Snow in Seattle

My plans to visit family in Albuquerque were set back today when my flight was canceled this morning. My roommate, who had gotten up at 5:00 am to take me to the airport, had just made it home (about a half hour drive) when I found out that I wouldn't be flying out anytime soon. On our way back, we stopped at Boeing Field to get a few rare shots of real winter weather in Seattle. It was a beautiful morning. If there hadn't been ice covering N738VJ, I probably would have gone up for a little while.

The red plane in the pictures below is N3312J, another planed owned by Alternate Air. It's a Cessna 150, a two-seat plane that's similar to the plane I fly. It's a bit cheaper to rent, but it's a small plane and I'm a big guy. I've tried sitting in it once, but the yoke rests on my knees. While I can pull back and push forward just fine, my knees prevent me from being able to turn enough to safely fly it, which is why I stick to flying the bigger Cessna 172.

360 Degree Flyover of Mt. St. Helens

I found the following three videos today showing a flyover of Mt. St. Helens. You can use your mouse cursor to "grab" the camera and drag it around to change your view.

Enjoy.

Short Film Starring N738VJ

I was going through the postings on http://www.pacificnorthwestflying.com and found a thread started by a Seattle area film student. Her project was to create a short video documenting a flight in a small plane.

The film student ended up going up in the plane I'm training in, along with a fellow student and his instructor. Below is the film that came out of the project.

Morning Flight from Maria Wardian on Vimeo.

Lesson 14 - Intro to Instrument Flight

Flight Time: 1.8 hours
Total Time: 20.7 hours

After being grounded since my first solo because of weather, I was finally able to go up again. The plan today was for an introduction to instrument flight and navigating using VOR.

We took off to the south and followed the pattern around to depart to the north out of the downwind leg. The route took us right through downtown Seattle, and I was able to get a short video and a few photos while Ed took the controls.

Seattle Flyover

Once we were out of town, Ed had me put on an instrument hood, a large gray thing that looks a little like a dog cone that's been cut in half. I placed this over my head and adjusted so that it restricted my view out the windows, but allowed me to still see the instruments.

He then directed to me to make a series of altitude and course changes, and gave instructions as we went along. The small amount of instrument training I get during my initial private pilot training is really just emergency preparation. The idea isn't to allow me to fly through clouds whenever I want, but to give me enough training to get out of them as quickly and safely as possible if I ever do end up in them. Most of what Ed was telling me was to help me fly as steadily as possible, in turns or attitude changes, while paying attention to what the instruments said rather than what my body was telling me.

This was much more difficult than I'd expected. While you're trying to fly and keep the plane moving the way you want it to based on the instruments, I was finding that my body was telling me something different. The instruments would say I was going straight, but I felt like I was turning. If I didn't watch myself, I'd tend to start turning in the other direction to correct this. The same applied for having the nose up and down - I had to really watch the instruments and try to ignore what my body said about whether I was going up or down. Trying to do the opposite of what my body was saying made me feel a little bit motion sick - the first time I've had that experience while flying. I can see why so many non-instrument rated pilots get into trouble when they fly into instrument conditions.

Since we were flying on the East side, I asked Ed what he though about a flyover near my apartment. A friend was in town and said she'd be listening for me to get a few pictures as I flew over. I took off the hood and we did a quick flyover at a thousand feet above the apartment. Ed told me he could show me an easy way to make sure that she heard us, and pulled the power back a few times. It certainly worked. 

On the second flyover, I could see my friend and Sasha (my dog) on my deck. I've see plenty of locations I know during my flight, but I've never seen someone I recognized on the ground. It was another one of those "wow, I'm really doing this" moments.

Lake Sammamish Apartment Flyover

As we flew north over Marymoor Park, Ed had me don the hood again, and we headed in a weaving pattern roughly north and east. This continued for some time, and Ed finally told me we were flying further north than I'd been so far because he wanted me to have no idea where I was. When he was satisfied that we'd gone far enough, he had me remove the hood. The site in front of me was the most amazing view I've ever seen while flying. To our north and east were tall mountains, with peaks at six or seven thousand feet (about double our altitude). Running between these mountains, to the northeast, was a valley, leading into the Cascades and towards a jagged peak. It looked like something out of a fantasy movie like Lord of the Rings. I can't believe I didn't reach for my camera, but I think the view (and Ed saying "Okay, now you have to figure out where we are") had me too stunned to think about it. I'll be sure to get a photo next time I'm out that way, but from looking at my flight track, I'm pretty sure I was looking at Gunn Peak near Highway 2.

Ed then had me dial both Seattle's and Everett's VORs, then use the directional finders to determine our location based on the direction of each station. It took me a little while, but using the rough area on the map the directional indicators told me I should be, I was able to find a few landmarks and figure out where we were. From there, Ed made it more difficult and had me find our way to Harvey Field (S43). It was more challenging than just finding our location - I'm still having a hard time finding new airports until I'm almost on top of them - but I was finally able to find it.

Harvey Field has a notation on the chart that shows that there are skydivers around the airport, and as we flew towards the field, we heard a call from a skydiving plane that was near our location. Looking out the window, I could see a plane on an intersecting course with us, but quite a bit higher. We looped around to get out of the flight path of the plane (and avoid any skydivers), and made our way into the Harvey's traffic pattern.

My pattern flying into Harvey was probably the sloppiest I've done and I ended up entering the pattern on base rather than downwind. I was really letting the wind push me around too much, rather than anticipating it's direction and correcting for it. I made moderate improvement over the next few stop-and-goes, but still wasn't very happy with how I did.

Off-Center on Final Approach Into Harvey Field

Harvey Field is a shorter and narrower runway then I've previously landed on (2671' x 36'), compared to Crest Airpark, which is 3288' x 40'. Those four feet of missing width really do make the runway feel a lot smaller. It's also got power lines right at the beginning of the runway, so you really have to watch your altitude as you come in to land.

Final into Harvey Field
(You can see the power lines - just look for the red
and white pillars on either side of the runway)

Since the field was short, we'd taxi around to the beginning of the runway each time, rather than doing touch-and-goes. This gave me a chance to practice taxiing on grass (keep your power up, the yoke back and don't stop), and a chance to check out a few pretty nice older planes. We did a total of three stop-and-goes at Harvey - one normal takeoff, one soft field and one short field - before heading back south towards Boeing Field.

On the flight back, Ed had me wear the hood once again, and we practiced more turns and altitude changes. He then gave me an introduction to unusual attitude recovery. Ed showed me two types of unusual attitudes - both in turns and one with nose high, the other with nose low - and showed me the steps for recovering, using the instruments to guage your success.

Once his demonstration was finished, he had me try one of each type of recovery. The recovery left me a little disoriented, and I had a hard time maintaining a steady altitude and course after that - the small turns and movements I'd subconsciously make if I didn't watch the instruments closely were much more pronounced after the recoveries. I logged a total of one hour of instrument flight time during this flight, and the required minimum is three to get your license, but I have a feeling I'm going to ask for a few more than that to become more comfortable with it.

We landed back at Boeing Field after 1.8 hours in the air, and my new logbook entry put me over 20 hours - half the minimum time required to get your private pilot's license. I'm sure I'll fly more than that before doing my checkride, but "halfway" is a fun milestone to him.

While I'm looking forward to getting my license, though, I'm really in no rush to get it. Even though I'm in training now, I'm still getting to fly. Once January comes, I'll be flying training flights twice a week. I have the feeling once I get my license I won't be able to fly twice weekly on a regular basis.

So at this point, it's all about the journey, and I'm enjoying training because even though I can't pick up a few friends and fly to Portland, Spokane or Northern California at a whim, I still get to fly a plane on a regular basis.

Google Earth Map of Today's Flight

First Solo - Update & Videos

I went up with Ed again today and started working on instrument flying. I'll post a full report about it later, but for now, here are the videos from my first solo flight.

First Solo Takeoff



First Solo Touch-and-Go