A real trip

For the past 12 months all of my flying has been training, currency, demo flights or instructional flights. So it was a treat to take a personal flight and to just fly for fun.

We booked the Cirrus for a trip down to Milwaukee to watch the Twins and Brewers. It's a great use for a small airplane and I've written before about the versatility of light airplanes for a trip like this. By car it's at least five hours, probably 5 ½.

In the SR-20 our flight time was 1:46 down and 2:05 coming back.

It was one of those weird weather weekends. We snuck out of Crystal ahead of some storms, ran into a few minutes of rain just east of the Twin Cities then it was decent visual conditions along a route took us more or less directly down the Mississippi River before heading east.

Center gave us direct to Timmerman a few miles north of La Crosse and we flew the visual approach into runway 22.

The good folks at Gran Aire, the FBO at Timmerman Airport just north of downtown Milwaukee, had our rental car ready for us when we arrived, so we parked the Cirrus, dropped the bags in the already opened trunk, signed the paperwork and were on our way about five minutes after we shut down.

We were drinking beer and eating lunch by noon. Milwaukee is my kind of town. You can be grabbing eggs at 8 a.m. on a Tuesday and they'll bring you a beer list. Outstanding.

The game Saturday night was great since the Twins won, although the roof was closed at Miller Park due to rain in the area.

Sunday we grabbed brunch, drove out to the game, watched the Twins lose a close one and were back at Timmerman 30 minutes after the final pitch.

I'd filed my flight plan in the morning based on the forecasts and what I was guessing the radar picture would look like in the afternoon. There was a line of scattered storms near La Crosse and Madison moving west so at 10 a.m. the hot ticket seemed to be heading northwest toward Stevens Point, WI then almost due west to Eau Claire and then into Crystal.

Well, as luck would have it, I guessed wrong. The southern route across Madison, La Crosse then up to the Twin Cities was fairly clear by mid-afternoon but there was a large cell just south of Eau Claire. The FSS briefer thought I could either stick with my filed route or go direct. One would put me north of the cell's path, the other south.

I figured going direct was a better way to go so I called ground and asked them in my nicest, aw shucks pilot voice, if they could get me an amended clearance direct to Crystal.

They did what they could but we wound up getting OSH STE EAU for a routing, with the suggestion from ground that I request direct from Milwaukee Departure or Chicago Center.

Down in the run up area everything was normal with the exception of the attitude indicator, which wouldn't stabilize. The vacuum gauge was in the green and the HSI appeared to be tracking but the AI was doing a drunken dance that got worse and worse.

If we'd been VFR I probably would have launched but we were filed IFR and the forecast showed I'd probably have to fly an approach to get back into Crystal. No way was I going anywhere without a functioning attitude indicator.

So, I called ground, apologized and said I needed to taxi back to the FBO to sort out a flaky attitude indicator.

About half way back, the thing suddenly popped back to life, erected itself and began acting normally. I did some sharp turns and stabbed the brakes to see if it would tumble but it sat there as perfect as could be, so we turned around, got our clearance, thanked ground for their patience and launched.

I kept a closer eye than normal on the attitude indicator during the climb out but it was on its best behavior. A few miles north of Milwaukee we flew between layers, with a thin overcast below and a higher broken to overcast layer above. The ride was perfectly smooth and to make things better Chicago Center quickly approved my request to go direct to Crystal.

VFR, it would have been a bit tricky. IFR it was a piece of cake. The piece of mind and convenience of filing IFR for a cross-country trip can't be beat. It's really much simpler than trying to go it VFR. And since I spend my time on an IFR clearance trying to stay visual, well, the flying itself is pretty simple as well.

We had about 23 knots of wind on the nose all the way home, but it was still a quick and easy flight.

Minneapolis Center was freakishly busy with traffic departing the weekend airshow at the La Crosse airport. Usually centers don't say much unless the weather is lousy and folks are looking for diversions. Today it sounded more like an approach control, which was actually a bit annoying. To be fair, it was kinda cool to hear him check on "Blue Angel One" as the Blues left La Crosse for their next show.

From my experience on the same trip last year I expected center to give us a crossing restriction 50 miles east of Crystal to keep us out of the arrival area for MSP, so I set up a Vertical Navigation profile in the number two Garmin.

Sure enough, about 90 miles out center told me to cross 45 miles southeast of Crystal at 4,000 feet. I reset the VNAV profile to 45 miles and waited until the “Vertical Speed Required” number matched my selected descent rate of 500 feet per minute then trimmed us for a 500 foot-per-minute descent, which worked out to be about 160 knots indicated. The Garmin worked like a charm and we levelled off at 4,000 feet right at 45 miles. I do love technology.

We got a couple of heading changes, one more altitude change and when I could finally see the Crystal Airport through the murky haze we were cleared for the visual.

It was a perfect weekend and a treat to get to fly for pleasure.

A student again

After seven months of not working on a rating I'm back in student mode again.

Of course, as long as you fly you're really just a student pilot because you're always learning. It holds true if you have 200 hours or 20,000. Well, at least it should because the moment you think you're beyond learning new things as a pilot it's time to find a new line of work before you kill yourself or somebody else.

Anyhow, the challenge this time around is getting through the Cirrus Standardized Instructor Program. It's a deal up at the Cirrus factory in Duluth designed to teach instructors how to teach the Cirrus in the same manner the factory folks use.

The first step was getting the required minimum 250 hours of dual given. Then came applying, setting up a training date and ordering a 15-pound box of training manuals to study before I actually show up for training.

My $417 box of books arrived yesterday and I dove right in. It's a daunting prospect.

Actually flying the airplane, and teaching the basics of flying the airplane, is the easy part because, well, it's an easy airplane to fly.

Teaching the systems, well, that's going to be another story.

I've flown a few glass-cockpit Cirri before but not a whole lot. I find the Avidyne system itself fairly intuitive and simple to use but the devil is always in the details and there are a ton of details that I need to get down in the next three weeks so I can teach the thing.

The irony is that I'll be taking our SR-20 up for training. It's a first-generation model, with steam gauges, an S-tec 30 autopilot and an old-style Multi-Function Display that looks sort of like an Atari. I'm betting there's nobody up there conducting training who actually knows much about that airplane.

For starters there's not much to know. And, the emphasis is on getting the most out of the Garmin 430 (which our SR-20 has) and the Avidyine PFD/MFD coupled to the S-tec 55x autopilot (neither of which graces N2014Y.) The only datalink weather on our SR-20 are my eyeballs and Flight Watch. Traffic alerting is again the calibrated Mark One Eyeball, sometimes coupled with an alert air traffic controller. Hell, the thing has a single-probe EGT for leaning.

The Garmin 430 is really the heart of getting somewhere in a Cirrus and, thankfully, I'm pretty comfortable with that wonderful box. Oddly, I have no benchmark against which I can actually rate my knowledge. Expert? Beginner? Who knows. I know more about the box than most, not as much as many and I guess I'll just leave it at that.

One thing that I really like about the program is that the emphasis is on scenario-based training.

Instead of going out to the airplane and flying a bunch of approaches, for example, the training program utilizes cross-country flights so the student gets a full 'real-world' experience flying the airplane the way it'll actually be flown.

A constant frustration of mine is that FAA check rides really just test maneuvers, so that's the focus of the bulk of the training. I'd like to do things differently, but I also know I need to get my students through the check ride so we spend more time than I'd like working on maneuvers instead of focusing on 'real-world' experience.

The other barrier (perhaps more perceived on my part than a true barrier) is simply the cost. It's an efficient use of my student's time and money to head out and fly four approaches in an hour at a few nearby airports. That gets them plenty of practice flying approaches but doesn't emulate the real-world particularly well.

Since the instrument check ride is pretty much all about flying approaches well that approach makes sense.

With my instrument students I've been making certain that we do several IFR cross-country trips, not just the single IFR trip that is required by the regulations. The thinking being that they'll learn more about real-world IFR operations if they've done it more than once.

I do make every effort to incorporate scenario-based training on every flight, with both my primary and instrument students, but I'm still learning how best to do that. I'll continue to do more and more scenario-based training because I think it's so valuable and people learn better that way. Hopefully the CSIP experience will help with that.

Instrument training: Staying visual

So much of teaching instrument flying is done with the student under the hood, flying on the gauges and spending 90% of your time working on approaches, that it's easy to forget the benefit of having them fly visually from time to time.

Today's flight was one of those IFR training trips that didn't work out as planned, but provided a great opportunity to teach real-world instrument flying.

The plan was for a short IFR cross country from Crystal to Mankato and back.

The trip down was pretty normal. There were some minor buildups and a small area of heavy rain a little west of our route. With the exception of two minutes of light rain we were in good VFR conditions all the way down, so I kept my guy under the hood until we got down to minimums on the GPS 22 approach into MKT.

The trip back wasn't quite as uneventful.

We'd checked the weather in Mankato and the radar was showing a few areas of light rain along our route, certainly nothing to be alarmed by.

Almost as soon as we were airborne I knew we were in for a challenge. I could see lightning flashes directly ahead and more off to the west. Heading east didn't look terribly promising, with plenty of dark clouds and obvious heavy rain.

As I pondered our options, my student was blissfully unaware under the hood.

Minneapolis Center handed us off to Minneapolis Approach and the approach controller almost immediately asked us if we had weather radar or a Stormscope. We had neither of course, so he advised us of a large cell along our route and offered to vector us around the back side, to the west, as best he could.

I let the situation play out for a while then asked my student to take off the hood so he could get some real-world experience staying visual around an area of convection.

I'm pretty certain he thought I was insane when he looked outside and saw a wall of lightning just off our right side and another set of bursts straight ahead in the distance.

I can't say I blame him and I would have thought the same thing. So I explained our options: Stay visual and if we didn't find a big gap, turn tail and get dinner back in Mankato.

We had a great out as everything to the south was beautiful VMC. Virtually the entire horizon to the south was clear and we were still in good visibilities as well so it was worth a look to see if we could find a safe way through the line of thunderstorms that had started popping up since we'd last checked the radar, maybe 20 minutes prior.

The key, IFR or VFR, to dealing with thunderstorms is to stay visual, don't get too close and always have several options to retreat. If you get down to one or two options, it's time to take one of them and wait for a better day. Actually, if you get down to one or two options you've waited too long and should have done something sooner.

But as long as your option bucket remains full and you can stay visual and a safe distance away it's reasonable to proceed, albeit with a healthy eye toward extreme caution and prudence. There's no sense messing with a thunderstorm and only an idiot would knowingly fly into one.

Make no mistake, my yellow streak is wider than most when it comes to dealing with thunderstorms. I've had the misfortune to fly directly through one (as a passenger, scared out of my wits) and will never, ever fly through one again, either as a passenger or the pilot in command. Been there, done that, got the nightmares, no thank you.

Anyhow, we asked approach for clearance to descend to 4,000 feet, told them we needed to turn an additional 20 degrees left to avoid the cell then started working our plan.

As it turned out, we were able to skirt the largest of the cells by paralleling it for about 15 miles. That course had us headed directly toward a second cell but it was comfortably off in the distance and we still had beautiful weather just a few miles south.

Approach dropped us down to 3,000 feet which was fine with me and we kept one eye on the cells and the other peeled to make sure our escape route to the south remained free and clear.

Finally, a large gap appeared. We had nearly unrestricted visibilities through it and we'd travelled far enough northwest that we could just see around the backside of the cell we'd been trying to skirt. Sure enough, it was clear behind so we flew through, caught about 30 seconds of moderate rain and headed back on course to Crystal.

We never encountered more than a few seconds of light turbulence the entire trip and the winds were calm and the air as smooth as glass when we landed at Crystal.

My guy didn't get as much time under the hood as I'd planned, but hopefully it was still a good lesson.

Sometimes the best plan for instrument flying is to just stay visual. And make sure you have plenty of options.

Variety

The great thing about this job is the variety in every day.

I might have a new primary student in the morning flying a 172, an instrument student flying a Cherokee and finish the day with a currency flight in the Cirrus. They're all very different experiences and it keeps me on my toes.

I was looking back through my logbook for April and I instructed in six different aircraft types (several Cessna 172s, a 182RG, a Piper Cherokee 180, a Mooney 201, a Beech Bonanza and the SR-20 Cirrus) based out of three different airports, plus a simulator, and flew with fifteen different pilots, ranging from new students to a high-time instructor.

I knew it had been a busy month but I was surprised at the variety. Every pilot is unique and it's interesting to see how different people approach the same airplane.

Something as seemingly simple as how to configure the CAPS (parachute) handle on the Cirrus for flight accounted for four different approaches among four pilots.

If you're not familiar with the CAPS, it's basically a small rocket with a parachute attached that fires out the top of the airplane and allows the entire airplane to descend under the canopy. The activation handle is located at the top of the cabin, between the pilot seats. Pull the handle and out comes the parachute.

There is a safety pin with a little “remove before flight” streamer, plus a plastic cover that contains the instructions for activating the CAPS that is attached with Velcro and hides the activation handle, which is a pretty bit of red anodized aluminium. The little streamer on the safety pin is normally left sticking out of the cover, so you can tell at a glance if the pin is in or out.

The configuration recommended by Cirrus, at least last I'd heard, is safety pin out, handle cover in place. One pilot did just that.

Another went with safety pin in, handle cover in place. That raised my eyebrows so we talked about it. His thinking was he could pull the pin via the little streamer, then the handle to activate the parachute.

I wasn't sure that was such a hot idea, because I've pulled the handle (in a simulator) and was shocked at how difficult it was to make myself actually pull the thing. I'd also watched other pilots wait far to long before pulling the handle (again, in the simulator) and fumble around when they finally did decide to pull it. Ultimately, it's the pilot's decision, so I said my piece and moved on.

A third went with my preferred configuration, which is safety pin out, cover off. I figure if I need to activate the CAPS, I'm not going to bother reading the directions and this configuration gives me the fastest access to the handle, particularly if there were an engine failure shortly after takeoff.

And the fourth totally forgot and we flew around with the safety pin in place and the little streamer tucked up inside the cover where we couldn't see it. Since he'd done the preflight, I'd assumed he'd removed the safety pin and replaced the cover. Silly me and a good lesson learned on my part.

Flying with so many different pilots in such a short time frame is awesome and I learn something from all of them, from the newest student to the most experienced instructor, every time I fly. Hopefully I'm getting to the point that they learn something from me as well.

All total for the month, I flew 54 hours and gave 59 hours of dual (the simulator accounts for the difference). That's a pretty good month but it also was a string of very long days. It was rare that I'd be home before 9:30 p.m. And I'd typically leave the house by 8 a.m. Luckily I was able to sneak home between flights fairly often and have some sense of normalcy.

The time in my logbook is interesting, but the progress among my students is what makes it so much fun.

I have one who is almost ready to solo and a couple of my instrument students have really turned the corner and are starting to think like instrument pilots, which is the biggest hurdle in that rating. They'll be ready for their check rides soon, which will be a huge accomplishment on their part.

There's just such a rush when you see pilots really starting to "get it" and know that you were a part of that process.

Pitch v. Power

I've been struggling to find a clever way to effectively teach the relationship between pitch and power, without much success.

There are two basic schools of thought on the deal: Pitch controls altitude and power controls airspeed or pitch controls airspeed and power controls altitude.

Personally, I fall more into the latter camp because I was taught to use pitch for airspeed control and power to control altitude or to maintain a desired rate of climb/descent.

But the reality is somewhat in the middle: If you adjust your pitch you need to adjust your power to maintain level flight and likewise, any power adjustment will require a pitch adjustment to maintain level flight.

Anyhow, it's a complex relationship which makes it incredibly difficult for primary students to master. (The same holds true for advanced pilots, so there's no shame on the part of primary students. It's just a difficult concept to grasp.)

I've been doing a lot of airspeed changes, configuration changes, glides at specific airspeeds, slow flight, etc... and really stressing the sight picture out the window to my students.

I rarely look at the airspeed indicator anymore, I can just tell what speed we're doing by the sight picture out the window. But I get to fly several times a day and it still took a while to really get comfortable with trusting what I was seeing out the window.

I did some searching to find a good explanation I could, um, steal and found out I wasn't alone. From what I've seen so far, pretty much every instructor finds it difficult to effectively explain pitch/power in a way that students grasp immediately.

Truth be told, in cruising flight I don't really care which order folks use (pitch for altitude, power for airspeed or pitch for airspeed, power for altitude) although I prefer to keep it simple and stick with my preferred method.

In the traffic pattern, particularly on final, there's only one way to do it in my mind, and that's to use pitch to control airspeed and power to control altitude.

The reason is that if you get on the back side of the power curve, pitch for airspeed, power for altitude always works. But the other way (power to control airspeed, pitch to control altitude) only works until you run out of power, which is quickly in a 172.

Nobody wants to push the nose down on short final when they're sinking too quickly, at least not initially. It's a natural reaction, which is also a reaction that'll get you in a world of hurt because if you don't, the airplane will slow down further, have a greater deficit between power required and power available and start coming down like a very expensive rock.

In times of stress, we revert to what we've learned first, and if our training was we pitch down to increase airspeed then that's what should happen when we get too slow on short final and the stall horn starts going off.

If we've been trained to increase altitude by pulling back on the elevator, that's what we're going to do on short final when we're sinking too quickly because we're really going too slow. In this case, our training will only make the situation worse.

That's where sight pictures really come into play. We go up to 2,500 AGL, set up a 63-knot glide with full flaps and I explain that this is the same picture we should be seeing on short final. The thinking is that the more comfortable folks become with that picture at altitude the less freaked out they'll be by it at 100 feet.

So far it's worked reasonably well, but I still have to remind folks to push the nose down on short final to stay on our target airspeed.

Where it comes back to bite is early in training, where the pitch changes are very aggressive as students hunt for a target airspeed. That winds up in a pretty uneven ride around the pattern as they chase the airspeed indicator trying to get their target airspeed with pitch instead of letting the airplane slow down naturally as we add in flaps (and drag) throughout the approach.

As much as I try to stress just looking outside for the proper sight picture the focus quickly moves to the airspeed indicator and the approach goes to hell.

So, I think I'm going to start covering the thing up more and forcing students to rely on the sight picture.

It'll be a test on my part too, because as much as I rely on the sight picture I still like to sneak a peak at the airspeed indicator. Just in case.