I thought the lesson would begin today at 4 pm -- after all, that's what the scheduler website thingie said. Stephen thought otherwise though -- he thought it was at 5 pm -- so, he left his house when I arrived (late) at 4:10.
When he did arrive, at 4:30, he told me he forgot his badge. He offered me a choice -- he could drive back to his place, get his badge, and come back to start the lesson around 5 pm, or we could simply stay outside, review the answers to my pre-solo quiz, and talk a bit about procedures at Palo Alto.
When he posed me this choice, I looked at him like he was retarded. "Which do you want to do?", he had asked -- did he have to ask?
"I want to fly." The words exited my mouth with a sort of assuredness that I rarely summon.
So we loaded into his car and went off to his house.
On the way I studied the terminal area charts for the SF Bay to familiarize myself with Palo Alto approach procedures, and we chatted about all things pilotage. When we finally arrived back at the airport, the sun was hanging ominously low in the sky. I imagined in my head how much lower it would be when we finally got the plane preflighted and ready, and it brought to me a sense of dread.
While driving back, Stephen said, very matter-of-factly, "This should work out. We'll do a short lesson, just a few touch-and-goes." I did my best to hide it from him, but the words "short lesson" broke my heart. They fell through my ear into the pit of my stomach like a brick might. A short lesson ... say it ain't so! I want to fly!!
4AC was preflighted and humming by 5:30, and the sun still had a good 5 or 6 degrees to go on the horizon, but I rushed my preflight, feeling the pressure of time. I figured it would come back to bite me later, rushing through the various preflight checks, but I did my best not to compromise on the thoroughness of the checks.
Before taking off Stephen had me configure the radios with all the frequencies I'd need for both Oakland and Palo Alto already dialed in and ready to go. I learned that this is an important practice: The Bay Area is densely packed with airports and their airspace, and once I get flying enroute, I will need to concentrate on following instructions over the radio, not fiddling with dials.
A departure to the south involves a handoff from North Tower to South Tower. Yes, Oakland has two towers. This, more than anything, embodies the dual nature of Oakland International. It's as if two airports had been smooshed together to make one. One, the North Field, is a general aviation airport with some private planes and a reasonable amount of traffic. The other, South Field, is a bustling metropolitan international airport, with lots of parking, a terminal, security checks, big jets, and everything a large airport should have.
Normally I deal strictly with North Tower, but today I was handed off to South Tower for the second part of the departure. After she was able to sequence me over the incoming Big Jets and out of her airspace, she canceled radar services and I had a 15 minute break to catch a breather before re-entering the "airspace maze."
Over the San Mateo midspan, I called Palo Alto tower and told them I was inbound to do touch-and-goes. He cleared me for a normal entry into right traffic for runway 31. I was to report over the Dunbarton Bridge. To Palo Alto's credit -- the Dunbarton is a much easier reporting point than the Mormon Temple. Any Bay Area resident can spot the Dunbarton Bridge from the air, but hell if they know where the "Mormon Temple" is.
Palo Alto is the busiest single-runway general-aviation airport in the world. Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles is the busiest general-aviation airport in the world, and of course, Chicago-O'Hare is the busiest airport in the world. So, with Palo Alto being as busy as it is, it's a curiosity how they have ... less than perfect controllers at Tower and Ground.
My landing on 31 was in a respectably strong crosswind, so a lot of my concentration was focused towards getting the plane safely on the ground. Thus, very little was left when, only 100 feet out from the threshold and only a few dozen feet off the ground, still battling the crosswind, Tower came over the radio and asked me to switch to Ground. (This is the sort of request they usually save until after you're done landing.)
I mentioned in an earlier entry that, as a newbie pilot, I am a robot on the radio, and I blindly repeat any command I'm given. So rather than tell Tower I was still busy landing the plane and couldn't switch to Ground yet, or -- even better -- simply ignore them and focus on the approaching earth, I said, "Going to ground, four alpha charlie." Knowing I couldn't land and tune the radio at the same time, I told Stephen "You'll have to do the radios for me right now."
Stephen was not pleased. After landing and clearing the runway, I got a mouthful from him. Most of it was a rehash of that AVIATE - NAVIGATE - RADIATE adage: I shouldn't be chatting on the radio when I'm seconds from touching down. I should have simply ignored Tower. I nodded my head obediently and promised it wouldn't happen again.
At about that time, Tower again came over the radio. The guy was clearly in the middle of laughing and other coworkers could be heard laughing in the background. "Four alpha charlie, now you can go to Ground..."
Tower had the humor to laugh at his own blunder (ordering me to tune to Ground before my wheels had even touched the ground), but Ground wasn't much more on top of things. She cleared us for takeoff with three planes in front of us, and when Stephen told her a takeoff would be ill-advised, she apologized and cleared the correct plane for departure.
Stephen mused on how such a busy airport would hire such inexperienced controllers. Drawing my knowledge from an article on controllers I had read recently, I remarked that they are in high demand. Stephen agreed emphatically. No one wants to be a traffic controller these days, and the FAA needs them bad. They are paying good money to anyone who can sit in a windowless room, stare at a radar screen, and talk a mile a minute to pilots on the radio. Hell, Stephen even asked me if I wanted the job.
After leaving Palo Alto's airspace, I performed my usual check-in procedure with NorCal (the one that used to cause me so much grief but nowadays is getting better), and got clearance for a straight-in to Oakland's runway 27L.
Oakland was still a good 10 miles away at this point, so this basically meant we would fly a 10-mile final. The wind was nearly perfectly down the runway: 270 degrees and 20 knots. This ridiculously strong headwind made the airplane feel as if it was crawling along the ground to the runway. This would be a long final.
Finally, when the runway was a mile or so out, I took the speed back to 75 MPH, the normal landing speed. With the 20-knot headwind, a 75 MPH airspeed meant a ground speed around 50 MPH or so, the slowest landing I had performed yet. The upside to this is such a slow landing is comfortable and easy, and there is no crosswind.
The downside, I would soon learn, is the very fast winds created some very disturbing turbulence at distances uncomfortably close to the runway. I would approach the runway and when it was just a few feet above me, the turbulence would make things very bumpy. This isn't a fun thing.
Anyway, about a mile out from 27L, Tower suddenly switched our clearance to 27R, so I had to make a quick bank and do my first touch-and-go on 27R. With the sun as low as it was, I decided to do three more touch-and-goes on 27R and then a full-stop to land.
The touch-and-goes were marvelous. After each one Stephen nearly burst out in praise at how silky smooth the landings were. My final landing for the day was a travesty, however -- for reasons unknown to me, I botched it completely, and had to do some very abrupt and unsettling maneuvering to avoid stalling too high and plummeting 10 feet to the ground.
"Other than that last stink job, nice work on your landings, Tim. You're really coming along." That's what he said, but what I heard was "your first solo is inching ever closer!"
I should state here that, despite my very obvious desire to solo, I am still scared shitless of my first solo landings. I imagine coming in to land without the Stephen Safety Net next to me, and for the first time, I am actually afraid to fly. Landings are something that scare a pilot to his dying days. The saying goes that you can ask the oldest, crustiest airline pilot with 20,000 hours how he feels about landings, and he'll say that to this day every last one scares him.
Because the lesson was so short (sniff), I didn't have to refuel the plane in the rapidly cooling twilight weather.
When we got back into the club building, Stephen pulled out my quiz which was very alarmingly covered in red ink. For the first time since senior year of college, I had had something of mine graded. And the amount of red was disappointing. A hasty estimate pegs my grade at around 2/3rds correct -- a D.
Fortunately, just discussing the wrong answers was enough for Stephen, so after he corrected my errors with me, he gave me my first endorsement:
"I, Stephen Ashley, hereby declare that Tim Morgan has satisfactorily completed a presolo knowledge test demonstrating knowledge of the areas outlined in 14 CFR 61.87(b)(1) applicable to student pilots, and the flight characteristics and operational limitations for a Cessna 172."
My first endorsement. What an honor! (Actually my second endorsement; my first I got for being a natural-born US citizen, whoop-dee-doo.)
Sitting just to the right of this endorsement was the tantalizing template for the solo endorsement, as yet un-filled, taunting me there. I sealed my lips though -- I had vowed not to bring up my first solo anymore, for fear of seeming more focused on what's ahead than what's in front of me.
However, without prompting, Stephen did talk a bit about my future. Seems club bylaws restrict me on when I can solo. I can only solo on the most calm, most pristine of days, and these days come very rarely with my luck. Stephen said if there weren't many "solo-able" days, I'd still be able to continue on with my cross-country training with him in the cabin, but he worried that I would be soloing too infrequently.
He also hinted that we may have just one more lesson's worth of pre-solo material to cover. Emergency descents (which sound very fun) and flying with broken instruments. Then we are out of stuff to do before the first solo.
Emergency descents are "ridiculous" according to Stephen. "If your engine catches fire, you're going to die. End of story. But because the FAA thinks you have some pitiful chance of actually surviving an engine fire, I have to teach you how to get the plane down on the ground as fast as possible." Talking about the ways in which you could die flying a plane doesn't even phase me anymore.
The basic idea is you point the plane down and fly it right at the redline, as fast as it will go, in an attempt to blow out the fire. (This never works.) Then, failing that, you dump all the lift you can and fly in tight circles to drop the airplane out of the sky as fast as you can (never works), land it anywhere that's not completely unsuitable (also never works), and get the hell out. (And neither does this.) So, in a magical fairy world, if your engine catches fire, yeah you might survive. But for the rest of us, just keep an eye your oil temperature and pressure, and land before it gets that bad.
So on Sunday, I imagine I will be learning how to get the plane down as fast as possible. Even if I will never use this knowledge to save my life, I do like flying planes in scary and interesting ways, so I am looking forward to it.
Cost so far: $3,145.91
Time so far: 40 days
Hours so far: 13.9
Projected certification date: August 14, 2007
Projected total cost: $11,316.22
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment