It begins again

Today began way too early, 5am I was up, couldn’t sleep because at 8am I needed to be at the airport for my first flight lesson with my dad. That is just too early for me to function well. I pulled into the airport at 8am on the dot after making the hour drive in 45 minutes because I forgot some things and had to back track a few blocks.
About 30 minutes of basic review in the operations building then we headed out to the plane. Cessna 150 N63514 was ready and waiting to go.

After a thorough pre-flight I got us to the end of the runway and away we went. The first take off was pretty squirrely, it has been a while for me, but it was trimmed well and flew itself off just as it should. The second one I did at the end of the lesson went very well I thought, rock solid on the centerline all the way down the runway, room for improvement on the rotation speed, could have lifted off 4-5mph sooner, next time.

The lesson today consisted of how to get a weather briefing, preflight, startup, taxi, climbs, descents, slow flight, turns in slow flight, maintaining altitude/speed/heading without using instruments, some in-flight emergency scenarios, local area specific issues (Class B starts at 2400ft at the airport, we are right next to Kansas City International Airport), and some other things. I did all my own radio work, just a blip or two, but mostly right on. When I discontinued my lessons 20 years ago I had soloed, even finished a dual cross country, so its coming back to me. The first landing was a bit high but pretty close on speed, the second one was on speed and decent but I flared a bit late and 3 pointed the landing, all and all I was happy with my first two landings in 20 years. Its going to take some practice.
Next lesson will be as soon as the weather man says its going to be a nice day, looks now like it will be the end of the week. The wind this morning was calm to 4 knots, unrestricted visibility, and smooth as glass. We hit a couple bumps at 2800ft but very minor, a few more trips out and it will get even easier.
All said and done I got 1.1 hours and 2 landings in the logbook and bought 6 gallons of gas for the plane.

Never Quit

Of course the wind canceled our scheduled flying lesson on Tuesday as expected, so we rescheduled for next Monday. Guess what, Micki had to go out of town again, family issues she had to attend to. To date, 5 out of 6 scheduled flight lessons have been canceled due to something. These things are no ones fault, not predicted or foreseen, I know what Micki is dealing with and she has my thoughts with her.
Always have a back-up plan.. well one fell in my lap today. Long story short, I found a Cessna 150 to rent from a pair of owners at Noah’s Ark airport, at a fraction of the going rate and a huge bunch cheaper than the Piper Warrior I flew that first day. My dad taught both the owners how to fly in the past years and he’s agreed to attempt to get me to the solo point. Now I don’t know how this will work out, it may not, but he is  a CFII with 19,000+ hours, and if we can stand each other for about 10-12 hours, we might get through this. Once my proficiency has returned and is back up to where it needs to be, I can get signed off for a few airports around and go practice whenever I want.
I did get a check flight from the Cessna 150 owner today, he showed me the whole plane and how they maintained it. It is fully IFR rated and has a color moving map GPS which is awesome. The flight went well, I had a touch of the anxiety come in today, but I was with a pilot I didn’t know, in a plane I didn’t know and the winds were 8-15knots (9-17mph) directly across the only runway (above my personal comfort zone). We flew for about 30 minutes out west of KC, he made a real nice crosswind, no flap landing, all in all a good flight.
The weather looks good for maybe a Tuesday flight, after that it’s going to rain the rest of the week.

Progress… yes and no, mostly no, more importantly yes!

Your confused, let me explain. My next flight lesson was canceled due to high winds, we rescheduled for Friday. Friday’s flight got cancelled because Micki my instructor had to go out of town. Next scheduled flight is tomorrow at Gardner (K34), Tuesday morning again… forecast for 10am is 20 knots on the surface, 60 knots at 3000ft. Just a bit out of my comfort zone, we shall see what the daylight brings. Progress to date none, and not looking good.

I spent Friday and Saturday at Noah’s Ark (06MO) just hanging out. Worked on a Cessna 150 a tiny bit, watched mostly, did an oil change, had a broken carb heat cable (which the owner caught on a RUN UP, GOOD JOB!) and the mount on the air inlet box was broke so that had to be welded, and some other small stuff.
Saturday my dad’s A&P mechanic showed up to finish the install of a new air/oil separator system which took 3-4 hours... and afterwards, I went on a short check flight to make sure all was good!

The 1940 something Piper Pacer flew like a dream. I just rode in the right seat up to about 2000ft then my dad handed me the controls and I flew for 15 minutes or so, making a few turns and trying to maintain my altitude. He offered to let me land it, a good idea at the time, not so good at about 300 feet when he decided I was too fast and high, it was a rough and bouncy landing. He was embarrassed, I couldn’t stop smiling. My anxiety never showed up, I was not 100% relaxed like I could take a nap, but the heart rate and breathing stayed just a tinge above where they should be. As soon as we got back, I wanted to go again. Progress YES!

I am Afraid of That

Two Friday’s ago I did something that I hadn’t done in 9 years, and before that it had been 10 years prior, I got into an airplane with an instructor, took the controls and left mother earth for a little while.
On the surface this in and of itself is not so unusual or significant, happens every day all over the world, but I have a history with it, and it is a big deal, to me. On February 2, 1992 I took my first flight lesson in a Cessna 152 at a little airport way out west commonly known as Honolulu International (HNL), you might have heard of it. I had two things against me from the start, one was the cost, a Navy airman does not make enough money to fly very often, two I had a fear of flying. I had the notion that learning to fly would help me overcome this fear. My training progressed very slowly, I could only fly once or twice a month due to the cost. On December 1st, 1992 I had my first solo after accumulating 17.3 hours of instruction over 10 months. During the month of December I flew 7 different days. One of these days included a dual cross country which in Hawaii involves island hopping with flight following and tons of radio work. This was on the 9th we flew from Honolulu International (HNL) to Lanai (LNY) to Molokai (MKK) and back. As we were circling Molokai to slide into the pattern for landing at the airport, we got a surprise that would rack me for years. There are shear cliffs jutting up several hundred feet on the coast, as we came in they were on my left, the off shore trade winds were blowing into then straight up the cliff face. A gust of wind caught the left wing from below and pushed it straight up and then some. At almost pattern altitude there wasn’t much room for recovery, but my instructor grabbed the wheel and with both of us standing on the rudder and turning ailerons to level, it finally came back to level. I swear we were all but upside down at maybe 1500 feet. My instructor saved us, shaken and stirred I landed at Lanai for a few minutes then we headed home. I don’t recall much about the trip back to Oahu. My logbook says I got back in the plane 9 days later and did 1.8 hours of solo time practicing landings, I’m sure I figured getting back on the horse was the cure what ailed me. That was the last entry until 2003 when I had two intro flights with 2 different instructors, as I recall both were young and obnoxious, I didn’t return. Total logged time, 29.0 hours.
My flight  Friday was one of those things most people would equate to letting a snake bite you if you were deathly afraid of snakes or taking scuba lessons knowing you were afraid of water and couldn’t swim. I got back into an airplane. A well used but functional Piper Warrior N43181. The flight was as bad as I made it out to be, bumpy, choppy air, what was no more than light to moderate turbulence, to me was a knife in the gut every 30 seconds for 40 minutes in the air. After 15 minutes in the air I was still flying on the same heading as the runway, I hadn’t even tipped the wings. My eyes rarely left the gauges, I was so fixated on maintaining altitude and airspeed nothing else mattered. I finally got us turned 90 degrees to the left then after a few minutes another 90 degree turn to the left and I told Micki the instructor I’d had enough and we flew straight back to the airport. We made a beautiful grass strip landing any carrier pilot would be proud of, straight down, slam it on, hope it sticks… it did, we made it back. I still had my breakfast.
My kudos to Micki Shetterly CFII, I think we broke the ice. My next flight is Tuesday morning. Maybe it won’t take 17 flight hours and 10 months to solo this time.