mikeg's blog - Flying

THUD.....THUD....THUD....

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 00:57:10 -0400

I'm not dead.... The plane isnt broken.... I suppose we can call that a success. Today's lesson was steep turns and landings. Steep turns are basically 45-degree constant-bank & constant altitude turns. I did OK on the first turn, but I'm chalking that up to a fluke, since the rest of them were pretty lousy. My first turn I nailed the bank and held altitude easily. Then we went the other way, and things started getting funky (couldn't make the plane stay at a 45-degree bank, which then made the altitude go all over the place). I started getting the hang of it again toward the end, but steep turns are on the top of the list list for next weekend (along with a bunch of other stuff that I want to work on to get closer to PTS). Then we headed back to the airport to work landings... hence the THUDs. First landing was OK. I flared a little high, but we landed pretty decently. This was my first touch-and-go at FRG, and the pace is definitely fast-and-furious, no sooner does the nosewheel touch the ground than you need to yank the flaps up and firewall the throttle (before someone lands on your slow ass). The other two landings.... not so much with the smoothness. They were definitely safe landings, bud they were definitely THUD landings - the main gear pretty much banged into the ground. Apparently I'm entering the flare too high, so that's going to need some work next lesson too. And of course, the next problem - Apparently at some point my brain and my feet stopped speaking. Because of the left-turning tendencies of properller-driven aircraft, you need to pretty much STOMP on the right rudder pedal whenever you're moving slow with lots of power on. My brain knows this. It's known this for a while. It has made my feet do this on climbout every single time I've gone up. Unfortunately my brain or my feet werent paying attention during the touch-and-go's. We were constantly drifting left on the "go" portion. I kept us on the runway, but well off the centerline. I'll need to figure out some way to keep my brain and feet on speaking terms for the next lesson. That's it - short cuz I'm tired :) I'll write something tomorrow about the next lesson, and maybe a more thorough review of this one.

Lions and Tigers and Landings, Oh My!

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 00:45:54 -0400

Sometimes I question my flight instructor's self-preservation instincts. He's had me preflighting the A/C unsupervised since lesson 2 (not that I'm not thorough, I'm probably pickier than he is, and the mechanics throw things at me when I walk by (the sparkplug wires were chafing damnit!)), and unless he's far more sneaky than the other instructors he hasnt been doing the "peek at the student from behind the fuel truck" thing). And last weekend for whatever reason he decided to go pretty much hands-off on the final approach and landing. Surprisingly I managed to keep 1933H shiny-side up and rubber-side down (although I landed with more of a "THUD!" than a "squeak").
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Hazy dayz of summer...

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 22:04:43 -0400

More flight training this past saturday. In haze. Again. The bright side is that if I can learn to fly in this crap "VFR" (who are we kidding? There's no horizon!) weather, I'll be able to fly in damn near anything. The bad news is... there's no horizon! So yeah, I was all over the sky (not like WAY all over the sky, but definitely not going to hold up to the PTS - Altitude +/- 100 feet my ass!) At some point I'm sure this will all come back to me, and I'll remember how to put the airplane where I want it, when I want it. Also I couldn't keep a turn coordinated for shit - my feet and my brain not much on the speaking terms. I was skidding across the sky (though I managed to roll out on heading about 75% of the time).
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Buying Things...

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 01:47:14 -0400

Just on a whim, I went and punched up an insurance quote from AOPA. I'm gonna go out on a very thin limb and assume that the numbers they're giving me are annual numbers (i hope so anyway)... If I purchase a PA28-140 (the same class of Cherokee I'm training in), insure it for $30,000, and get my private with 70hrs, insurance will run me $950/yr (about what I pay for car insurance... I'm shocked by that!). Assuming I get my IFR ticket in a rather generous (low) 45 hours after that (115h total time), it drops to $875-$900ish. If I buy an IFR-Rated Cherokee (which can be had for about 30,000 right here in NY (Dunkirk)), I can use it for my IFR training. I need to amortize a few more costs into this (tiedown @ KFRG, annual inspections, etc.), but I was viewing insurance as the "OMGZ0R" expense, and it's starting to look reasonable ($150/mo will amply cover it, and thats about what I spend in ONE LESSON renting 1933H (the cherokee I seem to have the best luck in out of my 3 flights so far) at NFI, not counting instructor fees)). What sucks is I don't believe I can secure a decent aircraft loan (looking at that now, thinking a 10% downpayment will get me about where I want to be so $3,000 toward the plane from the outset).
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Been a few days . . .

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 21:16:16 -0400

I'm back to the flying grind (trying to get up once a week or so, but grounded by the weather overhead for the last few days - thunderstorms and rain all weekend . . . FUCKERS!) So in celebration of the weather, I hacked up some weather scripts (and imagine my surprise when I discovered I could still read METARs!) To punish you all just the right amount for reading this dreck, Click Here for the current METAR from KFRG in all its glory (apparently there's no forecast station at FRG or it shuts down after hours, 'cuz I can't get a TAF, but you can check out KLGA or KISP for forecasts). This system eats any recognized airport ID and fetches the most current data from NOAA. As a note, you really SHOULD use 4-letter IDs (K??? for US Airports), because NOAA has ALL airports in their database. If you neglect to use a 4-letter ID, my script adds a K for you and tries to get the information for you. There are nice decoded METARs available (Woah... that's new!) for those of you who can't read the heiroglyphics -- See Here for FRG's decoded METAR.
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OMGZor... too funny!

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Mon, 22 May 2006 20:07:57 -0400

In celebration of tomorrow's (hopeful) return to flight training, Lizzie sent me this: TSAThemeSong.mp3 Lyrics below the jump
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ScrubZ0R...

mikeg@bsd-box.net (mikeg) — Sun, 21 May 2006 22:35:36 -0400

So it's been about 2 years since I last went up in a light aircraft with an instructor to log time toward my private rating. I went in yesterday (Saturday 5/20) to make an appointment; scheduled myself for 14:00 today, on what was forecast to be a nice VFR day (well, scattered thunder storms, but they were moving slow and I figured I'd be well on the ground before they popped up around the field. WRONG! I showed up around 13:45 and met my instructor (nice guy, kinda cute... perhaps taking flying lessons while single is not a good idea? :-P). We headed out to preflight the aircraft... And walked right into a squall line. Needless to say, we agreed that todays flight would be better off scrubbed and rescheduled. I will be going up Tuesday evening at 18:00. Expect to see something on here after that, assuming I manage to keep the shiny side up and the rubber side down. -MG