I’m almost finished with flight training for my private pilot certificate!\u00a0 That’s actually a little disappointing, because I’ve been enjoying the training so much; I probably won’t fly nearly this much after the lessons are over.<\/p>\n
Two weeks ago I performed one of my two required solo cross-country flights. \u00a0When I first heard about this requirement I hoped that cross-country<\/em> meant a flight from Boston to Seattle (cross country) or even to Winnipeg (cross countries) but it turns out it just means, in the exciting parlance of Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 61.109(a)(5)(ii)<\/a>, simply:<\/p>\n one solo cross country flight of 150 nautical miles total distance, with full-stop landings at three points, and one segment of the flight consisting of a straight-line distance of more than 50 nautical miles between the takeoff and landing locations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’d also hoped that I would be able to pick the airports for my cross-country training flights, but that choice too is regulated, this time by the flight school. \u00a0For my first flight my instructor assigned one of two approved routes, in this case KBED-KSFM-KCON-KBED — Bedford, MA, to Sanford, ME, to Concord, NH, and back to Bedford.<\/p>\n (Astute readers will calculate that route as only covering 143 nautical miles. \u00a0Although that distance doesn’t meet the requirement above, it’s okay since the school requires students perform a minimum of two solo cross-country routes; the next one will be a 179-mile trip to Connecticut and back. \u00a0I suspect the school chose those airports for the first “solo XC” because SFM and CON are both non-towered airports that are easy to find from the air — meaning good practice and confidence-building for the student — as well as because the student has flown round-trip to SFM with an instructor at least once.)<\/p>\n The most memorable aspect of my first solo cross-country flight was that\u00a0everything happened so quickly!<\/em> \u00a0Without an instructor around to act as a safety net, I had an ever-present feeling that I was forgetting something or missing something:<\/p>\n There were two genuine wide-eyed moments on the flight:<\/p>\n Despite these eye-opening moments, the flight went really well.\u00a0 My landings were superb — I am pleased to report that, now that I have over 150 landings in my logbook, I can usually land the plane pretty nicely — and once I settled into the swing of things I had time to look out the window, enjoy the view, and think about how much fun I’m having learning to fly.<\/p>\n Unfortunately I haven’t yet had the opportunity to repeat the experience.\u00a0 I was scheduled to fly the longer cross-country flight the next weekend, but the weather didn’t cooperate.\u00a0 I was then scheduled to fly the longer cross-country flight the next next weekend, but the weather didn’t cooperate.\u00a0 So I’m hoping that next weekend (the next next next weekend, so to speak) will have cooperative weather.\u00a0 Once I finish the second cross-country flight I will then pass the written exam, then take “3 [or more] hours of flight training with an authorized instructor in a single-engine airplane in preparation for the practical test,” then pass the practical test.\u00a0 Then I’ll be a pilot!\u00a0 Meanwhile, whenever I fly I am working on improving the coordination of my turns (using rudder and ailerons in the right proportions), making sure to clear to the left or right before starting a turn, and remembering to execute the before landing checklist as soon as I start descending to the traffic pattern altitude.<\/p>\n Overall, flying is easier than I expected it to be.\u00a0 The most important rule always is fly the airplane<\/em>.\u00a0 No matter what is happening — if the propeller shatters, just as lightning strikes the wing causing the electrical panel to catch fire, while simultaneously your passenger begins seizing and stops breathing — maintain control of the airplane!<\/em><\/p>\n My new instructor often tells me that I’m flying too tensely,\u00a0especially on the approach to landing — he remarks that I tighten my shoulders, look forward with intense concentration, make abrupt control movements, and maintain a death grip on the steering wheel.\u00a0 This tenseness is what I think of as “left-brained flying:”\u00a0 I am too cerebral, utilitarian, and immediate in my approach to maneuvering and in handling problems in the air; it gets the job done (I fly, I turn, I land, etc.) but doesn’t result in a very artistic (or comfortable) flight.\u00a0 I am working to be more of a “right-brained pilot,” reacting to the flow<\/em> of events instead of to single events, making small<\/em> corrections to the control surfaces and\u00a0waiting to see their effect on my flight path; and in general relaxing and enjoying the flight instead of obsessing over the flight parameters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m almost finished with flight training for my private pilot certificate!\u00a0 That’s actually a little disappointing, because I’ve been enjoying the training so much; I probably won’t fly nearly this much after the lessons are over. Two weeks ago I performed one of my two required solo cross-country flights. \u00a0When I first heard about this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":645,"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions\/645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
\nLesson learned:<\/strong> \u00a0What I\u00a0should<\/em> have done was immediately changed altitude and heading as soon as I got the first notification from ATC. \u00a0I delayed because I didn’t comprehend the severity of the situation; it’s pretty rare for someone to be coming right at you — this was the first time it’s happened to me. \u00a0Given the other pilot’s magnetic heading, that plane was flying at an altitude contrary to federal regulations<\/a>, which would have been small consolation if we’d collided. (Sub-lesson learned, as my Dad taught me when learning to drive: \u00a0Think of the absolutely dumbest, stupidest, most idiotic thing that the other pilot could possibly do, and prepare for him to do exactly that.)<\/li>\n
\nFlying into clouds without special “instrument meteorological conditions” training is (a) prohibited by the FAA and (b) a bad idea; without outside visual references to stay straight-and-level you can pretty quickly lose your spatial orientation and crash. \u00a0During flight training you’re taught what to do if you unintentionally find yourself in a cloud: Turn around!<\/em> is usually your best option:\u00a0 Check your current heading, make a gentle 180-degree turn, keep watching your instruments to make sure you’re not gaining or losing altitude or banking too steeply, exit the cloud, unclench.\u00a0 Fortunately, an opening quickly appeared in the cloud below me, so I immediately heaved the yoke forward and flew down out of the cloud, then continued descending to a safe altitude (safe above the ground and safe below the clouds).<\/strong>
\nLesson learned:<\/strong> I should have changed my flight plan to adapt as soon as I noticed the weather start to deteriorate.\u00a0 First, I should have stopped climbing once I noticed that visibility was getting worse the more I climbed.\u00a0 Second, given that my planned route was not the most direct route to the destination airport, I should have diverted directly toward the destination (where the weather looked okay) as soon as the weather started getting worse<\/em> instead of continuing to fly my planned route.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n