Coming to an End

Two Days ago I had another solo flight to UMP to pick up Nathan again. I’ve been trying to finish off my instrument requirements, and we did 0.4 hours. I only have 0.5 more hours until I am done with that. I don’t love it, so I’m ready to not have to wear the hood anymore. It was pretty uneventful, but fun none-the-less.

Yesterday evening Nate and I met up for one of the last times. We completed the night landing requirement, as well as my instrument time. I am extremely pleased. Now all I have remaining are 6.9 hours of solo time, including a solo cross country which I will be making on Labor day. I’m going to go visit Lenny in Decatur, IL. I’ll leave pretty early in the morning, and then we are going to go golfing and get some lunch before my return. It will be good to see my buddy again. I feel like it has been forever, but I think only a month or so since we went to Kings Island together. I really need to fly in to see Caleb some time. I feel like I am missing out on so much!

Anyway, back to yesterday. I took off from Eagle Creek at about 8:00 pm and headed over to Mt. Comfort. I did an ILS approach on runway 25. These approaches are actually something that is done for instrument training but because we only had 0.5 hours of instrument time remaining to meet the requirement, Nate decided we would do something different. I was pretty awful doing the approach, but at one moment during the decent I was exactly on. Both my airspeed, my altitude and my location right and left of the runway were perfect, then I promptly drifted again. Of course, I couldn’t tell where the runway was, but that is the point.

After Mt. Comfort we headed back over to Eagle Creek and did two performance TOLs. We worked on Short Field a little bit because we had done the soft field the day before on the grass. They looked pretty good. After the first two performance landings we did two normal landings. I needed to do these two in order to fulfill my requirement for 10 night landings to a full stop. No more special requirements! (except for solo flight). Here are my current log book totals:

Total Time: 39.0 Hours
Total Landings: 134 (124 Day, 10 Night)
Cross Country Time: 7.7 Hours
Night Time: 4.1 Hours
Simulated Instrument: 3.0 Hours
Solo: 3.1 Hours

I have scheduled my knowledge test for September 5th. I’ll be taking it at Greenwood Executive. Nate is talking with the examiner sometime today to determine when to take my practical test (the final test). It will probably be around the 19th of September. Lets just say I think I’ll meet my goal of being a pilot by Thanksgiving.

More Solo Flight and Photos

I made a big step towards getting my private pilot license yesteday.  I flew out of Eagle Creek up to Metro to pick up Nathan for our lesson.  We did 0.5 hours of instrument time and I did 3 TOLs from a controls field (KAID).  The controller there was very dry, but he still cracked a joke.  The flight was nice. On the way back when I was just cruising, I got the phone out a snapped a few quick photos.  Here they are:

You can see Eagle Creek Resivoir in this shot, as well as Eagle Creek Airpark.

 

Here is a better shot of Eagle Creek, with 56th street in view.

 

The airport you can see in this photo is Indy Metro (KUMP).  It was about 10 minutes between the two

Night Cross Country

Last night I flew to French Lick Indiana, which is TINY.  The runway is actually pretty large (5500'x100') but there isn't anything else around.

We took off from Eagle Creek around 9:15 pm.  My parents were there to watch which was pretty cool.  We headed WSW toward Gordan Graham Field.  There wasn't anyone else around, so we played with the lights a little to be sure.  After we cleared the airspace around Indianapolis, we headed south toward Bloomington.  I dialed in the Bloomington VOR and this leg was largely uneventful.  In fact the flight was pretty uneventful until we got closer to French Lick.  Here is the issue with that area that French Lick resided:

Most airports you can fly in to at night have pilot controlled lighting, which means you can use the common frequency for the field and click the mike button to turn the lights on, or change thier brightness.  This is usually a great way to identify fields.  This isn't a great way if every field in the area has the same common frequency.  This was the case yesterday.

We were flying south, and then I thought I had spotted the field.  When we got closer to it, we realized it was Huntingburg, an airport that is 23 miles to the southwest of French Lick.  We then saw another airport to the northwest and headed toward it, thinking it was French Lick.  It wasn't either, even though the pilot contolled light reacted to our inputs.  We checked our sectional charts and realized that the airport was more to the east and we found the rotating beacon and got the plane on the ground.  It was EXTREMELY quiet on the ground.  I couldn't even hear the bugs.  It was cool. There was a slight breeze, and only a few lights.  We hung out on the ground for a few minutes and then hopped back in the plane and took off.  The way back was good, we didn't get lost at all.

When we approached Indianapolis International we got flight following.  This allowed us to enter the airspace and see planes landing at night at IND.  This was pretty fantastic.  It was almost frightening to see these planes come in from out of the sky and land right before our eyes, from 3500 ft.

My landing at Eagle Creek was really good, so overall the day went great.

I logged 2.7 hours of cross country, night, dual and total time.  I've completed my night time requirement, but I need 2 more landings to a full stop to be done with night completely.

Solo Flight

I soloed yesterday!  Right after work I headed down to Eagle Creek and did 5 Take-off and Landings.  4 of them were full stop and the last one I did was a touch and go. 

The first take-off was just a regular one, to make sure I felt comfortable.  Let me tell you, the plane climbs MUCH faster with only one person it in.  It was nuts.

The second and third take off were "soft field" take offs.  The goal there is to keep the nose wheel barely touching the ground and to lift off in to ground effect until I gain speed.

The fouth take off was a short field take off, which seemed to work quite well, probably because I was the only person in the plane. haha.

The fifth was normal, and the fifth landing was fantastic.  There was a slight cross wind, and I came in crabbed and then started my slip.  I touched down on the upwind gear and then nicely brought down the otherside.  I remember to get the carb heat everytime but one too, so that was better.

 

I'm flying to French Lick tonight with Nate.  This will be the last time I have to night fly.  Hooray, another requirement done. (hopefully)

Performance!

Yesterday's flight was centered around learning how to do performance take-offs and landings.  By Performance, I mean, utilizing the best peformance of the airplane.  The first one was a soft field take-off.  Basically, when you taxi on to the field, you don't stop moving, and you just apply power and try to keep the nose wheel tapping the pavement.  If the plane is on a soft field, you don't want to nose gear to get stuck in a hole or in the mud or anything.  A soft field landing is the same as any other until touchdown, where you just try to creep it down lightly and hold the nose wheel off some more.  I also did short field landings and take-offs.  In a short field take-off, I taxi the plane to on to the runway, as far as I can to the beginning and then hold the brakes while applying full power.  The plane really jumps off when you release them.  Then you rotate at the normal 55 kias and climb out at 60 kias.  This is the speed for the best angle of climb.

 

I also did some hood work, which gets really annoying after a while.  I have 1.4 more hours of that to go.  I think on friday I am going to fly between eagle creek and anderson under the hood, and try to do some TOLs at a controlled field.  It is one of my requirements to fulfill, so I need to check it off the list.

Free Hot Dogs and Sporty's

Yesterday I did my second cross country flight.  Nathan and I headed over to Clermont County Airport, home of Sporty's Pilot Shop.  On Saturdays from 12:00 to 2:00 they serve free hot dogs and brats to visitors.  I had a fantastic spicy and cheesy Mettwurst, but back to the flight:

We called up 1-800-WXBRIEF to get a weather briefing and to file our flight plan.  Everything seemed be working great.  I did my pre-flight and realized we were missing one of the fuel tank caps, so I looked to see who had the plane last and determine why this wouldn't be attached.  Of course, I had the plane last, and therefore I felt quite foolish.  I called the FBO where I fueled and they had my fuel cap.  I drove down there and picked it up.   Hooray!  Everything else on the preflight went well and pretty soon we were on our way.  We skirted around the class C airspace of Indianapolis and when we had gotten to shelbyville realized we needed to open our flight plan.  We did so and there was no other big news until closer to Ohio.

We were about 30 miles from the big Cincy airport (CVG) and this was not our destination.  We were headed to I69 which was on the other side of Cincy.  We called into Cincinnati Tower and were told to contact Cincinnati Approach.  Cincinnati approach hooked us up with some flight following and clearance in to the class B airspace.  We navigated to our destination using VORs (Very High Frequency Omni-Directional Range).  Now you know why we shorten the names.  We found the airport after some looking around and made a landing.  The landing was quite poor, it wasn't unsafe or anything, I was pretty high and had to do a forward slip in order to lose altitude.  I landed later down the runway and I hit kind of hard.  It wasn't awful, just not my best.

We had our brats and took a quick break.   I realized that I really needed a better way to organize my stuff in the air, so I bought a kneeboard.   This was one of the greatest decisions I have made.  It is a clipboard with some pockets for maps and other papers.  It hold my sectional charts so that I can track my progress easier.

On the way back I took over and used the VORs a little bit more than I had before.  I talked on the radio more and I only needed help when I didn't know exactly what to say in return.  The landing at EYE was much better than at I69, but I still am coming in a little bit high and using too much of the runway.  It isn't an issue at Eagle Creek because of the longer runway.

We did get flight following, and because of this my flight showed up on flightaware.com.

We fueled up, using about 25 gallons total for 2.8 hours on the Hobbs Meter.  In general, that was good usage, about 9 gallons an hour.  I've been using 10 as my estimate, just in case.

I did earn my solo endorsement back, so I can go fly on my own if I want, but I have to call Nate first so he can ok it.

Totals for this flight:
2 landings
2.8 hours of Cross Country

Night Flight

I can't imagine having more fun in an airplane than I did yesterday.  Night Flying was amazing.  Everything was so peaceful down below.  We could see each of the cars trying to make it through the traffic on I-69.  I listened into Indianapolis Approach for a little while which was fun.  I think we are going to get flight following for the cross country this weekend.  I've wanted to do that so it will be fun.

 

Anyway, here is what I did:

We departed around 8:30, and flying at night doesn't really start until around 9:15, so for the first little bit we did some maneuving.  Started out with some slow flight, then power-on and power-off stalls, a few steep turns (which i did very poorly at this time... hmm) and then some hood work.  It was getting pretty dark about then so we started the clock for night flight.  It started out with simulated engine out procedure.  I did actually end of gliding down to Indy Executive airport and landing safely.  We taxied around and took off from there.  This is when I started loving flying at night.  Lights every where, cars driving around, stars in the sky.  It was amazing.

From Indy Executive (KTYQ) we headed over to Indy Metro (UMP). I've been in a plane that landed at UMP before, but I wasn't the pilot.  It was the flight that I went on with Brad Wood in the 172RG.  That was fun, but this was better.  I was a little high on the first approach, mostly becuase we did right traffic at an airport where I've never landed.  We ended up doing a go-around, which was good to practice and then the second time all was well.  We landed, taxied to the end of the runway and took off the opposite direction.  There was virtually no wind last night, so we could land however we wanted.

 

From UMP we headed to Mount Comfort (MQJ).  I actually remembered the UNICOM frequency and runways for Mt. Comfort so that was good.  I had a midfield cross over to enter the downwind in the pattern.  My landing at MQJ was a little flat, meaning that I had to apply power at the end instead of just gliding in.  This isn't terrible, but in general means if I were to lose the enging when I was coming in, I probably wouldn't make it to the runway.

 

I taxied around and took off from MQJ then headed toward Shelbyville (SHB).  I did some night hood work, which was much more challenging.  There is a lot to focus on when you are flying under the hood, and at this point I don't love it.  I don't hate it, but it is much harder.  At night in general you have to trust your instruments more than during the day, but when I was under the hood, I was taxed.

 

We did one go-around and one landing at SHB.  The landing was good, I had a strange pattern, but I kept my airspeeds right and fixed the plane for a nice landing.  We left shelbyville and headed back to EYE to end the night.  The final leg was great, I got to soak up the lights of downtown indy, listen to Air Traffic Control at KIND and relaxed after all of my touch and goes.  We got back, fueled up, put the plane away and logged our time.  I landed around 11:15 and we left the hanger around 11:35.  Long night of flying, but I'd do it again tomorrow if I had the chance.

First Time Back with Nelson

Yesterday was a good flight. Nate Nelson and I did a 5 touch and goes at Eagle Creek. There are a few things that are different in this plane compared to the other 172s I've been flying, so I needed to get those things cemented into my routine. Carb Heat is one of them. I need to remember to turn carb heat on anytime I am not in the green arc. Good knowledge for me!

I did 5 landings and 1 go around. We were in the plane for 0.8 hours and overall i think things went well. Nate didn't have to grab the controls at any time during the flight, and there was a slight crosswind from the left, which is a little bit different for me.

Some pilots have squawked about that plane having nose wheel shimmy, which is when the front wheel shakes back and forth due to it not tracking straight on the runway. this only happens toward the end of landings and can easily be fixed by just pulling back on the elevator. I need to add that to my routine as well. :D

I'm pumped for the night flight, and I am going to work on planning for my cross country on saturday over the next few days.

Upcoming Flights

Weather Permitting, this is my flying schedule for the next week:
Tuesday: Local flying around KEYE. First time with my instructor (Nate Nelson) again.
Thursday: Night Flight!
Friday: Local Flying
Saturday: Cross Country to I69

Sky-Vu Check Out

I met and flew with John Oot today. I had a great time. He is a fantastic teaching instructor and really helped me with a few items. We did some stalls, steep turns and TOLS. My landings were pretty good, they were all me so that was good. We flew for 1.2 hours and now I will get to fly with Nathan Nelson on Tuesday.

I did get to fly 146K for the first time, and well, I LOVE that plane. The controls are effortless and even when doing steep turns, where the pilot has to offer quite a bit of back pressure in order to keep the airplane at a constant altitude. I think I need to keep my altitude with in +/-100 ft during that manuver, and I think I kept it within 80 ft, which is awesome. I think for stalls I need to shoot for not losing more than 150 ft of altitude from the start to the end of the stall. It's much harder for me, but still achievable.

146K is an older plane compared with what I am used to. I flew planes made in 2001 at MQJ, and this is from 1982. It's still a great plane though.

After my flight I met up with Annie and Charlotte and we chatted about flying and stuff. After dinner we all went back to the airplane and sat in it to see what it would be like. Charlotte is more comfortable about planes than Annie, so I'm hoping some of that rubs off.

I'm Flying Today

I'm flying today.  Hooray!  I'm getting checked out on 146K.  I need to make sure I look at the sectional charts so that I know where I am allowed to fly on the west side of town.  I guess I should get caught up on my radio work becuase I am not sure how to request for clearance in class C airspace, or if I even need to at EYE.  I guess that's why I have an instructor!

 

Whoo, more after 5pm!

No Flying Today

Weather did not cooperate yesterday for flying. It was really raining and thunderstorming. Basically terrible conditions for flying. The check-out got moved to Friday, which means that I can’t fly on Thursday night now. That’s not awful I guess, but it would have been fun. Maybe I’ll schedule next Thursday for a night flight. I am excited for the opportunity to do so. In reality, I just want to get my solo endorsement back so that I can work on those hours I need to have. Then, a little bit later on in my training I can get my solo cross country endorsement and once that I complete I’ll be almost ready for my check ride.

I got the FAR/AIM in the mail yesterday. It contains the knowledge that I need to know as a pilot. But there is some stuff in there for pilots who want to be instrument rated as well as multi engine rated, so I don’t have to learn it all. Right now I am studying to make sure I know my airspace restrictions and my emergency procedures. Feel free to quiz me if you see me. I want to make sure I have them down.

I can’t wait to get back in the seat again. I had some of my best flying last Saturday and I want to experience that again.

Here is a image of what a plane had to do yesterday to avoid the storm (click the image and look at the green line of the aircrafts path):

Changing the Oil

Today I helped change the oil in 146K.  It was pretty easy.  8 quarts required plus the oil in the filter. The hardest part was putting the cowling back on.  I may have earned some flying credit doing so, which will cut down on costs.  I think we are going to do SV next Monday.  Hooray!

I got a note from Nate Nelson, my CFI, today.  He can't fly with me on Friday or Saturday this weekend due to some prior commitments.  I want to try to fly on thursday evening for a night flight.  I think that would be really fun.  I know that was next on my schedule with Steve Keller, my former CFI.  I'm not sure if he will want to do that though becuase I don't know how comfortable he is with the airport and my plane doesn't have GPS, just VORs.  I'm ok with that, they really make sure you know how to navigate without the use of something easy like a GPS.

Sky-Vu Flying Club

I officially joined Sky-Vu Flyers today.  I am extremely excited.  I am getting checked out on the aircraft on Tuesday.  That way I can continue to learn to fly.  It will be awesome.
www.sky-vu.org

Last Flight from MQJ?

Today I flew with Mat Dolezal. He is a flight instructor at Indy Aero, an Fixed Base Operator (FBO) at Mount Comfort (MQJ). I have done all of my flight training at MQJ from this point on, but tomorrow will be different. Anyway, we'll get to that tomorrow. Here is a little history of my flight at MQJ.

September 11, 2008 - Discovery Flight with Nate Nelson
- This hooked me. I took the controls during take-off and helped with the landing. Everything else in between was me. Fantastic!

November 2, 2008. SOLO! I did my three solo Take Off and Landings this day at Shelbyville (GEZ). This will always hold a special place in my flying heart. haha.

November 20th - Broken foot, stopped flying for the time being...

July 25th 2009 - After 8 months of not flying I started again. It was phenomenal.

August 1, 2009 - Today!
Mat and I did a mini practical test today. Hood Work, which is simulated instrument flying. Steep Turns, 45 degrees of bank. Engine out procedure, we put the throttle back to idle and find a suitable field to land in (and then put the throttle back in before we do...ha). Ground Reference Maneuvers, turns around a point on the ground or S-turns along a line (road). Upset recovery (I cover my eyes and put on the hood and then the instructor orients the airplane randomly and then I have to recover to straight and level flight. Slow Flight, flying the airplane on the "back" of the power curve.

It was a fantastic day. I did 3 landings that required no help from the instructor. I loved it.
Tomorrow I am meeting with Brad Wood that will be showing me the aircraft in the Sky-Vu flying club, which I am joining. I am excited. It is based out of Indy Metropolitan (UMP) and Eagle Creek Airpark (EYE). It's nice because I live so close to EYE. I can't wait to solo again.