Today I took my 6th flight. Going forward I'll keep more detailed records about each flight, but going back to write about 6 seems like too much work. Here's a brief of each one:
1st flight: discovery flight, 1/3/2011. 1 hour in N796SP. I was surprised to find that I got to fly most of the time during the flight. Radio communication was a real handful, and I really only spoke to ground control before taxiing out :P. Controlling the direction with foot pedals while taxiing was challenging, too. Mark controlled the direction during taking off, of course. Pulling back on the yoke and seeing the plane pulling up from ground is everything I had imagined and more! Took off from runway 31, made left turn after taking off to cross 101, then flew up along 101 to SFO. Got permission to cross SFO mid-field, that was cool (for me at that time at least :P). Headed to Bay Bridge the around SF over the Golden Gate Bridge. 180 degree turn to head to Oakland, and back to PAO from there. Maintaining straight and level flight seemed so hard :) oh and I didn't feel motion sickness at all.
Sometime in-between was a cancelled flight because of weather. Had two hours of ground instead.
2nd flight: 1/14/2011 1 hour in N784SP. The weather was still not great. Overcast so we didn't go out to the practice area. Stayed close to PAO and worked on pattern, take off and landing. I was able to steer the plane while taking off, although didn't do a great job of it. The plane wiggled quite a bit. I don't think I didn't get anywhere near making an unassisted landing, either. Mark had to step in at the last moment of each landing to correct something. It's just impossible to not tense up and over-grip the yoke and making too many adjustments. Seeing the ground coming up at you from the pilot's seat is something that I have to get used to :)
3rd lesson: 1/15/2011 1.4 hours in N784SP. Finally got some good weather and we flew out to the coast. Today's focus was straight and level flight and slow flight.
4th lesson: 1/18/2011 1.5 hours in N784SP Flew out to the coast and did slow flight and imminent stall. Flew over to HAF and flew over the runway a couple times. Got too close at one go that I almost touched down. Right pattern from runway 30 felt quite close to the hills.
5th lesson: 1/22/2011 1.4 hours in N796SP Bright sunny day, and the air was the bumpiest so far! I was able to steer the plane in quite straight a line on take off. Flew to SJC for some landing practice. I was still tense at the controls and the bumpy air didn't help. On final the plane felt like it could drop 20 feet at any moment. My first attempt was quite bad: hardly did any flare and the plane touched down on all three gears and bounced right back up. Mark had to step in to save the landing. 2nd attempt was rushed by an approaching jet and wasn't much better than the 1st one. Mark then decided we should go to RHV where there's no jumbo jets to disrupt us. Did better at RHV and finally got an unassisted landing, in fact the entire take off/close pattern/landing was unassisted. The air was calmer at the moment which helped a lot. After that took off and went back to PAO. Got cleared for a straight approach, which I flew too high. Mark took over at the last 50 feet and did a forward slip to bring the plane down. Interesting maneuver, a bit scary to watch as a passenger :)
6th lesson: 1/29/2011 1.8 hours in N14008. This is a G1000 cockpit. Low ceiling in the morning and we planned on an IFR take off then go through the clouds and get some instrument time. Although by the time we took off it had improved enough that IFR is not necessary. There's enough break in the clouds for us to climb over it without having to go through it. I put on the hood to block my sight out of the window and did some instrument flying. It felt kind of like playing a video game. Although at times I found myself banking to the wrong side. Later I realized it's because i was used to the mechanical attitude indicator, where the horizon stays horizontal and the little airplane tilts. But on the G1000 display the little airplane stays horizontal while the horizon line tilts. I then took the hood off for some full stall practice, and more hood time on our way back to PAO. Did two landings. 1st one Mark still had to help. The 2nd one was better but I flared too late and too fast. I still managed to land on main gears but it was a bit rough.
