Flight Six - Patterns and Landing

N16221 in flight

The weather kind of cooperated this morning, and another flight lesson was possible (just barely). There was a low ceiling of clouds over the practice area and we had to fly out over the Cornelius Pass to find enough altitude for the practice maneuvers we wanted to attempt. My favorite practice plane, N704XA, has been sold and I flew for the first time in N16221 a 1972 C-150L that uses MPH instead of KTS for the airspeed indicator.

I got to the airfield early and performed the walk-around solo. I even found a problem with the nose gear and we taxied over to the maintenance shop to get more nitrogen pumped into the wheel strut prior to starting our run-up check list. It has been almost a month (27 days) since my last flight and it kinda showed...I had forgotten a few steps in the procedures and Theresa gave me some grief for not practicing the check lists more. I am hoping to start flying every other Monday for the next few months and will be doing more realistic practice on the simulator to keep my skill set current.

Once we reached a practice area with a high enough cloud ceiling, we climbed up to 3,000 ft. MSL and practiced the power changes and decent procedures in prep for a landing. Once I got the plane trimmed for level light at around 2,300 RPMs, started to cut power, first by turning on the carb. heat. Then, reducing power to 1,500 RPMs, letting the nose drop into a 500 feet per minute rate of descent. The aircraft is still traveling at 80-85 MPH and to drop speed, I begin to add 10 degrees of flaps. This causes more lift and the nose of the aircraft to pitch up - the secret here is to try and keep the same angle of attack. Once the aircraft settles down again, I add 10 more degrees of flaps, still maintaining the angle of attack. Finally I add full flaps and the aircrafts is still descending at 500 feet per minute and the IAS is down to 60 MPH. Finally I reduce the throttle to idle and the aircraft slows to just above stall speed. After each descent procedure we climbed back up to 3,000 MSL and tried it again. After a few tries, we headed back to the airfield to try a touch-and-go landing or two.

We approached Pearson from the NW and got into the approach pattern for runway 8. We went through the reduction of power and adding flaps and made our way to final - on the final approach, I did exactly what you're not supposed to do - I looked at the runway instead of a point out towards the horizon. I totally flubbed it. Theresa needed to take the controls to get us down...then it was flaps up, full throttle and we were up and coming around to the down wind leg of the pattern. This time as we came in on final - I had the right view point. We were a little off center and Theresa helped me get properly aligned to the runway. Then I had the controls and flared us to a gentle touchdown. My first landing!

In the debrief, we discussed how out of practice I had gotten on my procedures in the cabin...so I need to practice more in the simulator so these things go smoother during flight lessons. I'll be back up in two weeks in the weather cooperates...hopefully, with more info. retention.

Ground school is just over half-way complete at this time. I have gotten a bit behind on writing up the class sessions on this blog. Lesson 5 is almost completed and I think I'll combine all of classes 6 thru 9 into a single longish post that covers all the lessons as they are the related topics of navigation charts and airports.