Pug’s Place

This morning I took Chris for a one hour flight around the southern portion of the Valley. Grats to Chris for being my first passenger! We started off by flying over our house and doing a nice slow turn around it for Chris to take some photos. Afterward we headed to Casa Grande for Chris to get another look into the giant strip mine, flew from there west to fly along the Sierra Estrella mountains back to South Mountain, back over our house again and then back to Stellar. I made a map of our flight path for all of you to be entertained.
Pictures from Chris are online here.

At the end of my 1 hour flight today with Chris I have 60.3 hours of flying time, 16.5 as pilot in command. So, officially, I was a 57.3 hour private pilot (as my checkride was 2 hours long).

I’ve now done the final tally for the cost it took for me to go from 0 to Private Pilot. It’s at the bottom of this post; if you don’t want to see it, don’t click the “read more” text. Yes, it’s painful.

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My name’s Pug and I am a Private Pilot.

Yesterday was my checkride (the FAA practical test for the Private Pilot certificate); I awoke extra-early to be at the airport by 5:45 am, paperwork and supplies in hand. Shortly after 6 am the examiner arrived, we were introduced and spent the next hour reviewing and typing up paperwork. After a short coffee break we closed the room’s door and without ceremony the oral examination started in earnest. He put a lot of emphasis on class E airspace, types of fronts, engines and emergency scenarios; after about two hours of questioning I was deemed knowledgeable enough to continue. Around 9:45 am we took to the sky and started following my flight plan I devised the night before to take us to Safford, AZ, the location I was given by the examiner. About the time we passed the San Tan Mountains we found ourselves heading into decreasing visibility and virga conditions, as the visibility ahead got worse I decided to eschew my carefully planned headings and fly around the weather to re-intercept the course toward Safford on the other side. I described my intentions as I undertook them to the examiner and he simply nodded. Clear of the weather and back on course, as we flew past Coolidge airport the examiner announced that I should divert to Eloy Municipal airport. I calculated a course, distance and time to arrive and made it so. We overflew Eloy, the examiner had me put on my view-limiting goggles (to enter simulated instrument conditions) and I started tracking radials into the Stanfield VOR. After proving some proficiency at radio-navigation we did an unusual attitude recovery. Compared with what my instructor trained me to deal with, it was tame. When I was allowed to look up and take the controls the plane was in a half-power 40 degree climb with a 30 degree bank to the right; It took me less than a second — literally — to have the airplane back in level flight. Within three seconds I asked, “what altitude would you like me to fly?” The examiner was smiling at me when I asked that question. Thank you, Jason!

I took the “foggles” (view-limiting goggles) off at this point and demonstrated my maneuvers. We started with a steep turn where I held altitude pretty well and hit my wake turbulence every time. I also predicted the wake turbulence before it happened: “Starting to roll out, and we’re about to hit our wake turbulence… *bumpbump* there it is…” From the steep turns I did a power-off stall straight ahead. I held our heading within 5 degrees and lost about 30 feet of altitude during the stall. Then I spent about four minutes setting up for the power-on stall: First I had to get the plane correctly re-trimmed from the steep turn, then I wanted to turn away from the hills I was flying toward, and then I realized I had flown into a bunch of turbulence. Anyway, after I got the plane back where I wanted it I did the power-on stall straight ahead and didn’t veer from my heading at all. I didn’t lose any altitude, either, I just stopped climbing for a few seconds. I barely got the plane back into a cruise configuration before the examiner pulled the throttle back and said, “Your engine has suddenly failed.”

I pulled the nose back to set the plane’s airspeed at 68 knots, the best-glide-distance speed. After I captured 68 knots and nosed the plane back down to hold it I did a rough trim job and took a look around for someplace to land. We weren’t near enough to any airports so I picked a dirt field over my right shoulder. I really liked the field because it was empty, hard-looking, long and next to an occupied house [here it is on Google Maps]. I started a turn to the right to point toward that field and checked all the obvious things to bring the engine back to life: I simulated switching fuel tanks and pushing in on the fuel cut-off valve. I simulated turning on the fuel pump, putting the fuel mixture to full-rich and increasing the throttle. I simulated trying the different magneto positions and cranking the starter, and then I pulled out the checklist. I ran through the “Engine failure in flight” and “Engine failure: No restart” checklists and simulated declaring an emergency: faked setting the transponder to 7700, switching to the emergency frequency and called (without transmitting) “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! Cessna 5325-November 6 miles south of Stanfield VOR, engine out, forced landing in a field north of the canal.” I then simulated securing the engine (engaging the fuel cut-off valves) and set up for the landing. I described to the passenger that right before we touched down we were going to pop open our doors and after the plane stopped we were going to exit immediately out to the wingtips and circle around to meet in front of the nose while staying clear of the prop. I flew a normal-looking traffic pattern around the field, putting in flaps when I was on final and sure I was going to miss the power lines. I flew the plane in really close to the ground and was getting ready to flare the plane for landing - right next to these people’s house. I’m sure there were people home, and if they were looking outside they would have seen some random airplane about to land in their yard. I was perhaps 50 feet off the ground when the examiner shoved the throttle forward and said “Your engine power returned!” I’m sure that the engine hitting full power kicked up a cloud of dust in that field.

I’m pretty sure getting that close to private property in a non-emergency situation is illegal, but I wasn’t about to say that to the examiner.

As I climbed away from the field the examiner asked me to do some ground reference maneuvers. Over that canal I mentioned before I did a series of S-turns, and then just down the fields from those I did a turn around a corner of yet another field. With these things satisfying him, he told me to go to the nearest airport and show him a soft-field landing. The nearest airport was - I was in luck - Phoenix Regional, the airport at which I’ve done the majority of my landings. I pointed us that way and cruised over and did a poor soft-field landing. D’oh! I flared too high and hit the ground too hard on the main gear - a no-no on soft landing strips. He asked me to do a normal landing next, which I accomplished without difficulty, followed by my dreaded short-field landing. I’ve been stressing over my short-field landing skills for the past few weeks (as has my instructor!), but when asked to do one for the examiner I managed to get it done. After that landing we headed back to my home airport. Those minutes were quiet, restful. He didn’t ask anything of me, instead just letting me fly the plane, make my radio calls and enter the traffic pattern at Stellar. This was to be my redeeming soft-field landing, my second chance, back at my home airport. The implication was clear: no more chances, this is where we’re landing and stopping… and I did it! I set the main gear down softly and held up the nose as long as I could. After we parked the plane the examiner held out his hand and said, “Congratulations, you pass your test. I’ll meet you inside.”

The pictures of my last landing and the celebratory shots of my new pilot’s certificate are up here. Additionally, you finally get to see my decorated shirt-tail (remember, the one cut off after I soloed?), as done by Shannon.

Interestingly, while I was busy flying, Tux was having adventures around Stellar Airpark without me. E. can sympathize, as she often took Tux adventuring.

I didn’t blog again in July; I was pretty busy. I’m now in the very last phase of my pilot training. Saturday morning, after answering lots of questions on the ground I’m going flying with a pilot examiner to show that I’m a safe and knowledgeable pilot.

It feels like I flew more in July than I had in any other month, but I checked the numbers and that isn’t true. I suppose what is true is that I’ve done more aviation-related stuff in July than I have before. Halfway through the month I took the private pilot written exam (which was a cinch), after which I read the newly released Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows novel. Dotted around the rest of the month have been flying lesson after flying lesson with my instructor polishing up my maneuvers.

Of particular difficulty to me has been my short-field landing technique: the ability to put the airplane on the ground within a 200 foot block of runway consistently. I’ve spent hours in the air working on this required maneuver until I’m starting to have a real sense of what a given engine sound versus a given headwind and altitude will yield in terms of a touchdown point. Without getting into details that the vast majority of my readership doesn’t care about, it appears I’ve found the problem I had with my short-field landing technique (power management) and I’ve figured out how to fix it in almost all cases.

Otherwise, training has been going great. My soft-field landing technique is being lauded, as are my ground reference maneuvers, steep turns and slow flight. I’ve conquered my fear of stalls: I’ve learned to do stall recoveries from turns without even having a wing twitch, so I have almost no chance of aggravating an unintentional stall into a spin. I’m sensing the first flickers of what it feels like to be a pilot, though I know I won’t be calling myself a real pilot for quite some time.

Current numbers: 153 landings, 56.2 total hours of flying, 13.5 hours solo, 5.3 hours nighttime.

My brother and his gal are in Grand Cayman this week, leaving me with the cats whose behavior hasn’t changed appreciably since I last wrote about them. I’m keeping them all fed, of course, but I can’t keep them from fighting. The hinged gate which has been carefully located in the stairwell to separate cats when I’m not home has proven ineffective; the cats can push their way underneath it, despite there being only about an inch of clearance. I haven’t seen it happen, but that’s the only explanation due to the gate’s design.

Anyway, cats aside, by the time they return on Saturday I should be holding my private pilot’s license. Which means when I come home in another week, if I wanted to I could rent a plane and go flying out of Destin. I probably won’t since I’ll be home such a short time, but that may be fun over Christmas.

The only thing geeky I’ve done recently (other than read the new Harry Potter book in an afternoon) was to convert my free software repository page to use Trac and switch my copies of Eclipse to use Mylyn. Unfortunately as of press time it looks like the repository page is broken, but I’ll try to fix that. Ah, the fun of switching to something new…