We had some fog this morning, but luckily it was everywhere except over Pearson, so we were able to fly today.
Pre-flight Briefing
Todays lesson is all about ground reference navigation. Theresa reviewed some more weather references. Mostly how to call the meteorologist at Boeing Field in Seattle to get highly detailed weather info. and other restrictions (we got notice that the President and Vice-President would be in the area tomorrow). It is also where you file your flight plan so if anything goes wrong and you don't show up at the predicted times, they know when & where to start searching for you. Theresa then reviewed what we would be doing for the ground reference navigation exercises. Mostly it was about following roads directly above and turning in a big left-handed series of turns to complete a square following four roads picked at random. Then I would try to place the plane 1/2 mile parallel to the roads at 1,000 ft AGL. performing the same square (just 1/2 mile outside).
Walk Around
Again, I was heavily assisted by my instructor to complete the walk around. It went much faster this time. Next time Theresa is going to set it up so I perform the check solo next time. Once that is going well, I can save on instructor time (and cost) by performing the walk-around before the instructor shows up.
Flight 3, Lesson 2
Theresa helped me perform the start-up check list and then we were ready to taxi to the runway. A quick visual check of the windsock, and we were off to runway 26. I'm getting better at taxiing, though I'm still tending to ride the brakes a bit. Theresa helped me with the run-up and take-off checklists once more. Then we were taxiing to the hold line - Theresa is still handling all the radio chatter between us and VUO or PDX.
I got to takeoff unassisted again. Everything seemed to go a bit smoother this time. Nice take off and we were heading north. The fog was starting to move into the area, so we headed north a bit sooner than usual. Theresa had me start by lining up over I-5. Once we were far enough north, we started the ground ref. nav. - doing a series of left hand turns (it's easier cause that's the pilots side window), following roads that continued to the horizon as much as possible. The key is not to spend too much time staring at the ground, but translating the ground info out to the horizon when possible.
There is a lot to keep track of, and maintaining a steady altitude during all the turns proved to be the big challenge. By the time we were headed back to Pearson, I had stopped drifting out of my assigned altitude during turns.
Theresa also spent a fair amount of time showing me different references to see the wind speed and direction - steam from smokestacks being the best.
As we approached Pearson Field, I needed to line the aircraft up one-half mile off to the north. We have a great visual reference in a water tower that lies 1/2 mile off center and is very hard to miss. Once we are parallel to the end of the runway, we decelerated and began our slow turning decent to the runway. Once we were less than a 1/4 mile out, Theresa took control and brought us in for a landing.
Next Lesson
Theresa said that next time we will be doing circles and s-turns as we continue ground reference navigation. Landings are still a few lessons away.
Hours of flight logged this lesson: 0.9 Dual Received (DR)
Cost of this flight lesson: $141.71
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