Lesson 7 - Review and Intro to Steep Turns

Flight Time: 1.3 hours
Total Time: 9.2 hours

We flew to the Olympic Peninsula today, where we started the flight with a review of power on and power off stalls, which are slowly becoming easier for me.

Ed than gave me an introduction to steep turns, which are at a much steeper bank than I’m used to – 45 or more degrees. This maneuver once again put me out of my comfort zone, since you can look out the side window and see the ground. After a few attempts, though, I got much more comfortable, and started enjoying the feeling. I didn’t do extremely well on them my first time and had a tendency to pull out of the bank whenever my rudder swung out of coordination, and although I need more work on them, I really started enjoying them after a few attempts.

There’s no parallel that I’ve been able to find to describe to feeling of flying – especially during maneuvers like these – but maybe the closest I can get is to have you imagine riding a rollercoaster that you can control.

Once we’d tried a few steep turns, we headed towards Bremerton (KPWT) to practice touch-and-goes and to get an introduction to soft field landings. With soft field landings, you approach final at a slower speed – 58 knots – and hold full back elevator after touchdown. This keeps the front wheel off the ground, preventing you from digging in, getting stuck and damaging the front landing gear. Ed also drilled me not to come to stop or apply brakes until you’re ready to park – otherwise you risk getting stuck (on a real soft field at least).

We practiced four touch-and-goes before calling it a day and heading back to Boeing Field. On the way back, Ed pointed out a very short paved runway to me. It was, he said, a remote controlled airplane field. He pointed out the X’s at the end of the runway in place of numbers, put there to prevent actual aircraft from trying to land.

I’m doing okay with a 3700 foot runway, but I couldn’t imagine trying to land on one that was 300 feet long.

Lesson 6 - The Radio, the Lake and the Eagle

Flight Time: 1.7 hours
Total Time: 7.9 hours

I got to Boeing Field a little bit nervous to fly after the way I ended the last flight. Pre-flight checkout went without incident, and there were no problems until I radioed ground control for clearance to taxi to the runway. I made the call and waited… No response. I made the call again... Nothing. I tried a couple of different frequencies, radios and jacks, but nothing at all. We could hear them, Ed and I could hear each other, but no one outside of the plane could hear us.

Fortunately Ed had his hand-held radio, a gift from his wife. It meant that we had to yell to hear each other while he was radioing the tower, but it was better than calling the flight. It also meant that I didn’t have to worry about dealing with radio calls – a nice luxury that let me focus only on flying.

It was a little bit nerve-wracking not having Ed be able to communicate with me during takeoff, but as he reminded me once he was plugged back into the intercom – yelling over the sound of the engine was the way everyone learned to fly until just a few decades ago.

We flew northeast, towards Redmond and Lake Sammamish, and started by searching for Radar Lake, a lake that my friend Mel’s family had built for waterskiing. Ed took the controls and circled at about a thousand feet above the lake while I took pictures. If you look closely at the pictures below, you can see the water ski jumps in the middle of the lake and the loops for turnarounds at both ends.

Radar Lake

From there we headed further east, where we practiced S-turns and turns around a point. Turns around a point I nailed every time I tried them, and didn’t have any problem adjusting for the wind – which was easy because there really wasn’t any. S-turns were a bit more difficult, and I had a hard time getting equal half circles on both sides of the line we were following (a road). We followed the road north and south a few times, practicing, and I got a little bit better towards the end. I can tell that this is one area that I’m going to need practice at.

S-Turns and Turns Around a Point

Next up was a practice emergency landing over Carnation. At about 3000 feet, Ed pulled the throttle to idle, had me set for 65 knots (the Cessna 172’s optimum glide speed – the speed that gives you the longest distance to glide before coming to the ground), and then identify a spot where I could land. I found a farmer’s field, and circled over it until I’d lost enough altitude to line up for final. While circling, I went over the checklist, which has an emergency section. Once you’ve gotten lined up so that you can land if you have to, you start working on getting the engine going again. Of course, Ed didn’t actually shut the engine down, so I just mimicked the steps that I would take in that situation.

After a few loops, we had dropped to 1000 feet, and I extended my loop out, turned around and continued to descend like the farmer’s field was a runway. At about five hundred feet, I put in full throttle, raised flaps, and gained altitude.

Practice Emergency Landing

We practiced slips as we flew west towards Lake Sammamish, where we were planning on doing a fly-around of my apartment and Marymoor Dog Park. Just as we were flying over the east shore of the lake, an Eagle dove in front of us and flew directly towards us. He swerved side to side a few times – reminding me of a deer in headlights – before diving out of our way with little room to spare.

The Eagle, My Apartment and Marymoor

After a few loops around the park and my apartment, we flew south over Lake Washington to land back at Boeing. I flew the plane until we turned final and had Ed “show” me a smooth landing. I was disappointed with myself for not landing it, but I didn't like the idea of landing while being isolated from my instructor so early in my flight training (since he was off of the intercom and on his portable radio), and I think I was still a little bit edgy after the landing on my last flight.

My Apartment Complex and Lake Sammamish

Marymoor Dog Park


Google Earth Map of My Flight (Animated)

Lesson 5 - Bad Landing

Flight Time: 1.6 hours
Total Time: 6.2 hours

We headed towards Bremerton again today, where we practiced more slow flight and stalls, which I did with moderate success. Flying right by stall speed still makes me nervous because of the work involved with maintaining coordinated flight and avoiding a stall. Stalls are also still making me nervous, which keeps me from starting really solid stalls. A few of the times, I ended up with the plane sinking at 1000 feet a minute, the nose up, but no stall warning at all – just a sinking while still flying slowly. Years of instinct have taught me that stalls are bad and will lead to a quick, terrifying plunge from the sky. It’s taking a bit of work, but I’m slowly coming to realize that this isn’t the case.

After a bit of work with that, we headed south towards Tacoma for some touch-and-goes. While entering the downwind leg for the first landing, we got a call from the tower that there was another small plane on the final leg. In this situation, you have to wait until you and the other plane pass each other before turning onto the base leg – this prevents any chance of collision. It was also a chance for Ed to show me when slow flight is useful. If you’re flying at cruising speed while waiting for the other plane to go past, you’ll fly much further away from the airport than if you’re going half the speed or less. When the plane finally did pass us, we turned into base and had a barely longer than normal final approach.

I’m glad we had the extra time, though, because the Tacoma Narrows Airport is intimidating to fly into at first. Rather than flat ground leading up to the runway, you are flying over the Puget Sound, where a 300 foot cliff rises out of the water with the runway at the top of it.

Tacoma Narrows Airport on Google Earth

We did six touch-and-goes at Tacoma, and things were going well until the second to last one, which is when I was starting to feel fatigued. I was coming in a few feet to the left of the center line and overcorrected on touchdown, causing the plane to bounce a few times and veer right. I realized the landing was not going to work, so I pushed in full throttle to get the speed up and go around, but – and here is where I made my mistake – I then raised the flaps. This was not good at all, because while it meant we were accelerating, it also caused us to lose a considerable amount of lift and drop right back onto the runway, bouncing, accelerating and now veering off to the left.

“Help please,” I told Ed, who obliged by lowering the flaps again. Almost instantly we rose off of the tarmac again and after a little bit of overcorrection, we were finally flying nearly straight out on our upwind leg. Ed later told me that the only help he gave with to lower the flaps again. He said I had good instincts to go around on a botched landing, but that flaps are a good thing – they let you get off of the runway with minimal speed, giving you time to recover, gain speed and slowly raise the flaps.

It was a bad way to end the evening, and even though I knew I was tired, I did one more touch-and-go to end the flight on a better note. We then flew north over the sound in the twilight, while Ed showed me how to steer with the rudders in trimmed flight – a skill he said is useful in cross country flight when you only need minor course corrections.

We did a “long” landing on the long runway at Boeing, which means we glided over most of the runway and landed near the end – saving ourselves two miles of taxiing. Boeing’s long runway, by the way, really is long – two miles. I played around in Microsoft Flight Sim X recently and found out that I could take off, fly up to 300 feet, land, and still have room to take off again without using the entire runway. Yeah, it’s long. This also makes me feel a bit safer if I ever have an engine failure on takeoff.

The landing, though, was uneventful, other than the tower rushing us off of the runway to clear some space for a cargo jet. Even with two good landings after my botched landing, I was still a little bit skittish, and was glad to be finished for the day. This was the most stressful day of flying so far, and I drove home kicking myself over my mistake with the flaps on the go-around.

Lesson 4 - Touch-and-Goes at Bremerton

Flight Time: 1.7 hours
Total Time: 4.6 hours

Today instead of heading east towards Lake Sammamish, we headed west, across the Puget Sound, towards Bremerton. Flying west is much more restricted than flying east because it’s closer to Sea-Tac’s Class B airspace. This means that you have to listen to Boeing’s tower for much longer, and you have to pay attention to staying below certain altitudes until you get far enough out. Once over the Olympic Peninsula, though, you’re in an open area with relatively low air traffic and amazing views of Mount Rainier, the Olympic Mountains and Seattle.

We started by practicing both forward and side slips. In both types of slips you are in uncoordinated flight, which means that you push in rudder in the opposite direction of your ailerons. Forward slips are used to increase your rate of descent without increasing speed or using flaps. They’re useful when you need to descend quickly onto a short runway after getting past an obstacle (for instance a row of trees). Side slips are similar, but are useful when landing in a crosswind. Rather than using the sideways flight to descend, you balance the turn using the ailerons with opposite rudder so that your ground track lines up with the runway, even though you’re turned into the wind.

I did reasonably well practicing slips at high altitude, but I had a hard time using them effectively in landing. I’m just not confident enough with my landings yet to add in another variable. We did eight touch-and-goes at Bremerton Airport today, including power-off, and no-flap landings. The forward slip was useful during the no-flap landing, but I as I already mentioned, I had a hard time with it since it was an extra complication on top of a normal landing, which is still complicated enough for me.

Ed also reviewed the traffic pattern with me - getting me into a routine for following the standard practice for takeoffs and landings. I won't explain the pattern in detail - there's a good description on Wikipedia, but the image below lays it out pretty well.


While flying back to Boeing Field, we flew next to Bremerton Naval Base, where we got a great view of a handful of aircraft carriers and over a dozen submarines. I’ll have to remember to bring my camera along next time we go to Bremerton, because the site is one worth sharing.

Today was the most exhausting day so far, and those touch-and-goes really took it out of me. After landing nine times total today, though, I’m feeling much more comfortable with them.

Lesson 3 - The Basics

Flight Time: 1.4 hours
Total Time: 2.9 hours

I arrived at Boeing Field early again today, and waited for Ed near the plane. I didn’t know the pre-flight checklist well enough to do it without Ed, so I just waited. Once he arrived, we got through it faster than yesterday, but it still took quite a while. He assured me that once I get to know it, the process takes no more than five or ten minutes. I hope that’s true, because it’s taking a good fifteen or twenty minutes right now.

We took off to the north on the short runway again and headed back towards Lake Sammamish. Once over the lake, we started with slow flight. With slow flight, you pull back the throttle to slow down and extend the flaps. When full flaps are extended, you use the throttle to maintain altitude, while using the elevator to maintain a speed between 45 and 50 knots. That speed is well below the stall speed of the Cessna 172, but the flaps decrease the angle of attack, allowing you to keep flying at a slower speed than is normally possible.

From slow flight, Ed had me try power off stalls, which simulates a stall (loss of lift/flight) during landing. The power off stall is similar to slow flight, but you pull the engine back to idle, while pulling up on the controls to maintain altitude until the wings can’t support the plane. At this point, the stall warning horn begins blaring, the plane starts to shudder and the nose drops. To get out of the stall you just release back pressure, push in the throttle to full power and the raise the nose to level while maintaining speed.

Power off stalls were followed by power on stalls, which simulates a stall during takeoff. To begin a power off stall, I decreased speed until I was going about 65 knots, then pushed in full throttle and brought the nose of the plane up to a steeper than normal attitude, allowing the plane to continue to slow down until, once again, the stall warning horn went off, the plane shuddered and the nose dropped. To recover from a power on stall, though, all you do is drop the nose since you are already at full throttle.

The first few stalls were a little intimidating, particularly the power on stalls. Power on stalls were more difficult than power off because it took more work to keep the nose up rather than level, and it took more time for the stall to start, which means I had more time to think about what would happen when the stall started, and more work to keep the plane level leading up to the stall.

This flight was a little bit longer than the last because we were covering so much more, and when we were finished we did a few touch and gos at Boeing Field. I was nervous on both landings, and on my first I remember flying over a parked cargo jet and being struck by how odd it was to be looking down on an airport from that perspective. With the steep angle we were descending at with full flaps in, it felt like we were going to touch down on top of the planes. Ed assured me that we were fine, and we continued along, touching down just past the numbers. Once we were taxiing back to the parking area, Ed told me that two of the last three landings were done without any help from him – two unassisted landings on my second time up with him. He’s been happy with my progress so far, and while I’ve got a lot to learn, I’m feeling confident that I really can do this.

Lesson 2 - First Flight With Ed Bryce

Flight Time: 1.0 hours
Total Time: 1.5 hours

My first day of flying on a regular basis was on a Tuesday afternoon after work. It was a clear, fairly warm day, with almost no wind. I left Microsoft early, anticipating a long commute during rush hour traffic. The drive took nowhere near as long as I thought, so I ended up stopping by the Boeing Field Pilot shop and then sitting in the parking lot at the northeast entrance to Boeing Field for about 45 minutes waiting for Ed to show up.

When he did show up, we got introduced and talked a little bit about what I could expect during the day, and then he led me into the small aircraft parking area to show me the basics of the plane. We started with the pre-flight inspection, and he walked me through the process using the checklist that he’d given me.

N738VJ - My Trainer

N738VJ's Cockpit

Once we got into the plane, Ed told me that he wanted me to do everything I was comfortable doing from the moment I got in the plane. The idea, he said, was that the more I did from day one, the more comfortable I’d be and the quicker I’d learn as we went along. This meant that unlike my first flight, I needed to worry about coordinated flight.

Ed had me make the call to request clearance to taxi from northeast parking to the runway, which I stumbled through, but finally got after a few tries. He then had me taxi to the runway, which also took quite a bit of work. Learning to steer with your feet is not easy at all, and although he kept telling me to keep my hands on my knees and the throttle, I kept reaching for the wheel. With some work and a lot of swerving I finally made it to the runway for the pre-flight part of the checklist.

I was vaguely familiar with the steps we went through, but there was a flood of new information as we checked controls and engine function before takeoff. I really didn’t understand what we were looking for with all of the steps yet, but he did, so I didn’t waste too much time questioning him about the why’s until later.

Once we had clearance, we taxi’d onto the runway for takeoff. Rather than controlling the rudder for me, Ed expected me to use the rudder to keep us on the centerline (which I did with moderate success) and reminded me that because we were accelerating and climbing, that I needed to keep a heavy foot on the right rudder to keep us straight.

We climbed out of the short runway heading north towards downtown Seattle, and I had an amazing view as rose to 500 feet, where we turned towards the east and flew over Lake Washington towards Belleview. I snapped a few shots over Bellevue while he held the controls and we headed further east over Lake Sammamish - the area that I live in.

Bellevue

Flying Towards Mount Rainier

Factoria

Mount Rainier

Over Lake Sammamish, we started working on the basics of flight: keeping the plane straight and level, trimming the plane, and coordinated turns. In the previous flight, my instructor had controlled the rudders. This time, I was in control of the rudders. The rudders are used to maintain “coordinated flight.” When you turn the wheel left, the ailerons turn so you make a left hand turn, but when you do this, your tail is slipping around behind you. To prevent this, you press in enough rudder in the direction of your turn until the ball in “turn coordinator” is centered. Not coordinating your turns leads to an uncomfortable skidding type feeling when you turn, and if you stall during the turn, can lead into a spin – something that gets distracted pilots in trouble when they’re closer to the ground.


Ed told me that this flight would be one of my shorter flights because the first real flight is always the most draining with so much to learn. He was right, and we were back to Boeing Field within an hour. We came in for a landing from the north, following a greenway that runs south from near the Amazon.com headquarters and parallels Boeing Field. He had me turn on carb heat, pull out the throttle and drop flaps as we hit the end of the short runway; then start turning, drop the throttle to idle, and drop full flaps and start to turn when we hit a 45 degree angle from the end of the runway. He directed me to turn at the right time to get lined up with the runway and we put it down fairly smoothly a little bit late, but still with plenty of runway to spare.

We debriefed after getting the plane tied down, and I had a hard time concentrating because I was still on a buzz from the experience. My stomach was a little woozy and I felt extremely hyper and exhausted at the same time.

Ed filled out my logbook and we made plans to meet at the same time the next day. All in all it was a good experience, and I left looking forward to my next lesson and feeling confident that this really is something I could do.

Research and Ground School

After my first flight, I started researching flight schools in the Seattle area to find out which would let me get my license without breaking my budget. I also had a few other criteria I wanted to get out of flight school:

1) I wanted to fly out of Boeing Field, so that I could get used to flying in a high traffic area from the start, so that I’d never be surprised or put out of my element by flying to or through a large city.

2) I wanted an instructor who would be patient, well spoken and not arrogant – in other words, a good teacher. I figured I’d be stressed enough at learning to fly without having to deal with someone’s attitude problems or personality conflicts, and I’d read quite a few horror stories of students burning out because they’d found an impatient CFI with a grating personality.

There are quite a few flight schools in the Seattle, but I decided to go with Alternate Air because they’re located on Boeing Field, their name kept coming up with positive reviews and their rates are relatively low. Alternate Air is a flight club rather than a school, but there are a number of flight instructors who are members of the club. For $20 a month and $97 an hour, you can rent a Cessna 172 and pay the instructor you choose whatever hourly fee they ask for.

I did a bit of calling around to some of the different instructors to find one who would match the sort of CFI I was looking for. Most of the instructors had too many students to take on another, but I received a recommendation to contact Ed Bryce, another Alternate Air instructor and an ex-Microsoftee. I sent Ed an email, and decided to do a little research on any reviews he had online while I waited for a response. I found this link, which gave me an idea that I was on the right track.

His profile described him as exactly the sort of instructor I was looking for, and after a few phone calls and emails, I decided I wanted to learn from him. There was one sentence on his profile that really sold me, “I am retired and do flight instructing because I like to fly and I like to teach.” He’s not teaching because he has to in order to become a commercial pilot (as is the case with many instructors) – he’s teaching because it’s how he wants to spend his retirement. Perfect.

Ed told me that he, too, had too many students to take on another, but was willing to take me on in August when one of his students would most likely take their flight exam. That timing worked for me, since I was recently back from Alaska and still needed to restore my savings. With that goal in mind, I signed up for ground school at Aviation Training Center at Ed’s recommendation. The school would mean two full weekends, and would finish at the end of June – which should have me ready to start flying after passing my FAA Written Exam.

Ground school was not much more than you’d expect from four 10-hour days in a windowless classroom, while perfect cloudless summer days went on outside. Okay, that sounds pretty negative – the classes were enjoyable because I was learning information that I really want to learn. In retrospect, though, I’ve decided that if I ever pursue my IFR (instrument) rating, I’ll do the weekend ground school classes in the winter.

I took my written exam just over a week after completing ground school and passed with a score of 90%. I called Ed soon after passing the test, and scheduled my first flight with him for September 2.