Ones and Zeros

This was to be my first lesson in the plane as the last one was in the sim. Before I got to the airport I self-briefted weather and saw that we were ok for visibility, ceiling, and winds. Interestingly enough (and instructor M pointed this out later) there’s little to no wind on the surface while at 3000 feet winds are 38 knots, and at 6000 feet they’re 50 knots. That can be a problem. My plane only flies 100-120 knots!

While it’s not good to take passengers on days like today due to turbulence, it’s pretty cool to fly in slow flight in these conditions. You can go backwards - with reference to the ground at least. Meanwhile, your airspeed is perfectly normal. Planes fly with airspeed after all, not ground speed, so while this is cool it is quite safe.

I filed my ADIZ flight plans for the Washington D.C. ADIZ airspace, assured the briefer that I knew the ADIZ procedures. Then, when I got the airport started my preflight.

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My instructor, who I’ll call M, and I worked on the simulator. Technically it’s not a simulator but an “FTD” or flight training device as it doesn’t fully simulate flight. But it’s useful to teach basics more cheaply and easily than in an airplane. We’ll use this a number of times throughout training to learn various new aspects. I can count up to 10 hours of its use to my hours accumulated for the instrument rating.

We started with straight-and-level flight on the gauges. I practiced my “scan”, looking successively at each of the main “6-pack” of gauges: altitude indicator, airspeed, altitude, heading, turn coordinator, and vertical speed indicator (VSI). Each gauge tells me somewhat different information. And each has a different set of possible errors. Pitch or heading information is shared across multiple gauges.

My job is to take in all this information from the various gauges, integrate it into a idea of what the airplane (or simulator) is doing, then compare that with what I want it to do, and move the controls to either keep it doing that, or make it do what I want.

Like learning to ride a bike, initially it takes all my attention to make this work. With time, it’ll get more automatic and I’ll be able to do other things; like tune and talk on the radio, adjust the GPS, etc.

I did well M told me. I was able to maintain heading and altitude reasonably closely, although not quite to IFR checkride standards yet.

While we started with straight-and-level, we ended up doing turns (while maintaining altitude), climbs, and descents at a constant airspeed, and then turns while climbing or descending. M introduced some training patterns to fly with timed legs; a square and a double racetrack (side by side).

So, a good start!

My wife and I, like other Texas residents, had Bush as a leader for four years in Texas then for eight more as President. After those long twelve years we were more than ready to see him go. But more than that, we are overjoyed to see Obama take the office. This is the first politician who’s speeches I actually believe.

So, despite the cold weather and the anticipated crowds, we went to the inauguration. I attempted to post twitter and flickr updates to friends and family but as soon as we got to the National Mall that failed. Just too many people were using their cell phones in too small an area.

What follows are the time-stamped twitter posts that got through interspersed with my later and more complete comments. I’ve fixed typos and grammar problems in those posts that came from typing with my thumbs. Note this is rather longer than my usual posts.

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The other day I talked with two of the local instructors I like, both at the same flight school. Yesterday I bought the Cessna pilot training kit at that flight school. Right now I’m a VFR private pilot. I plan to be an instrument capable pilot soon.

I’ll be doing as intensive a training program as my job permits. This means 4-6 three hour training sessions per week - or that’s the plan at least. Since both instructors are part-time, I’ll be working with both of them. This gives me both viewpoints. Both instructors believe in “real IFR” training in the clouds when appropriate. Both are experienced instructors, one is a charter pilot who’s flown for the airlines.

Training will be on the sim and in my own (shared ownership) plane, a Cessna 172 with round gauges. There is one VOR with glideslope, a IFR GPS, and an ADF.

I’ve been reading the FAA handbooks for the instrument rating. Currently I barely pass the practice knowledge tests. This is not nearly good enough by my standards or my those of my instructors yet. So, I’ll keep going on that as well.

More posts will be coming on the IFR training! I’ll talk about what IFR, VOR, and ADF all mean too.