Lesson 4 - What a way to start a day!

More turns, rolls, gliding, transitions, and crosswind landing!
Well after having the last two lessons cancelled, I thought I would take some initiative and make sure I at least get a flight in this week. So, I called up Jack to see if he wanted to do an early morning flight, 6:00 am. I know, that meant me getting up at 4:30 am, but I would be rewarded soon thereafter. I got to the airport a little early, around 5:50 am, hoping to find Jack so we could get a quick preflight in and be in the air as close to 6 as possible. My goal was to be done by 7 am, and at work by about 7:15. Well, I got there, and waited for about 20 minutes, and didn't see Jack. Crap. Of course, dummy me, I didn't walk around the corner to see him drinking coffee and talking it up with other pilots. Duh. Oh well, 20 minutes down the drain. There was also the Menards bunch waiting to get their charter flights off, so that was neat seeing all the jets. As we were finishing preflighting the plane, a jet was warming up their engines just a few feet away, quite a rush!

So, did our checks, and I was reintroduced to the radio, and he had me make most of the calls. I tell ya, its the identical speak to flying virtually online, but its so easy to get tripped over your words. I said the phrase about 5 times to Jack before having the courage to transmit it over the air. Remember the 4 Ws: Who are they? Who are you? Where are you? What do you want? "Eau Claire Ground, Cessna 588BR, at the Heartland ramp, VFR departure to the southwest, we have the weather!" Simple huh? Eau Claire Ground responds... "Cessna 588BR, taxi to runway 4 via taxiway alpha". I look at Jack with a dumb look, oh yeah, I have to repeat that back! "Runway 4 via alpha, 8BR." Then taxi, did ok here except I was a speed demon for a bit, heh, this plane rents by the hour, do you blame me? I also started to turn down the wrong taxiway, Jack quickly corrected me. Got to the runup area, and we let a turbo prop go ahead (since I am still learning). Did our runup as we waited, all good there, getting better at the routine. Ok, taxi to the hold line, scanning for inbound traffic, radio time again, switch frequencies to tower... "Eau Claire Tower, Cessna 588BR, at the hold runway 4, ready for departure," Tower responds "588BR winds XXXX, make left turn at 1400 ft, cleared for take off runway 4, caution wake turbulence." Repeating back "Cleared for take off runway 4, 8BR." Fun! Nerve racking, but I will get it eventually.

Ease the throttle in, keeping on center, pull the nose up just a bit, accelerate, off we go, watch the engine pressure and temp, all good. Pitch, power, maintain 80 knots, trim it (which I forgot to do, so I was fighting it, but later I get better). Turning towards the southwest. Alright, as we approached the practice area, we realized the cloud level was much lower than expected, crap, so certain maneuvers were out (I had a feeling he was going to introduce stalls). We have to maintain 500 ft below the clouds, so we descended to 2500 ft (1600 ft agl). And did some turns for a refresher, did pretty well, although forgot the rudder. Jack really liked my smooth rollouts. I am also getting more accustomed to maintaining my positional awareness, and I could rollout close to desired heading by looking outside and watching section lines on the ground. Jack obviously noticed my poor rudder control, so he introduced a new exercise, called rolls, these were fun! Basically we rock the wings with aileron control, and at the same time use the rudders to always keep us pointed in the same direction. He demonstrated, I tried it and got us all over the place, hah! Although, I could definitely feel my butt move in the seat when I did it wrong this time. He showed me again, and I felt with two hands a little better. Then I tried again and got it, was very fun. We then did some more gliding and flaps work, and tried to drill into me the sight picture for gliding and landing pitch attitudes. Things are starting to sink in. Yikes, when I first tried though, I reached for the mixture instead of the throttle, and tried to pull, thank goodness it has a button to push to move it, if I was successful at pulling out the mixture, I would have killed the engine, not good when you are only 1000 ft above ground. Jack said he's done that once or twice himself, you learn quick when you have to scramble to get the engine restarted in midair. Hopefully I have learned this lesson the easy way.

Oh yeah! Jack introduced the scenario, "what if a goat runs out on the runway when you are landing." So, while in the air we introduced the concept of a go-around, basically, throttle to full, with full flaps, the plane wants to pitch way up, so you have to resist that pressure, otherwise you could turn yourself right into a stall (very bad at a low altitude). Slowly retract the flaps when you have positive rate of climb and good airspeed. Not bad!

Ok, time evaporated on us real fast, Jack had another student waiting on the ground for a lesson at 7:30, so we turned to head back. And guess what!? I remembered where the airport was this time! Eau Claire is starting to become a little more familiar from a few thousand feet up!

Jack had me make calls again to tower for landing... "Eau Claire Tower, Cessna 588BR, 5 miles southwest, 2400 ft, landing" "588BR, report 5 mile base for runway 4". "Report 5 mile base, runway 4, 8BR" I turned to Jack and asked, aren't we already 5 miles, he said yes, so we'll call in a few seconds once we get lined up. We haven't yet done a regular pattern entry landing, we've always come in on an angle for base or straight-in on final, but that is what the tower wants, so that is what we do. Here I got to practice my gliding skills again, slow us down to flap range, first notch of flaps, pitch down a bit to maintain 75 knots. I am definitely better at my transitions than last time. Jack helped me out a bit with power so I tried to concentrate on aiming for the "4" and keeping it in the same spot in the windshield. It was a crosswind landing, which was really goofy! It felt like we were flying the plane sideways all the way down, we were lined up with the runway, but crabbed into the wind. Felt very weird. As we landed, we dipped our wings into the wind (right) slightly, used left rudder to keep us lined up on centerline, touch one wheel down, then let the wind push the plane down and set on the other wheel. Nice. Then tower piped up ... "Cessna 588BR, exit taxiway, alpha 4, taxi to parking." I was still distracted with the plane, and clammed up again on the radio, Jack jumped in and took care of the response "Taxi to parking, taxiway alpha, 8BR." Ok, taxing back to the heartland ramp, and going through shutdown checklists, and power down!

Wow, what a way to start the morning, another 0.9 hrs in the logbook. I am definitely going to do more morning training sessions, puts me in a good mood all day! The other student was patiently waiting and smiling, apparently she just soloed for the first time on her last flight, she must be flying high (figuratively and soon physically), she had in over 20 hours before she got to do that, who knows how long it will take me! :) But I feel things clicking better, could be teens, could be 30-40 hours, all I know I am really enjoying this! No rush to solo!