Day Forty-Five – Flyin’ Home

Well, time to head back to Churchill and back to work.  It has been a great six weeks, but all things must come to an end.  My training is essentially complete, but I will still need a few more hours of practice to make sure that I can perform all the exercises to Transport Canada flight test standards.  The next time I’m in Winnipeg, I’ll need to do a few hours of review and then take my flight test.  I’ll be sure to keep you updated.  For now, I’ll let the professionals at Calm Air handle this last trip.

Thanks to everyone for your comments and support.  I hope you found my blog interesting and that it took a bit of the mystery out of private aviation.

Keep the shiny side up,

Mike

Day Forty-Four – More Unusual Attitudes

Okay, back under the hood today for more instrument training.  Today we practiced instrument recovery from unusual attitudes.  With my head down and my eyes closed, my instructor would put the aircraft into a stall or maybe a spiral dive.  I would then have to open my eyes and from only being able to see the instruments, interpret what was happening to the plane and then recover appropriately.   Airspeed is an important clue – slow speeds usually indicate a stall and high speeds usually indicate a spiral dive.  The attitude indicator can help you interpret which direction the plane is going in, i.e. a left turn or right.  It is very disorienting because when you have your eyes closed, it is impossible to understand what is going on.  When you open them, you only have seconds to react correctly.  I didn’t seem to have any trouble recognizing what was going on once I was allowed to see the instruments.  My instructor, sneaky guy that he is, was very good at putting the aircraft through a variety of contortions before turning control over to me.  On the last exercise, I opened my eyes and for a split second I couldn’t figure out what was wrong.  Turns out, he had actually put the airplane back into straight and level flight!  There was nothing wrong and nothing to correct.  Fooled me…

Day Forty-Three – Flying Blind

I flew for almost an hour today and had absolutely no clue as to where I was.  No, I wasn’t lost.  I was flying on instruments.  Click here for a demonstration.  For the most part, the private pilot flies under visual flight rules (VFR) meaning with constant reference to the ground and horizon.  When flying in cloud, it is impossible to maintain situational awareness without instruments.  In fact, studies have shown that, on average, pilots without instruments can fly anywhere from 20 seconds to 8 minutes before losing complete control of the aircraft and tearing it apart.  However, with proper training and full instruments, a pilot can manage safely in zero visibility.  Commercial pilots (and many private ones) do it all the time.

Advanced instrument training is an entirely different rating and one that I might do someday.  At the private pilot level, though, students are taught only the basic skills to safely execute a 180 degree turn and fly out of the cloud.  To practice this you put a plastic shield on your head that blocks the view out the window, but still allows you to see the instrument panel.  Imagine that plastic cone they put on dogs’ heads so they can’t chew out their stitches.  Now imagine me with one on my head, because there are no pictures of this and there never will be any pictures of this.  The instructor asks you to fly a variety of headings to fly and altitudes to maintain during straight and level flight or any combination of turns, climbs and descents.  Each instrument provides different information in different situations and it requires a lot of discipline to trust what they are telling you when your entire body is telling you something else.  As my instructor says, “If humans were meant to fly, you wouldn’t need me to teach you.”

Day Forty-Two – Man Down!

Now that I have your attention, I woke up this morning with a dry cough and runny nose, so no flying for me today.  Number one: my instructor makes his living flying and there’s no need to pass this along to him.  Number two: flying with plugged sinuses is not only uncomfortable, it’s also dangerous.  Number three: cold and flu medications and flying don’t mix.

Day Forty-One – Regular Day Off

Nothing to see here people – move along now…

Day Forty – Brandon Solo

Today I was back in the cockpit for a solo flight to Brandon.  I guess my instructor wanted me to do this quickly before I forgot how to get there!  Again, it was an incredible experience.  My route took me northwest from St. Andrews to the northern tip of Oak Hammock Marsh and then southwest to Brandon.  After a 30 minute fuel stop I left Brandon northeast for Gladstone and then due east to Delta Beach, Stonewall and St. Andrews.  It took 1 hour 15 m to get there and 1 hour 20 m to get back, covering a total of 237 nm.  I still amazed that they let me do this…

I had planned on making the trip at 4500 ft out and 3500 ft back, but my transponder (which provides altitude and other information to Winnipeg Terminal Control) wasn’t being picked up properly.  Terminal was apparently too busy with traffic to grant me an exemption, so it was back down to 2500 ft with the rest of the great unwashed masses.  Sigh.  The flight took longer, but on the plus side, another student I ran into in Brandon had just made the trip at 4500 ft and had a heck of a time navigating through the haze of stubble fires.  I didn’t have that problem at 2500 ft, but would you believe that you can still smell hog manure at that altitude…