Plateaus

When you're learning to fly it's not unusual to hit a plateau, where you wind up stuck on a particular maneuver, concept or some other important bit.

When you know how to fly -- or at least have a piece of government-issued plastic that says you do -- it still happens.

For the life of me right now I can't fly a decent power-off 180-degree accuracy approach and it's starting to piss me off. Three months ago when I took my commercial checkride I could fly power-off 180s all day long without much trouble. Now, I'm a spaz.

Yesterday I damn near wrecked the 182RG trying one. I had the approach looking good but the entire thing went to crap right at the end. I guess I was so shocked that I had actually flown a decent power-off approach I forgot how to land.

Anyway, I rounded out high, tried to get it back, started my flare at about 10 feet or something and wound up dropping the RG on from some ungodly height.

Luckily, Cessna builds tough airplanes. To add injury to insult I scraped a layer of skin off of my left middle-finger as I shoved in the power at the last second attempt to avert disaster and caught my finger on the carburetor heat knob.

Anyhow, it's incredibly frustrating to know that you know how to fly a maneuver, have flown it well in the past and for some reason simply can't do it.

The only bright spot I can take from the whole mess is that it's a good reminder of what students will be going through. It's been odd at times realizing what students have difficulty with because it's usually not something I would expect.

Now, when I have a student who hits a plateau I'll have an idea what they're going through and can tell them that when their flight instructor was doing his CFI training he darn near pulled out what hair he had left over a silly power-off accuracy approach.

Like everything else, this too will pass and I just need to go practice a bunch of them and get my brain re-calibrated.

On the upside, everything else is going well. We've been working on the commercial maneuvers which are just fine. Lesson plans are done and Cheryl and I are going to start some intensive ground sessions to review, especially the Fundamentals of Instructing.

I dropped off my application for the checkride at the Minneapolis FSDO this afternoon and there wasn't much to be encouraged about. I should expect a letter assigning me an examiner in two weeks, after that it'll probably be several more weeks before my actual checkride.

The clerk at the office told me that a CFI candidate dropped off their application in mid-April and didn't take the checkride until the second week in June.

Ugh.

At least it'll give me time to work on my power-off approaches.

Starting to see the light

Last week was brutal, this week won't be much better.

Christine and I had ground four out of five days last week and flew a cross-country lesson with Cheryl on the fifth. On the sixth day I spent the morning washing our club airplanes then went flying with a buddy.

On the seventh day, finally, I got a bit of a break and finished up my final three lesson plans.

The cross-country lesson was fun. We jumped in a newish 172 on Thursday and I sat in back reading the POH to figure out how it worked while Christine and Cheryl took us to Princeton so we could tour the Flight Service Station there.

The tour was interesting and the FSS guys were great.

After that, Christine played the part of instructor and guided Cheryl to Litchfield where we stopped, wrangled a ride to Peter's Ribs and had an awesome dinner. If you're looking for a place to go, head out to Litchfield and eat at Peter's. The ribs were outstanding.

Finally it was my turn to play instructor so I explained our route to Cheryl and babbled away while she did the flying. We managed to find the Anoka County Airport so it worked out well. Turns out the newish 172 flies pretty much like every other 172 known to mankind.

Friday I got to do the first non-CFI-related flying in ages. Cheryl, Stan and I jumped in the 182RG and headed up to Wahpeton, ND for a Red Tail Project meeting. It was one of those trips that was made for general aviation.

Driving, it would have taken us at least five hours. In the 182RG it was about 80 minutes up and 50 minutes back. Since the meeting was right on the airport, it worked out brilliantly and we spent some time looking at the collection of warbirds in various states of restoration, including the Red Tail Project's lovely P-51C Mustang.

Today it was back into the 182RG to work on VOR procedures and the commercial maneuvers with Cheryl.

The VOR stuff went just fine but I'm out of practice on the commercial maneuvers. I did a few steep turns that were starting to get reasonable toward the end, talked Cheryl through a few then we moved onto Chandelles.

My first couple of attempts were pretty bad before I started getting the feel back and could fly them within standards. Still, they were pretty ugly.

I've never really been able to nail Lazy Eights consistently and today was no exception. I wound up doing a bunch before they started feeling good then talked Cheryl through a few.

By that point, we both admitted we were both pretty rusty on the commercial maneuvers so we decided to head for Anoka, where I made a mess out of a short-field landing.

Ugh.

On the upside, all the maneuvers got better with practice so I should have them down from the right seat in another flight or two.

I headed back to Crystal and made another lousy landing. The upside was I figured out I was starting my roundout and flare just a tad high and dropping the airplane in. That should be an easy fix when I go fly tomorrow.

Finally, I'm almost done with lesson plans so I can start concentrating on reviewing everything and doing a bunch of flying.

With luck, I'll get the checkride scheduled in the next three weeks or so. With even more luck I'll be among the 20 percent that actually manages to pass the CFI checkride on the first try. I'm not holding out very high expectations for that and bracing myself for a pink.

The crunch begins

It's been a busy week and next week is looking to be even more difficult.

Flew 3.2 hours in the Cirrus as safety pilot on Monday. Another pilot in our club needed to fly six approaches and a hold to stay IFR current so up we went.

It's always interesting watching another pilot fly an approach and I learn a ton every time. If you have the chance, fly as safety pilot for people as often as possible.

Tuesday, Christine and I presented our weather and performance charts lessons. Weather is one of those lessons that you start teaching the first flight and keep teaching right through the checkride, at flight reviews and any other opportunity you have to fly with somebody.

It's also my weakest subject, and damn important, so I really have to work hard at it.

After ground school at Anoka I hustled over the Crystal to go fly with a friend. He's getting ready to start training for his private license so I've been letting him start the airplane, taxi and handle most of the flying duties.

What's really interesting is how much better he's flying after just a couple of flights. I can't instruct him, obviously, but by just letting him fly and explaining what to do he's catching on and doing a fine job taxiing, flying the four fundamentals and slow flight.

In fact, he was flying so well last night I showed him how to fly a traffic pattern out in the practice area then let him fly the pattern back into Crystal.

I took over on short final and his sigh of relief when I finally started flying cracked me up. He'd done a fantastic job up until that point and we were set up in a nice, stabilized approach right on the glidepath so there wasn't much left for me to do but round out, flare and land.

It's been incredibly satisfying to watch him fly better every time we go up and I'm starting to get a glimpse of the upside of being a flight instructor.

I didn't realize how much I'd be invested in helping other people fly well. When I'm out there, either with my friend or with Cheryl playing the role of a student, I get totally absorbed in their performance. It really is more fun than I had expected.

I'm also finally really comfortable in the right seat. It took about 10 hours but I'm starting to feel at home over there and have finally gotten the sight picture down so I can stay on the damn centerline.

Next week is going to be brutal. We're doing ground four out of five days and flying on the fifth. If we push, we might get six or seven lessons presented, which means we'll only have seven more to go.

Another heavy week like that and it'll be time to start prepping for the checkride!

As busy as next week is for me, it's even worse for Christine who is doing the same thing I'm doing plus her multi-engine commercial. Phew! That's a tall order.

Going for a spin

Kevin and I went out in one of our club 172s so I could get the required spin endorsement for my flight instructor license.

I'd never spun an airplane before so I wasn't sure what to expect. Kevin had soothed my fears a bit by explaining that 172s just don't spin very aggressively. Matter of fact, they can be difficult to spin at all.

It's a different story, I'm told, in something like a Cessna 150 or a dedicated aerobatic airplane, which spin quite readily.

As it turned out, spins in the 172 were interesting, although sort of anti-climatic.

The only way I could get our 172 to spin was to fly it into a stall, stomp full left rudder when the stall started to develop then give it a shot of power to get more air flowing over the rudder. That set up enough yaw that the airplane would actually enter a spin, albeit in a fairly lazy fashion.

I'd had visions of the wing snapping over instantly followed by an absurdly fast rotation, which wasn't the case at all. It just sort of hung there and reluctantly started to spin nice and slowly. The ground did fill the windscreen, which was initially unnerving, but the spin itself was nice and gentle.

If getting the airplane into a spin was hard, getting out of one was absurdly simple.

The standard spin recovery technique is P.A.R.E. (Power to idle, ailerons neutral, rudder opposite the direction of rotation and forward elevator.)

In the 172, the first time I got it into a spin I subconsciously released just a bit of back pressure on the elevator, which was enough to break the stall and the airplane just sort of flew itself out.

The next time I concentrated on holding the rudder full left and made sure to hold the elevator back to the stop to see if I could get the spin to continue for a full rotation. No dice. Even with me holding full pro-spin control inputs the 172 would just fly itself out after three-quarters of a turn.

I managed to get a spin to the right started, again by blasting some power just as the stall developed and kicking full right rudder, but the airplane just started flying itself out after a quarter turn.

The 172 is a beauty of an airplane. It's hard to get into a spin (I think you'd have to be totally asleep to get into one by mistake) and just sort of flies itself out. Obviously all airplanes are different, but my thanks to the folks at Cessna for designing a nice, safe airplane.

Anyhow, we completed the tasks for the spin endorsement and flew home slightly disappointed.

When I get some spare cash I'm going to take some aerobatic lessons. I'd love to see how an airplane built for the task spins (and rolls, and loops) because even our lackadaisical spins in the 172 were kinda fun.

Short and soft-field, instruments, emergencies

A busy flight but we managed to cover three lessons so that's the sort of efficiency I like. You'd never do it with a student, of course, but for training it worked out just fine.

I started out demonstrating a soft-field takeoff out of Anoka, which is always fun. I managed to keep my mouth moving and explaining what I was doing while I was doing it, so I suppose it went well.

Cheryl gave me a great tip, to demonstrate a soft-field takeoff using only partial power to simulate the reduced performance you get on a true soft field. I need to try that one a few time myself before I do it with a student on board.

We got up to the practice area and Cheryl put on the Foggles and played the role of a student learning instrument maneuvers. We'd done the ground portion a few days prior so I concentrated on remembering to look outside and occasionally check the flight instruments while I talked her through straight and level, turns, climbs and descents.

I love flying instruments but it was odd trying to teach someone else because so much time was spent not actually looking at the gauges. Instead, I'd notice a deviation while I was looking outside for traffic then try to say something meaningful like "uh, keep your scan going, wings level on your attitude indicator, now check your altimeter, back to the attitude indicator, now check your heading indicator, blah blah blah blah blah."

It's going to be hard to shut up once I start doing this for real.

I put Cheryl through some unusual attitudes, which was odd. I took the airplane and made some gentle climbing and descending turns then put it in a left-hand, descending turn. Playing the role of an instructor I thought there was no way my gentle turns could cause any disorientation. Of course, I could see just fine. Anyhow, apparently it worked.

Next up was a simulated engine-out, which was much stranger than I'd expected. I've had the power pulled to idle on me more times than I can count during my own training that it seems routine but I'd never pulled it back deliberately myself and talked through the procedure.

Anyhow, I spotted a reasonable field, took a deep breath, pulled the power back to idle and talked through the process. We got set up, did a go-around then it was Cheryl's turn. She nailed it, of course .

We flew over to Cambridge and I demonstrated a short-field landing over an obstacle then a short-field takeoff.

We stayed in the pattern so I could demonstrate a power-off 180 degree approach. Thankfully it wasn't a precision power-off 180 because I didn't really judge it that well and wound up high. I dropped 40 degrees of flaps, pushed the nose down then did a series of S-turns to burn some altitude. It certainly wasn't the best-planned approach but it worked out.

Cheryl gave me a treat and I only had to do a normal takeoff and we headed back to Anoka for a short/soft-field landing. I got set up better than my last couple of approaches, talked through the approach and landing and we touched down just past the numbers for 36 and ambled off on the A2 taxiway.

After 8 hours I'm finally starting to get comfortable in the right seat, although it still doesn't feel natural. That'll come in time, I'm sure.