Lesson 8: New CFI, new mental breakthroughs
06/20/2007 Filed in: Flying
Wednesday - 6/20/07
Had my first lesson yesterday with CFI2. Showed up bright and early at the school and we got started right away. Preflight is fine, get in, radio ground (all I forgot this time was to cold call him first, I can live with that) and taxi over for the runup.
After runup, pull up to hold short line and tell tower we're ready. Now, every other time, without exception, tower gives us an immediate clearance to take off. This time, he says "hold short". Fair enough, "holding short" back atcha.
Me: <after a couple of minutes waiting> You're bad luck. This is the first time this has happened.
CFI2: <silence>
Hrm. My charm isn't working on this one. Or maybe I just don't have any. Either way, we'll keep trying.
A couple more minutes and some baron-esque twin lands and off we go. We head straight to the practice area and review stalls, slow flight, and steep turns.
CFI2: Maintain at 2700. Give me a power-off stall; the hard deck is 2600 ft.
I do a pretty decent power-off stall, holding it stalled for quite a bit longer than I normally do. I recover fairly nicely and then check the altimeter: 2550 ft. Huh?
CFI2: Ok, pretty good. Now a power-on stall.
Me: I busted through your hard deck.
CFI2: <silence>
Hrm :-/ Incidentally, I have no idea how that happened as the recovery really wasn't slow or bad in any way I can put a finger on. Maybe I was just losing altitude while I held it stalled without realizing it? I remain somewhat puzzled by this.
Slow flight and power-on stalls went well enough so we moved on to steep turns. Somewhat counter intuitively, my right turns were much better than my first left turn. Tried the left again and it was the best of the three. That was after a demo by CFI. I find that I like demos by CFIs and I think I should request more of them. It's hard to judge by yourself if you're doing something correctly if you've never even seen the maneuver executed properly.
Note to all you CFIs: more demos, and don't make us ask because it makes us feel insecure to do so. Naturally, I speak for all students. We took a vote.
After the various maneuvering we headed straight to the Lebanon airport (the one I had planned to go to on Monday). It's a one strip airport... 100 ft wide, 5000 ft long.
Me: That's an awfully small runway.
CFI2: It's a normal runway. You're used to giant 32 [back at Smyrna]
Me: Is that so wrong?
I really am probably more nervous about landing on this runway than any other part of the lesson. You remember I always pull left of center on landings? Well, I haven't had a chance to correct that yet, and I kinda feel like this here teeny runwaylet puts a little undue, and unwelcome, pressure on me to fix that. Promptly.
I do a somewhat normal approach which crosses over I-40. It is perpendicular to the runway about 100 yards before the numbers, complete with semis ready to T-bone me at 80mph at the first slip up. I'm channeling Ted Striker during the sweating scenes in the first Airplane movie.
Did I mention the monster headwind? And the small runway? And the semis? Through all of that, I somehow managed to quiet my gastro-intestinal reflexes and land the plane, only slightly left of center, and only slightly firmer than I should have. Woot! Ok, great, we've done it... let's head back to Smyrna! Er, not so fast, grasshopper.
Me: Did I make ya nervous?
CFI2: Nope.
Me: Must not have been all bad then.
CFI2: <silence>
Clearly, I still have some work to do.
In the next pattern I'm making about mach 4 on the downwind thanks to the tailwind. I get abeam the numbers and CFI unceremoniously jams the throttle back to idle.
Me: Hrm. Ok.
Turn in for a bit of a modified based and final CFI showed me.
Me: I'm going to turn a bit early here to counteract that headwind.
CFI2: <silence>
Ok, the strong silent type. I get it. Welp, we have a dead engine here so I got better things to worry about.
My turn is way, way... WAY early even with the headwind. I begin to slip... and slip... and slip. Finally we're over the numbers and I'm still about 75 ft in the air. CFI2 calls a go around so we do.
Now, at first I chalked that one up to a failure. Later, as I reflected upon it, I realized it really wasn't. Yes, I failed to recreate any semblance of a normal approach, that's true. But as for landing the plane in a real emergency... I'd have done it easily on the remaining runway. We just would not have had room to takeoff again comfortably, or at least without a lot of taxiing, thus the go-around.
Next pattern CFI2 does a rather illustrative demo for me on how to make a stabilized approach. Well hell... that's a lot better than what I was doing. This was light bulb number one for the lesson, and well worth the price of admission. This is exactly why you want to fly with more than one CFI. Not that CFI1 doesn't do stabilized approaches, he just hasn't verbalized / demoed one in this manner so it didn't stick quite like this one did. Fantastic.
That said, my one major landing screwup happened on the next pattern. The approach was way better than previous ones. But the landing had a somewhat significant bounce. It wasn't the Michael Jordan bounce from my first day of landings, but neither could you couch it as a minor dribble.
I was unsure whether it was a go-around or not at the time so I started to add throttle (when in doubt, right?). CFI2 pulled back the throttle and I made an easy recovery, feeling quite foolish about the whole ordeal. I think, however, that now I know what's a go-around bounce and what isn't, so I'm glad it happened. So long as it doesn't happen again. And I'm sure with my prowess it never will. *whistling innocently*
We finally start heading back to Smyrna, and I'm busy enough that I don't notice we're making about 140 kts in the katana thanks to that tailwind. I get all the radios tuned back for Smyrna and call tower for the landing. I'm aware at this point that I'm a bit high, but I'm on a really long right base and figure I can pull it together as we get closer.
Well, apparently I didn't do it fast enough because we turn final and I am OMG high. It's like we're doing aerial photos of the runway rather than landing on it. Seriously, I'm at least 600 ft above pattern altitude on final. It's really hideous.
Since we'd have to go around anyway, I figure I'll see exactly how much altitude I can lose in a forward slip. So I slip.
Guy on radio: Smyrna tower, 123XYZ, request landing etc
Tower: 123XYZ, you're number 2 behind the katana
Guy on radio: Negative contact, looking, 123XYZ...
Me (w/o keying mike): I'm the one flying sideways.
CFI2: <chuckle>
Bam, got him! Still got a long way to go on the slip though, so my victory is short lived. Finally, somehow I manage to make it over the numbers at about 20 ft and straighten back up and land the sucker. Bit of a clunker landing (I cannot seem not to land hard these days) but I was really pretty pleased just to get it on the ground and I didn't even miss the first taxiway. Yay, me!
I taxi off, handle the ground radio, and taxi back to the ramp.
CFI2: That was one helluva slip, I'll tell ya that.
Me: Yeah, I was pretty happy with that one, actually. You didn't think we'd make it did you?
CFI2: I always have faith.
Cool, he's coming around. After securing, we talk about all the ways that last approach was screwy, and it helps quite a bit. Then he informs me he's going to give me solo written exam. For those that don't yet know, I'm really very nervous about soloing still.
Me: You know I'm in no hurry, right?
CFI2: Yeah, but it's one more item we have to do before you solo.
Me: <silence>
It wasn't until later that I noted the irony in the role reversal there.
I'm having to cancel my lesson for the next day for family reasons, but the wife has agreed to let me fly Saturday instead. Unfortunately, CFI1 is still out of town, and CFI2 is booked Saturday. This means I'll fly with CFI2 again on Friday and CFI3 on Saturday. Been a squirrelly week for instructors, but after today I do really feel that's a positive not a negative.
Oh yeah, so two big realizations today. The first I mentioned was how to fly a stabilized approach. The second is huge... after the lesson I came to the realization that landings have gone from something I really wasn't even sure I could do to something that piss me off when I do them badly. Very cool.
Logged: 1.3
Jeff S KDTW
Patent Pending
Registered: Jan 2003
Location: Flying at Mach 0.30
Posts: 7646
Jeff -
I have to tell you in all honesty, I really enjoy reading your entries. Keep them coming.
By the way, . .
Hrm :-/ Incidentally, I have no idea how that happened as the recovery really wasn't slow or bad in any way I can put a finger on. Maybe I was just losing altitude while I held it stalled without realizing it? I remain somewhat puzzled by this.
Your hypothesis is correct--you most likely lost that altitude in the power off stall by holding it in the stall.
battmain
Checkride Passed!
Registered: Oct 2006
Location:
Posts: 271
Heh, wait until tower or the instructor tells you to do some small s-turns on final. Times two your hypothesis is correct for the altitude loss.
Great writeup as usual.
__________________
PP ASEL
cindi
earthbound misfit
Registered: Jan 2002
Location: KCGI, KK02
Posts: 2997
OMG you SO crack me up....
I was getting worried about all the <silence> but was happy to hear you finally broke him!!!
Have fun tomorrow.. and Im really looking forward to Saturday's report on CFI3
__________________
My soul is in the sky. — William Shakespeare
castlepines
Bovine Scatologist
Registered: May 2004
Location: Denver
Posts: 4102
You're a good read, Sysvr4! Looking forward to more!
__________________
I'll start closing on the lead runner shortly after he reaches mile 26.
16L Pilot
Junior Member
Registered: Jun 2007
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 10
All I can say is that dumping my first CFI was the best move I ever made. The progress was immediate and it's great learning things from a new perspective. That said, make sure your personality meshes with the new guy. It won't be any fun going on long cross-countries with Oscar the Grouch.
Sysvr4
Member
Registered: May 2007
Location: KMQY
Posts: 67
Originally posted by 16L Pilot
It won't be any fun going on long cross-countries with Oscar the Grouch.
Yeah, that's true. You should know, however, there's a little hyperbole in these writeups for entertainment value. Not much, but a little I certainly wouldn't characterize CFI2 as Oscar the Grouch, for example. He is, in fact, a very good teacher, he just doesn't laugh at my corny jokes.
CFI2 is actually very cool and I had a great lesson with him on Friday (writeup coming shortly). I just finished my first lesson with CFI3 today and that also went fantastic... going to try to write both up by tonight sometime.
Thanks everyone for the kind words and encouragement, it is most certainly appreciated.
Jeff
Comments
soulie13
Senior Member
Registered: Feb 2006
Location: KHEF
Posts: 306
Originally posted by 16L Pilot
All I can say is that dumping my first CFI was the best move I ever made. The progress was immediate and it's great learning things from a new perspective. That said, make sure your personality meshes with the new guy. It won't be any fun going on long cross-countries with Oscar the Grouch.
You hear alot of "Your CFI is not your buddy, they are there to teach you how not to kill yourself" about CFIs. Truthfully, if I had someone who I couldn't talk about anything other than stick and rudder stuff, my training would have been a real chore. While you certainly aren't paying to talk about your last summer vacation, getting along personally with the instructor can really help. All depends on your learning style.
Can't wait for the next writeup.
__________________
PP-ASEL
5/22/2007
Had my first lesson yesterday with CFI2. Showed up bright and early at the school and we got started right away. Preflight is fine, get in, radio ground (all I forgot this time was to cold call him first, I can live with that) and taxi over for the runup.
After runup, pull up to hold short line and tell tower we're ready. Now, every other time, without exception, tower gives us an immediate clearance to take off. This time, he says "hold short". Fair enough, "holding short" back atcha.
Me: <after a couple of minutes waiting> You're bad luck. This is the first time this has happened.
CFI2: <silence>
Hrm. My charm isn't working on this one. Or maybe I just don't have any. Either way, we'll keep trying.
A couple more minutes and some baron-esque twin lands and off we go. We head straight to the practice area and review stalls, slow flight, and steep turns.
CFI2: Maintain at 2700. Give me a power-off stall; the hard deck is 2600 ft.
I do a pretty decent power-off stall, holding it stalled for quite a bit longer than I normally do. I recover fairly nicely and then check the altimeter: 2550 ft. Huh?
CFI2: Ok, pretty good. Now a power-on stall.
Me: I busted through your hard deck.
CFI2: <silence>
Hrm :-/ Incidentally, I have no idea how that happened as the recovery really wasn't slow or bad in any way I can put a finger on. Maybe I was just losing altitude while I held it stalled without realizing it? I remain somewhat puzzled by this.
Slow flight and power-on stalls went well enough so we moved on to steep turns. Somewhat counter intuitively, my right turns were much better than my first left turn. Tried the left again and it was the best of the three. That was after a demo by CFI. I find that I like demos by CFIs and I think I should request more of them. It's hard to judge by yourself if you're doing something correctly if you've never even seen the maneuver executed properly.
Note to all you CFIs: more demos, and don't make us ask because it makes us feel insecure to do so. Naturally, I speak for all students. We took a vote.
After the various maneuvering we headed straight to the Lebanon airport (the one I had planned to go to on Monday). It's a one strip airport... 100 ft wide, 5000 ft long.
Me: That's an awfully small runway.
CFI2: It's a normal runway. You're used to giant 32 [back at Smyrna]
Me: Is that so wrong?
I really am probably more nervous about landing on this runway than any other part of the lesson. You remember I always pull left of center on landings? Well, I haven't had a chance to correct that yet, and I kinda feel like this here teeny runwaylet puts a little undue, and unwelcome, pressure on me to fix that. Promptly.
I do a somewhat normal approach which crosses over I-40. It is perpendicular to the runway about 100 yards before the numbers, complete with semis ready to T-bone me at 80mph at the first slip up. I'm channeling Ted Striker during the sweating scenes in the first Airplane movie.
Did I mention the monster headwind? And the small runway? And the semis? Through all of that, I somehow managed to quiet my gastro-intestinal reflexes and land the plane, only slightly left of center, and only slightly firmer than I should have. Woot! Ok, great, we've done it... let's head back to Smyrna! Er, not so fast, grasshopper.
Me: Did I make ya nervous?
CFI2: Nope.
Me: Must not have been all bad then.
CFI2: <silence>
Clearly, I still have some work to do.
In the next pattern I'm making about mach 4 on the downwind thanks to the tailwind. I get abeam the numbers and CFI unceremoniously jams the throttle back to idle.
Me: Hrm. Ok.
Turn in for a bit of a modified based and final CFI showed me.
Me: I'm going to turn a bit early here to counteract that headwind.
CFI2: <silence>
Ok, the strong silent type. I get it. Welp, we have a dead engine here so I got better things to worry about.
My turn is way, way... WAY early even with the headwind. I begin to slip... and slip... and slip. Finally we're over the numbers and I'm still about 75 ft in the air. CFI2 calls a go around so we do.
Now, at first I chalked that one up to a failure. Later, as I reflected upon it, I realized it really wasn't. Yes, I failed to recreate any semblance of a normal approach, that's true. But as for landing the plane in a real emergency... I'd have done it easily on the remaining runway. We just would not have had room to takeoff again comfortably, or at least without a lot of taxiing, thus the go-around.
Next pattern CFI2 does a rather illustrative demo for me on how to make a stabilized approach. Well hell... that's a lot better than what I was doing. This was light bulb number one for the lesson, and well worth the price of admission. This is exactly why you want to fly with more than one CFI. Not that CFI1 doesn't do stabilized approaches, he just hasn't verbalized / demoed one in this manner so it didn't stick quite like this one did. Fantastic.
That said, my one major landing screwup happened on the next pattern. The approach was way better than previous ones. But the landing had a somewhat significant bounce. It wasn't the Michael Jordan bounce from my first day of landings, but neither could you couch it as a minor dribble.
I was unsure whether it was a go-around or not at the time so I started to add throttle (when in doubt, right?). CFI2 pulled back the throttle and I made an easy recovery, feeling quite foolish about the whole ordeal. I think, however, that now I know what's a go-around bounce and what isn't, so I'm glad it happened. So long as it doesn't happen again. And I'm sure with my prowess it never will. *whistling innocently*
We finally start heading back to Smyrna, and I'm busy enough that I don't notice we're making about 140 kts in the katana thanks to that tailwind. I get all the radios tuned back for Smyrna and call tower for the landing. I'm aware at this point that I'm a bit high, but I'm on a really long right base and figure I can pull it together as we get closer.
Well, apparently I didn't do it fast enough because we turn final and I am OMG high. It's like we're doing aerial photos of the runway rather than landing on it. Seriously, I'm at least 600 ft above pattern altitude on final. It's really hideous.
Since we'd have to go around anyway, I figure I'll see exactly how much altitude I can lose in a forward slip. So I slip.
Guy on radio: Smyrna tower, 123XYZ, request landing etc
Tower: 123XYZ, you're number 2 behind the katana
Guy on radio: Negative contact, looking, 123XYZ...
Me (w/o keying mike): I'm the one flying sideways.
CFI2: <chuckle>
Bam, got him! Still got a long way to go on the slip though, so my victory is short lived. Finally, somehow I manage to make it over the numbers at about 20 ft and straighten back up and land the sucker. Bit of a clunker landing (I cannot seem not to land hard these days) but I was really pretty pleased just to get it on the ground and I didn't even miss the first taxiway. Yay, me!
I taxi off, handle the ground radio, and taxi back to the ramp.
CFI2: That was one helluva slip, I'll tell ya that.
Me: Yeah, I was pretty happy with that one, actually. You didn't think we'd make it did you?
CFI2: I always have faith.
Cool, he's coming around. After securing, we talk about all the ways that last approach was screwy, and it helps quite a bit. Then he informs me he's going to give me solo written exam. For those that don't yet know, I'm really very nervous about soloing still.
Me: You know I'm in no hurry, right?
CFI2: Yeah, but it's one more item we have to do before you solo.
Me: <silence>
It wasn't until later that I noted the irony in the role reversal there.
I'm having to cancel my lesson for the next day for family reasons, but the wife has agreed to let me fly Saturday instead. Unfortunately, CFI1 is still out of town, and CFI2 is booked Saturday. This means I'll fly with CFI2 again on Friday and CFI3 on Saturday. Been a squirrelly week for instructors, but after today I do really feel that's a positive not a negative.
Oh yeah, so two big realizations today. The first I mentioned was how to fly a stabilized approach. The second is huge... after the lesson I came to the realization that landings have gone from something I really wasn't even sure I could do to something that piss me off when I do them badly. Very cool.
Logged: 1.3
Jeff S KDTW
Patent Pending
Registered: Jan 2003
Location: Flying at Mach 0.30
Posts: 7646
Jeff -
I have to tell you in all honesty, I really enjoy reading your entries. Keep them coming.
By the way, . .
Hrm :-/ Incidentally, I have no idea how that happened as the recovery really wasn't slow or bad in any way I can put a finger on. Maybe I was just losing altitude while I held it stalled without realizing it? I remain somewhat puzzled by this.
Your hypothesis is correct--you most likely lost that altitude in the power off stall by holding it in the stall.
battmain
Checkride Passed!
Registered: Oct 2006
Location:
Posts: 271
Heh, wait until tower or the instructor tells you to do some small s-turns on final. Times two your hypothesis is correct for the altitude loss.
Great writeup as usual.
__________________
PP ASEL
cindi
earthbound misfit
Registered: Jan 2002
Location: KCGI, KK02
Posts: 2997
OMG you SO crack me up....
I was getting worried about all the <silence> but was happy to hear you finally broke him!!!
Have fun tomorrow.. and Im really looking forward to Saturday's report on CFI3
__________________
My soul is in the sky. — William Shakespeare
castlepines
Bovine Scatologist
Registered: May 2004
Location: Denver
Posts: 4102
You're a good read, Sysvr4! Looking forward to more!
__________________
I'll start closing on the lead runner shortly after he reaches mile 26.
16L Pilot
Junior Member
Registered: Jun 2007
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 10
All I can say is that dumping my first CFI was the best move I ever made. The progress was immediate and it's great learning things from a new perspective. That said, make sure your personality meshes with the new guy. It won't be any fun going on long cross-countries with Oscar the Grouch.
Sysvr4
Member
Registered: May 2007
Location: KMQY
Posts: 67
Originally posted by 16L Pilot
It won't be any fun going on long cross-countries with Oscar the Grouch.
Yeah, that's true. You should know, however, there's a little hyperbole in these writeups for entertainment value. Not much, but a little I certainly wouldn't characterize CFI2 as Oscar the Grouch, for example. He is, in fact, a very good teacher, he just doesn't laugh at my corny jokes.
CFI2 is actually very cool and I had a great lesson with him on Friday (writeup coming shortly). I just finished my first lesson with CFI3 today and that also went fantastic... going to try to write both up by tonight sometime.
Thanks everyone for the kind words and encouragement, it is most certainly appreciated.
Jeff
Comments
soulie13
Senior Member
Registered: Feb 2006
Location: KHEF
Posts: 306
Originally posted by 16L Pilot
All I can say is that dumping my first CFI was the best move I ever made. The progress was immediate and it's great learning things from a new perspective. That said, make sure your personality meshes with the new guy. It won't be any fun going on long cross-countries with Oscar the Grouch.
You hear alot of "Your CFI is not your buddy, they are there to teach you how not to kill yourself" about CFIs. Truthfully, if I had someone who I couldn't talk about anything other than stick and rudder stuff, my training would have been a real chore. While you certainly aren't paying to talk about your last summer vacation, getting along personally with the instructor can really help. All depends on your learning style.
Can't wait for the next writeup.
__________________
PP-ASEL
5/22/2007