Ones and Zeros

Instructor M and I rescheduled our planned flight from tomorrow till today due to the forecast winds, snow, etc tomorrow.  So today’s plan is for more BAI (basic attitude instruments) work and to include unusual attitudes, and steep turns.

Unusual attitudes are used to teach to things: recovery from unusual bank or pitch angles in the plane, and also to teach me to trust my instruments and not my semicircular canals and balance.  Steep turns are not required by the FAA, but they’re used for instrument scan training in the Cessna Pilot School syllabus.

We departed and we delayed using the foggles today due to some local traffic.  Better have two people looking in a busy area than just one.  Once we could tell from radio calls that all the traffic was behind us, I donned the foggles and I was under simulated IFR.  Later on, past the BAI stage of training, I’ll get to flying in actual IFR.  But with the weather luck we’ve been having it’ll probably end up completely clear and sunny for a month.

We continued as we have in the last lesson in the air practicing turns and climbs along with level flight.  Instructor M acted like ATC giving me vectors.  Once we got out far enough we did some steep turns.

I’ve always handled steep turns before by adding a hundred RPM or so with power when I practice these every few months in my own routine VFR practice.  M showed me that about one and a half full turns on the trim also kept my altitude nicely too and was easier to put in and take out.  After a few I was able to get these reasonably stable.  It’s not that different from VFR steep turns, after all the airplane still flies using the same physics.  Left is better than right of course (with the engine torque), but it was time to move on.

Next, I was to fly with my eyes closed.  This was to teach me to trust the instruments and not my own sense of balance.  I knew how this would go, pretty soon I’d fall off the left or right, and loose track of level flight as well.  If instructor M let this go on long enough (which he wouldn’t) the ultimate result would be a stall followed by a spin or a spiral dive developing into a spin.

So I decided to try an experiment I’d not tried before.  Human semicircular canals are not evolved for flying.  But I thought if I could keep them moving, my balance would improve.  So I started rocking my head forward and backwards thinking that this would make any bank deviation more apparent.  For pitch, I was listening to the engine sounds; slower for nose up and louder for nose down.  M is a tolerant person and didn’t say anything.  And with my eyes closed I couldn’t see any of the strange looks he might be giving me.

We did this eyes closed flying a few times.  I only did my head bobbing the first time as it seemed to make me slightly queasy.  In any case, it seemed to help a little but, but not significantly.  It’s an interesting idea, but it requires more mental effort to keep the bobbing up, pay attention to the engine sound, etc.  And the queasiness wasn’t useful.  Sometime after my IFR training is done I might hire an instructor and try this again though.  For science!

When I did this exercise during private pilot license training, I tended to fall off to the left.  This time, M told me I tended to fall off to the right.  He also says that most people go left.  I’ve been told by my father, a retired professor who follows auditory and balance research that people have a characteristic direction.  Perhaps I was trying to compensate today?

M then took control of the plane and I kept my head down and eyes closed.  He flew up and down and turned various directions to disorient me, the gave me back control and said, “Recover!”  The plane would be a severe bank right or left, with a fair amount of pitch up or down.

He was training me to look first at the airspeed indicator.  If the airspeed was increasing, we’re descending.  I pull power to slow to a safe speed, level the wings, then pitch up to level the plane.  If the airspeed is decreasing we’re climbing.  I add full power to help avoid a stall, pitch down to level the plane, then level the wings.  The last two steps are reversed since I want a level plane (equal lift on the wings) to pitch up when leveling but I want to break any incipient stall when pitched up.

We did several of these then headed to a local airport to land and file for return into the ADIZ, or the SFRA as they’ve changed it to now.  We landed there in a gusty crosswind.  While I was too high for the landing and thus ended up with a too wide pattern, the touchdown was good.  M commented that, “we were on an airliner final” and I apologized.  I know better.  But the touchdown was textbook; tracking centerline all the time. First the right wheel rolled along as the left was still in the air and slowly coming down to roll on the runway.  Then, the nose wheel slowly lowered and we were down.  I love it when that happens.  Instructor M said, “Nice!”

Takeoffs and landings are interesting  They’re the transition from an airplane to a ground vehicle that happens to have wings or vice versa.

After filing, M took off and gave me the airplane when we were 200 feet over the airport.  I already had my foggles on of course.  We headed to a fix to intercept the localizer at my home airport.  More BAI to get there of course.  Tune in the localizer - M gave me the frequency.  I should be carrying the local approach plates by now!

My first localizer in the plane was reasonably, but I had a lot to do.  Frankly, it was very good to have M there reminding me to check one thing or another, and that the localizer would get more sensitive, etc.  I was once again high and had to dump all flaps to get down.  I’m going to have to watch my airspeed and descent rate when doing this.  I’ve had three landings in IFR training and all were high.  That’s a pattern I need to fix.  I know how to land well but am apparently ignoring what I know.  I think the problem comes from not slowing the plane enough at the right point.

But in the end, and with the help of 40 degrees of flaps, I slowed enough  got a good descent going.  With the help of good headwind I touched down neatly if not quite as gracefully as earlier.  The headwind slows us down too, it was easy to make the first turnoff at 2000 feet from the runway end.  M said, “You know it’s a good landing when you have add power to get to the turnoff.”

In the end, I handled this localizer much better than the last one in the simulator (when I crashed the simulated plane).  I wasn’t that straight on the localizer, and I need to work on my descent control as well.  No matter our approach worked.  And it’ll get better.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 08:36 and is filed under aviation, flying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.