Lesson #4: Ground reference maneuvers

Leaving work at 4 pm, I arrived at the Old T's around 5 as planned. After some whiteboard discussion of ground reference maneuvers (most of which was review from my reading material), we headed to the aircraft for preflight.

Preflight checks are getting more and more informal. Most of the time Stephen is off doing something else while I preflight the plane. When he comes back, he trusts my judgement when I say we're ready to go. Likewise, taxi and takeoff is more informal now, with him keeping only a casual eye on me as I communicate with ground controllers and steer the aircraft. I still make mistakes though. Today, when positioning for the runup, I brought the plane too close to the edge of the taxiway. Stephen told me there wouldn't be enough room to turn around without going off the taxiway.

This was an unusual experience because, as a simmer, I'm not used to thinking about stuff like that. Ground is all the same in flight sims, and if I taxied too far to the edge, I just turned around on the dirt. No big deal. Well, it was a big deal in Real Life, because now Stephen had to get out and pull the plane back from the edge, so there would be room to turn around. Oops.

Takeoff was done mostly under my command with Stephen jumping in to make small corrections now and then. After takeoff we headed south of Mount Diablo and east out to the farmland near Tracy. Ground reference maneuvers are performed close to the ground, so it's advisable to do them away from cities. Along the way we did a quick, 15-minute review of stalls and slow flight.

When my instructor was learning to fly sometime during the Bronze Age, he practiced a maneuver called Turns About the Transamerica Building (a ground reference maneuver whereby you make circles around the Transamerica Tower). If you tried to do this today, the Air Force would probably shoot you down without a moment's hesitation.

So, in this day and age, for my ground reference maneuvers, I did a maneuver called Turns About a Cow. You choose a cow or other stationary object on the farmland below, and make circles around it in the sky. The trick is accounting for wind -- a wind will turn your ground track oblate, so you have to steepen and shallow your bank as necessary to maintain a good ground track.

There's a nice straight canal in the area, so we used it for ground-reference S-turns. Stephen seemed satisfied (though not thrilled) with my performance. Personally, I was shocked at my ability to maintain 1,000 feet. I remember having an easy time controlling altitude in 4AC, and figured that the plane was more forgiving. But here I was back in ol' 9UL, holding altitude pretty darn well. I was within 50 feet of my assigned altitude most of the time, and within 100 feet of my assigned altitude always.

Stephen didn't seem too worried about my performance in the ground reference maneuvers, because the FAA checkride examiner he usually refers his students to doesn't test them. The suits up at the FAA consider them very important for some reason, but most others don't. Such is the way of the FAA.

After completing my training, we used the GPS to set me up for a direct-in approach to Oakland's 27R. When in range I contacted NorCal approach and got our clearances. There were a few commands I had to have Stephen read back, but nowadays I'm doing 90ish percent of the radio myself. Once we passed over Livermore Airport, NorCal gave us the go-ahead for a direct-in approach to 27R.

Over the radio another aircraft with the callsign Justice 315 was getting vectors in to land from NorCal. Stephen asked me if I knew what "Justice" meant. I said no. He said it stands for U.S. Justice Department aircraft. They round up illegal immigrants, drive 'em to the Kaiser FBO at Oakland, and load 'em on to planes like Justice 315, where they are flown back to Mexico.

Stephen had me do the landing myself, and for kicks and giggles, tuned in the ILS and pointed at the landing symbology. Now, most students on their fourth flight wouldn't even know what ILS stands for, but since I had some familiarity with IFR procedures, he figured he'd entertain a notion.

"If you really want to impress me, fly an ILS approach in and hold 90 knots." I was able to hold the speed ±10 knots about, and I was decent on holding the glideslope. It was pretty sloppy, all told, but for a first ILS approach ever, not bad. Landing was like takeoff, with me in command and Stephen putting his hands on the controls occasionally for small corrections.

We taxied to Kaiser to refuel, and sure enough, parked there was Justice 315 and a big bus, inside of which could be assumed to be a large number of despondent Mexicans. The airplane stuck out like a sore thumb. Kaiser is a zoo of small private aircraft, and here was this MD80 casting a shadow on the whole FBO.

After refueling, I returned the airplane to the Old T's. A 737 was blocking the way to the T's so ground had us taxi all the way down runway 33 to get there. Along with accidentially leaving the tow bar on the aircraft fuselage last week, I went the whole flight this week having forgotten to put on half my seatbelt. Little things like that, I will always forget.

Next Sunday is landing practice, which means taking off and landing over and over again on a runway. Should be fun! (Should at least iron out my sloppiness.)

Cost so far: $1,703.46
Time so far: 11 days
Hours so far: 5.0