Complex Time with a Retractable Gear 172

A complex aircraft has flaps, retractable landing gear, and an adjustable pitch propeller. Believe it or not, I have used a Groupon more than once to get a flying lesson at a flying school that I would not otherwise have visited. As a result, I have had the opportunity to fly a complex Cessna 172 as well as a Garmin G1000 Glass Cockpit equipped Cessna 172. When I came home from a demo flight with Orange County Flight Center, I explained to my wife that I had just flown a plane with retractable landing gear, but she was astonished after she asked “Don’t they all have those?” Good stuff. Since I have done all of my primary training in either a C-152 or some flavor of a C-172, everything I have flown has had flaps. The only complexity that adds is remembering to extend flaps at the appropriate speed, and remembering to retract flaps for touch and goes and go-arounds for a landing.

With the 172RG, I get an introduction to the awesome GUMPS mnemonic checklist as follows:

G - Gas  - (Not Gear as you may think) – Have the tank selector on Both or the fullest tank

U – Undercarriage – This refers to gear – down and locked

M - Mixture – Set for landing

P - Prop – High RPM

S - Seatbelts – Fastened

Although I have been using the King Schools Private Pilot video course to supplement all of the reading I did with both the Airplane Flying Handbook and The Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, after my flight at Orange County Flight Center, the instructor told me about the Cessna Pilot Training which is an updated private pilot course specific to newer Cessna 162 and 172 aircraft and it also covers the Garmin G300 Glass Panel as well as the G1000. I’ll be headed up again soon, but for now I am going to stay away from complex aircraft so I can just focus on finishing my Private Pilot with the simplest requirements possible.

Posted in Complex Aircraft, Learn to Fly, My Private Pilot Training, Private Pilot | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Flying the Rocky Mountains

It has been a goal of mine to go flying in my old hometown for a long time. I knew that I wanted to fly with a flight school at KBJC, Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (Formerly Jeffco Airport) in Broomfield, CO.
I found McAir Aviation, they have a fantastic modern fleet of training aircraft. We took up a Cessna 172S with a G1000 glass cockpit. This was highly advanced and almost like a culture shock for me. Previously, my only exposure to a glass cockpit 172, was with an Aspen Glass setup partial panel while flying in Kona Hawaii.

The preflight on this modern Cessna was a bit different, from having 5 fuel sumps on each wing, to checking and verifying the availability GPS satellites. This is also my first time in a Cessna 172 that had fuel injection and a TCAS warning system.

The day in Denver was cold, but clear with light winds up to 5 knots. We departed and climbed to 6,500′ MSL. Once we were cleared for our south departure, we turned straight south and followed Wadsworth Blvd down to the Green Mountain/Littleton area. There we practiced some steep turns and slow flight before continuing on to Centennial Airport (KAPA). In the Centennial traffic pattern, I was able to do some touch and goes to knock the dust off of my skills and keep my landings and pattern work sharp. We then turned back north and flew over Downtown Denver and Mile High Stadium.



Posted in Airports, KAPA - Centennial, KBJC - Rocky Mountain Metropolitan, Learn to Fly | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Cross Country to Camarillo

Cessna Skyhawk POHMy instructor had a commendable amount of patience as he walked me through the ins and outs of flight planning. I sat mostly stumped trying to remember high school algebra that was dusty as hell somewhere in the back of my head. Since I just passed the private pilot written exam, I knew that some of the calculation problems like finding the estimated time en-route, were going to be a problem for me. The issue was that I didn’t know what the formulas were, nor where to get the necessary data to plugin to the formulas, had I known what they were.

Here is what I did know:
I knew where were were headed, from KSNA (Orange County, John Wayne) to KCMA (Camarillo – an airport north of LA near some outlet mall).
I knew that we were going to take basically the same route as our last flight which was to Santa Monica airport, except this time we would fly over Santa Monica instead of landing there.
I knew how to plot that course on the map and measure the distance to all of the important waypoints, including the transition through bravo airspace over LAX.
I knew how to convert my true headings to magnetic headings and correct for magnetic variation to find magnetic course.
I knew how to find all of the frequencies of where we were, where we needed to go, and basically who we would be talking to the whole time.

Here is what I didn’t know:
How to calculate top of climb and fuel burn
How to calculate estimated time en route (I knew I needed true airspeed, but was foggy on where to get the wind and wind triangle info)
How to correctly and manually interpolate the data from performance charts in the pilot’s operating handbook to precise figures.

Flight Plan Orange County to Camarillo
The interpolation tripped me up more than I anticipated because my high school algebra is embarrassingly rusty. So because of that and the time it took for other critical info to make it’s way into my Homer Simpson-like skull, the weather changed for the worse by the time we finished the flight planning process. So it was time to check the weather again. We could look outside and see quite a bit of haze/marine layer developing from over the ocean again. John Wayne typically has marine layer issues in the AM because the airport is only about 5nm from the shoreline of Newport Beach.
20111004-184538.jpg

Our flight planning ended around 2:45 pm, and my instructor declared the weather “barely legal”. He folded up the IFR approach charts for himself to do the IFR approach just in case our VFR weather changed and pushed us below minimums from “barely legal” to “fully illegal”.

With that, we went out to preflight the aircraft. Today we were flying N5364K which is one of my favorite training aircraft at Royal Aviation because it doesn’t have any negative quirks that bother me. One of the other 172′s has a harder left turning tendency, not only during low speeds and climb, but practically during all phases of flight, so it requires a couple notches of rudder trim correction.

Anyhow, during preflight, I called up John Wayne clearance and got a VFR clearance for a “Mesa Local” which is John Wayne speak that tells them we want to go northwest towards the coast. The controller gave us the clearance with a heading of 220 and told us to contact ground. Preflight was totally normal, so we started the engine, tested the brakes, called ground just before leaving our parking area and ground told us to taxi to the tower run-up area. We completed run-up and called Riverside flight service station to open the flight plan that we filed back in the office. The guy at the FSS opened the flight plan and told us once again just how marginal the weather was. We thanked him, contacted ground to taxi for departure. Ground told us to continue our taxi on Bravo, and to take Kilo to hold short of 19R, which we did. We then contacted the tower freq for 19R and they let us go ahead and use the “big runway” 19R for departure.

Lights, camera, action, and we started our ground roll. I pulled back on the yoke and kept my eye on the airspeed to keep us at Vx – or 76 knots. We took our 220 heading provided by clearance and flew that until we got to the shoreline south of Huntington Beach. We then turned north to head for the Emmy and Eva oil platforms.

Just over the oil platforms, we reached our cruising altitude of 4,500′ which is required for us to transition over LAX using the VFR special flight rules corridor. Right at the edge of Long Beach Harbor, we made a minor 10 degree heading change and headed for the Santa Monica VOR. Because the skies were so cloudy, we had few visual references for position reporting. After about 12 minutes, we reached the Santa Monica VOR and continued northwest to reach the 101 freeway. After we crossed over the 101 freeway and could see VNY Van Nuys airport off to our 2 o’clock position it was time to head directly to Camarillo – also known as the town of the outlet malls.

We reached the top of decent over an area called conejo grade – which is a steep downhill road through the mountains north of Thousand Oaks. Since we had a Beech Baron closing from behind at a high rate of speed, the Camarillo controller had us sidestep to allow the Baron to land first.

We landed and taxied back for takeoff. Just after we took off, the clouds moved in really cramping our VFR style. We made it back over LAX and through the special flight rules corridor with a solid layer of clouds below us. We were still ‘barely legal’ VFR and didn’t have a good visual on nearby reporting points.

Once we were inbound over Long Beach harbor, we started our descent, and contacted SoCal Approach. They handed us off to John Wayne tower who gave us a right downwind for runway 19R. After landing on the big runway we taxied back to parking. It was a great cross country, and a really good day to see what the weather limits look like both on the ground and in the air. I can’t wait to get back up again.

Posted in KCMA - Camarillo, KSMO - Santa Monica, KSNA - John Wayne - Santa Ana, Learn to Fly | Leave a comment

Studying for the Private Pilot Written Exam

One of my best purchases in my student pilot career has definitely been my iPad. I have been studying for my private pilot written exam with the Study Buddy app released by Sporty’s. The Private Pilot version is $10 and has 700+ questions to review to prepare for the Private Pilot Written exam. I started slowly by just doing the first few modules, then I jumped into the deep end of the pool and went through all 700 questions in “learning mode”. Learning mode essentially trains you what questions you answered incorrectly, and explains why they are incorrect then it also shows you the correct answer and explains why it is correct. After about 1 week of hard core review, I can now pass the simulated tests with scores consistently in the 80%s. I also know what material I need to review and where my weaknesses are.

I told my instructor about my progress and yesterday he indorsed my logbook to go and take the Private Pilot written test – which I am going to do right after I get back from Vegas next week.

Having previously taken flying lessons in 2005, and not completing the training, I firmly believe that there are 2 things that more or less prevent people from getting all the way through their training (most of the time). I think that not getting a medical soon enough after beginning training is one of them. People who take demo flights and then a few more lessons then wash out, don’t bother to get the medical, and thus never remove that obstruction from their progress. I think the second obstacle most people who fail to complete private pilot training is taking and passing the written exam. It is an obstacle, but by comparison, I doubt that many people give up after a failed oral exam or checkride, though there are those that do. By virtue of the fact that it costs so much monetarily to reach the point of taking the checkride, most would likely just want to try again if they fail. With soloing, cross country flying, night flying, all of those are challenges that most student pilots look forward to, though perhaps with some trepidation, those challenges still seem much more sexy than taking a multiple choice test.

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Not winning a plane

In July, The 1940 Terminal Air Museum at Houston Hobby Airport held their annual drawing to win a raffle plane. Unlike Sporty’s drawing, or the one for AOPA, I actually thought that there may be a decent chance with this one since they (the museum folks who run the drawing) promise to only sell a maximum of 2500 tickets. I think I first learned about this drawing while I was helping the people at Flying.com with some social media stuff a year or so ago. Strangely, I found the raffle plane on Twitter, and started to follow the account for the raffle plane. Since tickets were only $50, I of course had to buy at least one. So sure enough, I sent away for the raffle ticket and it showed up a few days later. I threw it into my desk and nearly forgot about with the exception of the once per month fantasy about how life would be awesome with my own plane.

Pictured above is the next raffle plane, for which you can currently purchase tickets. I’ll buy another ticket again this year, and if I don’t win, I can just look at all of the aircraft for sale on Flying.com and continue to fantasize.

The photo in this post is courtesy of The 1940 Terminal Air Museum

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Weather creates chaos at Sun N Fun

Provided by Mark Horne, Flying.com

Nothing will ruin a picnic quicker than some bad weather. No one knows this better than pilots. The best way to ruin a pilot’s day is by putting them in the middle of bad weather. This year’s Sun N Fun fly-in took a turn for the most unpleasant as a tornado reportedly touched down in Lakeland, Fl. Photos taken by those in attendance showed piles of damaged planes. Many single engine planes flipped over completely, wings folded, and ended in heaps tangled with other planes. Other more sturdy aircraft in some cases remained stationary only to have lighter aircraft hurled on top of them.

@jeppdirect I'm horrified to see the damage from #SNF11. I am glad to hear that no one from your group was injured.

Thankfully no one was killed, but many took shelter in a tent that ended up collapsing and reportedly had to be rescued.

@Planeology Thank you - it was a very tense afternoon for the entire team.
@JeppDirect
JeppDirect
Provided by Mark Horne, Flying.com

Provided by Mark Horne, Flying.com

I am guessing that starting Thursday afternoon, the tent city swelled with the ranks of insurance adjusters trying to count up the damage in the tangled mess. 70 planes were damaged, a dozen were totaled.

That was Thursday. By Friday, many damaged planes were hauled away on trailers. According to Mark Horne, of Flying.com 90% of the damage was cleaned up by Friday mid-morning and the weather was absolutely clear. Organizers of Sun N Fun were concerned that the reports of damage and poor weather earlier in the week would effect attendance, but there will still lines to get into the airshow on Friday, so it sounds as if the weekend will go much easier. The Blue Angels were already doing their scheduled practice and shows on Friday, so all is well.

@planeology We're ok. Some of our new friends lost everything.
@NFlightcam
NFlight Technologies
Provided by Mark Horne, Flying.com

Provided by Mark Horne, Flying.com

It appears as if the people who are showing up on Friday and expect a great airshow throughout the weekend will not be disappointed. Though there were some injuries during the storm, it seems that both the Sun and the Fun are going to be in full force during the weekend.

To prove that people are having fun, we found people smiling on Friday. Here are some aviation celebrities. Our friend, Laura found John and Martha, and they have smiles all the way around!

Provided by Mark Horne, Flying.com

Provided by Mark Horne, Flying.com



Posted in Sun N Fun, Weather | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Kona – The Departure

This post should have been the first one, but I just now was able to get these awesome videos uploaded.

On taxi to run up, the controller gave us our choice of what runway to use. We picked runway 17 because we were closer to that end of the field. During run up, a UPS 767 cargo flight departed just ahead of us. This was cool because my dad retired from UPS as a cargo pilot and it was an ironic father-son experience to see something represent the last of his flying career appear as I am just getting mine off of the ground.

From: KOA, PHKO, Runway 17 Opted for left downwind. There was a Blue Hawaiian helicopter departing parallel to the right.

Precious Cargo: My wife, who said swore she would never fly with me in a small plane came. She also shot all of the awesome videos that we uploaded to YouTube, and all of the still photos. She juggled 3 cameras while coping with her white knuckle fear of flying. So I really have to hand it to her.

My dad who is a retired UPS cargo pilot also rode along.

We flew a shortcut over the south point of Kona – The Southernmost Point in the United States, and then turned north towards Hilo.

Posted in Airports, Cross Country, Learn to Fly, PHKO - Kona at Keahole - KOA | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Flying Around Kona

We woke up early, at 5 AM to meet the instructor at the Kona Airport by 6 am. The sun wasn’t up yet, so we did the preflight on the Cessna 172 in the dark with a flashlight. The instructor really expedited our checklists and preflight, so we started up pretty quickly and headed off to the fuel pit to get the fuel tanks topped off.

While we were doing run-up, a UPS 767 took off right before us. The instructor keyed the mic and asked them to be gentle because our run up area was almost directly behind the departing jet blast. We were finished with run-up and cleared for takeoff at 6:45, at which point dawn had just broken over the island.

On departure, we flew south toward Kailua town and the beachfront hotels there.

Coming soon: Flying over the Volcano and getting to the other side of the Island…

Posted in Learn to Fly | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments