similar fashion as my solo practice last week). This also went off without a hitch, as I had some nice, clean breaks as the wings stalled and I brought the nose level (not down!). The biggest problem (if you can really call it that) is just getting the power and pitch set just right rather than fiddling with them for a minute. It's not that I can't perform the required tasks, but it would show much better form and be smoother if I could target the airspeed with fewer fluctuations.

We followed with another couple of steep turns, even better than the first sets. I began to think (and still do) that part of my problem is just the number of hours per week that I am able to fly. Way back when, I was flying two - and occasionally three - times a week. Now, I'm down to once, sometimes twice. I think if I could fly a bit more consistently, I'd have the entire thing handled.

Next came some more hood work. This is where things kind of came apart, and never really recovered. I had much more difficulty than I remember ever having maintaining basic control while performing radio and navigation tasks. My altitude wandered (badly), my heading wasn't much better, and I was just really getting behind the plane. We did a constant rate descent, which was much descending, but little that could be considered "constant". I think it was about this time that my instructor decided that I would need another flight before the checkride. Little did he know that I had more to reinforce that feeling.

We went back in to the field for some touch-and-go's, and the first approach was dead-on. I did my best at keeping a stabilized descent, and then had a smooth touchdown. We went back up, and then I tried a no-flap landing. I don't remember the last one of these that I tried, but I couldn't even get the plane slowed to touchdown. I felt like it was going to bounce, so I just added power to try again.

So we changed it around a bit, and added a "power failure" in the pattern, again with no flaps. This time, knowing that it took so long to get down before, I went a bit too far on downwind. If this had been a real emergency, they'd probably still be picking the plane out of the weeds. In any case, we did make it back down safely, and I tried it again. This time, I turned in towards the runway, but we again had too much speed, and I couldn't get the wheels down without a bounce. So I went around again.

This time, we had to extend the downwind for other traffic. I decided that with half flaps, I would slow the plane so that we weren't so far out when it came time to turn base. But I didn't realize just how far out we were, and we had the longest final approach in history at 80 knots, two miles out. The nice thing was that the approach was right on, and the landing was decent, with the only negative being slightly off centerline. One more approach for a short field landing, also which turned out just right, but again off to the left.

The final analysis: I'm a safe, competent pilot, but my flying needs quite a bit more spit and polish to satisfy an examiner. One more session with the instructor is in order, again.

One More To Go

As per the instructor's recommendation, I took another solo flight today under an overcast sky to work some more on the required PTS maneuvers. I decided to formalize my plan the night before, mimicking the syllabus and my typical flights with the instructor. This would help me to organize my thoughts and give me something to follow, rather than aimlessly going around the sky trying to decide what to do next.

The plan worked out well, with minor modifications due to another plane being in the practice area. I wrote down everything that I wanted to do, from takeoff to landing. I included a soft-field takeoff (complete with speed notations), my target altitude, a VOR intercept, and then to the practice area. My mini "flight plan" gave me hard standards to work toward, and made sure that I was always doing something worthwhile.

I also wrote down the maneuvers I would practice. I included some power/pitch climbs and descents, a return to my original target altitude, intercepting another VOR radial, and then clearing turns for slow flight. Slow flight consisted of full- and partial-flap flight, while maintaining altitude, and then a power-off stall.

Then, I went into some steep turns, which are coming along nicely. I think they might go better with the extra weight of an instructor, but I don't know why they would. Maybe it's my imagination. In any event, I did much better maintaining altitude and not letting the nose deviate too far from level.

Finally, I descended to "pattern altitude" and performed some ground-reference maneuvers. I haven't had much chance to do these lately, especially with any decent wind, so today's 20-knot breeze kept them interesting. I managed one good turn around a point and one that was a bit wonky, but my S-turns were in need of some help, and I lost a bit too much altitude watching the ground slip away in the wind.

By this time, I had burned up nearly an hour, had reached the end of my maneuver checklist, and went back in for a couple of touch-and-go's. About all there is to say about my landings is that I really need to get my airspeed under control earlier on base and final. Just about every single one is high and fast. I know there's probably a simple answer, like pulling the power back just a bit more, or keeping my pattern altitude about 100' lower, but it will just take some experimentation. My instructor seems to think I'm doing okay, but I don't know if it will be good enough for the examiner. As it is, the actual landings are very smooth, but I don't think any of them will qualify as "short-field".

According to the latest plan, I will have one more flight with the instructor, and then we'll schedule a checkride.

Still In The 40's

A new year, and another flight in the books...I think my instructor is trying to make sure I stay humble. Today was (in my mind) to be one of the last lessons before my checkride, and indeed it is. But my instructor wants me to take another solo and then one more with him to get all of the maneuvers dialed in. By the time I take my checkride, I'll be at about 46 hours, which still puts me firmly in the low-time category. It never was my goal to do any better than average, so it's a pleasant feeling to beat that (by quite a bit).

Nevertheless, it gives both my instructor and myself the opportunity to really tighten up the tolerances and identify critical test tasks that can sometimes trip up the student. It's the really small details, too:
--Taking a few extra feet to make sure the nosewheel is straight before a short-field takeoff
--Sticking the best-rate-of-climb airspeed on climbout
--Making a smooth level-off, airspeed increase, and power reduction without altitude fluctuations
--Not hurrying through the procedures, but rather thinking them through beforehand
--Taking the "emergency" all the way to "touchdown" - including things like briefing passengers and securing the cockpit
--Mentally reducing the typical 100' altitude tolerances during maneuvers to 50'
--Getting the airspeed down to a stabilized approach speed a bit sooner on final
--Do those clearing turns

We did another combination of maneuvers today that included steep turns (much better this time), stalls, hood work, slow flight, and emergency descents. Most of it was "reruns", but we did do something new today. We overflew the field at about 4500' AGL, and performed an engine-out spiral descent to landing. This is a way to lose altitude when you have an ideal emergency landing site in reach, and you don't want to fly too far away. The trick here is to coordinate the turns and descent rate so that you end up close to the end of the field as you enter a typical base leg.

This was the maneuver that I didn't do last time, since I didn't know how the math would work out. Now, it was good to see that I could properly judge the distances and turn rates required to make it all come together into a fairly smooth landing (just a little bounce, thank you). Amazingly, even though much of this descent was in a downward spiral (still at best glide speed), the profile was nearly identical to last time's. Roughly 4500 vertical feet and just under 10 horizontal miles. I watched the altimeter tick off the drop, while I kept my turn rate and airspeed constant. As I turned about 180 degrees (in a bit of a rectangle), I had lost about 1000 feet. So I did a 360 to lose another 2000 or so, which put me just a bit high, but still workable on a bit of a wide pattern. I also could see that another circle would be trouble. So I kept it a bit wide and went ahead with flaps. As I turned final, the rest of the flaps came in, and it was a smooth descent. I had a touch too much speed, so there was a little hop, but the nose stayed up and it planted firmly as the main wheels touched down.

Then, we switched to the narrow intersecting runway to do a short-field landing. This also worked out well, although while my speed was good for a normal landing, it would have been a bit too much for a truly short field.

So, it's another couple of hours before I'll be released for a checkride, but there's not a whole lot else I can do than keep tightening the tolerances and working toward a perfect flight.