I really should write about flying

[cjsmith]

I should write something, if only for my own memory.

I spent Saturday morning watching a coworker's flight lesson. If both he and the wind had been having a good day, there was a chance he'd solo. I wrapped myself up in two coats and sat out on the bench to watch. Sadly, the wind picked up and got gustier, and the sky darkened, as the lesson progressed. No solo that day! I suppose it was a mercy that I was somewhat numb to the cold-and-wet by the time I needed to preflight the plane for my own lesson.

Saturday my flying SUCKED. I was all over the sky. Wasn't holding centerline on final, wasn't keeping the nose pointed straight down the runway in the flare, wasn't keeping Vy in the climbout, and worst of all, twice I let my airspeed drop on the base-to-final turn. The airspeed didn't drop to a dangerous point but Benjamin noted it as a dangerous beginning. Slowing during base-to-final is a classic way to get yourself dead.

At times during the lesson Benjamin would say "You're getting slow" or "You're getting fast" when I wasn't... and then the needle would start to move just as he had said it would. He was seeing it via the pitch attitude, not the airspeed indicator. I never did learn that whole sight picture thing. (My primary instructor, I suspect, didn't know it himself.)

Benjamin cut the lesson short after only 1.2 hours of flight time, saying he sensed fatigue. I readily agreed. Later on in the day I realized how tense I must have been the whole time we were up. I ached everywhere.

After Saturday's lesson I went home feeling pretty grumpy. I would have been mollified if I'd seen any improvement during the lesson, but I couldn't see any such thing. In order to reach a goal eventually, there has to be some (even if only microscopic) progress along the way, right?

rfrench said something wise: Identifying a thing you need to work on is progress.

I decided the base turn to final was the most immediate thing I needed to work on. I thought about what I had been doing and thinking during those turns, and I decided I had been fixating on whether I'd roll out on the runway centerline. I wasn't looking forward, I wasn't even glancing forward occasionally, and I wasn't glancing at the airspeed indicator either. During the turn I was staring down and sideways at the runway. That fixation had to break.

I decided that the visual estimation of airspeed by what the horizon looks like was another thing I needed to work on. This had been a big hole in my original training. I knew it might take a long time to patch it over, longer than to regain a skill I had once had, but I was also pretty sure I needed it.

Sunday was MUCH better. We started out talking about the previous day and what I should be thinking about during each part of the pattern. No fixating, instead dividing my attention. I told Benjamin about my thoughts on the base-to-final turn and about knowing what the sight picture should look like. He agreed that I needed to look out the window.

Then we flew the pattern and I was a whole new pilot. I wasn't flawless, but I would bet you $100 that if Benjamin had suddenly gone comatose I would have been perfectly safe on my own. On Saturday I wouldn't have taken that bet at nearly any odds. Sunday, I would. I was looking out the window, I was dividing my attention between the sight picture and the airspeed indicator, I was professional on the radio (ok, that at least I usually am), and my touchdowns were lovely. I don't think I really "have the hang of" the sight picture thing yet, but at least my airspeed is a lot more stable when I'm thinking of it that way rather than chasing the needle. All in all I was basically reasonable -- a far cry from Saturday.

PHEW.

After Sunday's lesson Benjamin gave me homework: study short-field and soft-field operations, and type up my poor scribbled-over checklists neatly.

Life's looking up.

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[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

The best flight instructors are psychic! Not only can they predict the dials, but then they tell you what you were thinking about when you should have been doing such-and-so.