A good CFI day

Up at 5:45, at the airport by 7, home at 3:30. No breakfast, no lunch. Four flights, 3.2 hours in the airplane and eight landings.

I figure it was a pretty good glimpse at what a 'typical' day will be like as a CFI.

A friend wanted to go for an airplane ride so we met out at the hangar at 7 a.m. Since I needed the practice, I turned him into my test subject and showed him how to preflight a 172 then put him in the left seat so I could fly from the right side.

I talked him through an engine start then showed him how to taxi.

I remember the first time I tried to taxi an airplane. I was 16 and after weaving back and forth for a while and creeping along at a crawl getting passed by turtles my instructor looked over at me and said 'where the hell are you going?' I didn't have a good answer, except to mention that I was trying to get us to the runway but the damn airplane didn't want to cooperate.

My buddy did much better and I kept coaching. In a moment I'm sure I'll repeat a few thousand times in my career I said "right rudder, right rudder, more right rudder, more right rudder, right brake, right brake, more right brake" before I finally stomped on the right brake myself to keep us out of the weeds.

We took off, I gave him the airplane then coached him through the climb, level-off and some turns before we ran out of time and had to head back to Crystal, where I promptly made a horrible landing.

I thought I needed to be over at Anoka by 10 a.m. to go fly with Cheryl but when I checked my messages I realized we had scheduled our flight for noon. With 2.5 hours to kill I ran out, grabbed a cup of coffee and a muffin, studied my lesson plans for a bit then went back to the airport to go fly a little on my own.

I find that steep turns are great for getting the feel for an airplane and getting my hands, feet and eyes working in a coordinated manner. The first two to the right were terrible and I kept losing 200 feet, which was perplexing. To the left they were spot-on perfect, so I have some practice to do.

I flew over to Anoka, made a reasonable landing then sat there scratching my head as the tower gave me a rapid-fire taxi clearance:

"CessnatwofouryankeeturnleftonBravoleftonAlpharightonAlphaOne, taxi to Knowlton."

Of course, my brain stopped working after 'turn left on Bravo' so I just played dumb pilot and read it back incorrectly. The controller slowed it down and I managed to catch everything the second time around.

I had to chuckle about it though. Monitoring tower on the way inbound he gave an even more complicated set of directions at an even faster pace to a Caravan that had just landed. To which the Caravan simply replied “uh, yeah, we'll do all that and taxi to parking.”

Then it was my turn to 'teach' Cheryl takeoffs, the traffic pattern and landings.

We fired the 172 back up and I talked through a takeoff then we flew up to Cambridge at a massive 86 knots groundspeed.

I was doing well talking through the approach and landing until I decided to get cute and explain how the aiming point stayed stationary during a stabilized approach but moved down in the windshield when.... my mind went blank and I couldn't remember if that meant you were high or low. I gave up and explained the roundout and flare and we settled down into my nicest landing yet from the right side.

There is just a lot of stuff happening during the approach and landing and trying to talk through everything as it's happening is tough because so much is happening so quickly.

I managed to talk Cheryl through a takeoff (“right rudder, right rudder, ok, nice, start easing off that right rudder”) and a landing.

The next time around Cheryl said she was going to make some common mistakes so I could correct them, which got me sitting up straight and alert since I had no idea what she was going to do, although I had nasty visions of us hanging inches from a stall 40 feet in the air.

Luckily for me it was pretty easy to correct (“right rudder, more right rudder, more right rudder, more right rudder, shit, less right rudder, uh, stay on that centerline, rotate”)

We flew back to Anoka and I talked it through while I made a landing that was almost on the centerline.

The sight picture from the right side is starting to click, albeit ever so slightly. At least now I know when I'm off the centerline. Getting lined up still isn't coming naturally but I can at least spot my own mistake, so I guess that's progress.

I dropped Cheryl off then flew back to Crystal, made a nice crosswind landing that was only four feet right of center (crap), put the airplane away and drove home hungry and exhausted.

It was great fun and I can't wait to start doing it for real every day.