So this “winter storm” has grounded most students from flying today, even without any snow. VFR flight, or visual flight rules, dictates whether or not certain students can fly. It all depends on the training. For a student like me, I cannot fly on a day like this. Unless the ceiling (lowest layer of broken or overcast clouds) is above 3000 feet and visibility is 5 SM or more, I’m grounded. However, when I become an instrument student (learning to fly in clouds, and bad weather) I can go out in a day like this.

While flying VFR, pilots must follow rules on ceiling, and visibility, as well as how far away they are to stay from the clouds. Each airspace has its own rules. The chart below does a good job to illustrate the visual flight rules in the different types of airspace.

Skies clear. Wind at 6 knots from 320°. Altimeter at 29.95”. Temperature is 14°C/ 58°F. Pretty much a perfect day to fly. I got to the flight center 30 minutes early to give myself enough time to get the weather, ATIS, figure out landing and takeoff distance, and determine the weight and balance for the airplane. Today’s lesson was going to be a fun one. We would start by taking off runway 32, and travel north to the north practice grounds. After doing a few stall recoveries, I was going to go up to Bridgeport Airport to practice touch and goes there. I had never been to Bridgeport and was excited to visit a new place. After all, that’s what flying is all about, traveling. However, I never made it to Bridgeport. I didn’t make it to the practice field. I didn’t even make it off the ground.

After I got all the information I went out to the plane to inspect the plane and make sure everything was good. As I went through the checklists, I made sure every item was correct, as I usually do. First the cockpit checklist, then the right wing followed by the forward fuselage. Next was the left wing and finally rear fuselage. After all that I did a complete 360° walk around and was confident the plane was all set. I went back into the cockpit and got ready for the flight. As I waited for my instructor to come out, I opened the aviation map to the places I would be at, and got the frequencies I would need for the new airport I was going to.

My instructor finally came out checked the airplane himself to make sure I didn’t forget anything and he hopped in the plane as well. I diligently went through the pre engine start checklist:
Seats/seatbelts-                                on
Fuel selector-                                    switch
Flaps-                                              set 0
Circuit breakers-                                set in
Electrical switches-                            off
Mixture-                                            full forward
Throttle-                                            open 1/4th
Panel lights-                                      as required
Checklist complete

Time to start the engine:
Battery master switch-                       on
Alternator-                                         on
Fuel pump-                                        on
Prime-                                               3 seconds
Prop area-                                         cleared
Starter-                                             engage
As the engine roared alive, I finished the first few checklists and got ready to taxi. I collected the weather, checked my brakes, and turned on all the lights. I radioed to the company’s frequency that I was outbound and made my way for the runway. After calling up ground control, I got a clearance to taxi to runway 32 via alpha, cross runway 1, to alpha run up area.

In the run-up area, I pulled the plane into the box, set the parking brake and went through the before takeoff checklist
Flight controls-                                 free correct
Directional gyro-                               set to magnetic compass
Stabilator trim-                                  neutral
Flaps-                                              set 0
Windows/doors-                                locked
Seatbelt-                                          on
Set throttle to 2000 rpm-                    set
Check magnetos-                              FAILED

As I was doing the before takeoff checklist, I went to check the magnetos. As I turned the key to the left magneto, I read a 150 rpm drop. Normal. I turned it back to both then to the right magneto. As I did so, the engine’s rpm started fluctuating uncontrollably. Magnetos are supposed to make the engine rpms drop no more than 175, but in this case, the rpms dropped well over 500 rpms. A problem. My instructor didn’t expect me to be able to fix the problem or know what to do so he helped me out. We idled in the run-up area and waited a few minutes to try it again. After trying it again, the same thing happened. The rpms dropped about 600 this time. My instructor called state ops and told them we were inbound in an aircraft with a faulty left magneto. My day was over.

A magneto is a device inside the engine cowling which is responsible for starting the aircraft’s engine. The planes I use have two magnetos. This is for system redundancy, as well as for increased performance. With one magneto, the engine could get up to 2500 rpms, for example. However with 2, the rpms could go up to 2700 rpms. However, each one can produce 2500 rpms. So with 2, there’s added power, but not double power. A magneto is an electrical generator that uses permanent magnets to produce alternating current. This means that no power is needed to fire the magnetos because they operate on magnetism. So if there were to be an electrical failure in flight, the engine would still be able to run. The magnetos send an electric current to the spark plugs, in the cylinders, which ignite the fuel/air mixture which burns, turns the crankshaft, which turns the propeller. The turning propeller produces thrust and the plane moves through the air. So when I did the right magneto check earlier today, it dropped more than 175 rpms. This means that the right magneto wasn’t functioning properly and needed to be looked at.

A good lesson, but at the cost of a flight lesson. Luckily I didn’t get charged for the time I was in the airplane.

Every pilot license has certain criteria which need to be met for a student pilot to obtain it. The first license any pilot anywhere, no matter what, gets is the private pilot license, or PPL. Some of the requirements for the PPL are a minimum of 40 hours flight time, 10 hours solo time, and 3 hours BMI time. BMI time is also referred to as “under the hood” or instrument flying simulation. What they all mean is that while flying with an instructor the student puts on foggles. Foggles look like sunglasses but block the view of the outside world to the person wearing them. There is a cut out on the bottom of each lens so that the wearer can only see the control panel of the airplane and not look outside the windows. The purpose of this is to practice flying with no outside references, or flying in the clouds (instrument flying). So to get a PPL, aside from passing the flying and oral tests, the student also needs 3 hours under the hood time.

Yesterday, my lesson was 90% under the hood. I took off and at 1500 feet, after doing the climb checklist; my instructor told me to put the foggles on. Once on, I flew the plane out to the practice grounds, over the ocean. When students wear the foggles, the instructor usually tells them what heading to turn and what altitude to stay at. Personally, I like flying with foggles on. Not because I can’t see outside, but because it make me a better pilot. For example, it’s easy to keep the wings level while you’re looking out to the horizon. Once the horizon changes its angle in relation to the dashboard of the plane, that means you’re turning the airplane. However, with no outside references, like the horizon, the student really needs to make sure he or she is watching the instrument panel closely. Flying under the hood really strengthens a student’s ability to scan the instruments. Having a good scan is paramount to being a good pilot.

Once in the practice grounds, my instructor had me do slow flight, and stall recoveries first. My slow flight was good. Unfortunately, when I do slow flight without foggles on, I watch the instruments a lot. This isn’t exactly what you’re supposed to do. I should be looking outside more than inside, but I developed a bad habit that I’m trying to break. Because of this habit, my slow flight under the hood was good. I did a climb, a turn, and a descending turn in slow flight. After that, the stalls were next. As I got the plane configured for a stall, I realized that the recovery was going to be harder without the outside references. My instructor must have been reading my mind because as I was thinking that, he told me that I need to just recover from the stall as I would if I wasn’t wearing foggles. The recovery is the same, except for the fact that I’ll be looking at the instruments and not the ground outside. As I stalled the plane in the power off configuration, I realized I was losing a lot of altitude. I quickly nosed up, but put the plane into a secondary stall. The secondary stall occurs when recovering from a stall; the nose is raised before sufficient air is flowing over the wings. I practiced this stall along with the power on stall multiple times before moving on.

After these maneuvers, my instructor had me track the Deer Park VOR. I’ve tracked VORs many times by now so this wasn’t too much of a big deal under the hood. I identified the station, selected VLOC on the GPS and turned the OBS to the station.  Once my instructor saw me do this, he told me to break off from the 205 radial TO Deer Park VOR, and head back out over the Atlantic. Once there, I practiced unusual attitude recoveries. Without foggles, I really like these. In order to practice these maneuvers, the instructor changes the plane’s banks, pitch, and power while the student has his head down so he can’t see outside. So while wearing the foggles, I put my head down and enjoyed the change in G’s while he maneuvered the airplane. As he was doing this I thought to myself the recovery procedures. Pitch up bank: add power, lower nose, neutralize ailerons. Pitch down bank: power to idle, neutralize ailerons, nose up. I heard recover over the headset and simultaneously looked to the attitude indicator, grabbed the throttle with my right hand, and the control yoke with my left. I interpreted the instruments and determined I was nose high, banking right. I immediately added full throttle, lowered the nose, and rolled the plane back to the left. Perfect. It’s much harder to do these while having to look at instruments instead of the earth. The big difference is that while recovering from looking outside, the horizon is a large attitude indicator. Because of peripheral vision, I don’t need to be looking directly at the horizon to know what the plane is doing. However, while under the hood, I have look directly at the attitude indicator to know what the plane is doing. If I look at something else, like airspeed for example, I won’t still be able to see the artificial horizon. My instructor had me do several more recoveries then we headed back to the airport.

We only had time for 1 landing at this point, but it still needed to be good. The airport was using runway 19 and the winds were 24014G21 (14 knot winds out of 240 degrees [50 degrees off centerline] and gusting to 21 knots). Basically, strong winds from a large distance off the centerline. As I came in, I put in the crosswind correction, aileron into wind (so the plane doesn’t get blown off course) and opposite rudder (so the nose stays lined up with the centerline). I put the upwind wheel, right main gear, down first, and quickly lowered the nose and applied the brakes. A decent landing after a pretty good day of under the hood work

What I learned Today:
Simulating flying in IMC (instrument meteorological conditions) really helps all skills of piloting. Today my scan improved, and I gained confidence with keeping my heading and altitude. Something I wasn’t ready for, but handled well was unusual attitudes. Once I heard recover, my eyes started darting all over the panel to find out the information which would tell me how to recover. In all, simulated instrument flying is fun and good practice.

After last lesson’s simulated VOR navigation, I was ready for real navigation in the Warrior. Last lesson, I practiced tuning into VORs, identifying its’ signal and tracking to or from the VOR. I did well enough that my instructor said the next flight, today, would be a real VOR tracking flight. When I checked out the weather for the day, I didn’t think I was going to fly. Clouds were all over the sky, and they kept changing on the weather reports. When I was ready for the preflight brief, the clouds opened slightly up to 3000 feet so VFR fight was possible.

After filling paperwork, getting current weather, pre-flighting the plane, starting the engine, taxing to the active runway and taking off, my instructor told me to put on my foggles while I was only at 600 feet. Foggles is a tool which allows student pilots to practice flying a plane while in the clouds, known as instrument flying rules. They look like sunglasses but are blacked out. There is a small opening on the bottom of both lenses so that while looking forward I can only see the instrument panel and not outside.

My instructor wanted me to practice IFR, also referred to as under the hood, so I put the foggles on. At 600 feet, he started instructing me to the nearest VOR, Deer Park several miles away. I looked up the frequency, tuned to it and identified the Morse code.

I made my way over to the Deer Park VOR and passed over it. Once the FROM indication popped up, my instructor told me to fly To the Bridgeport VOR. Bridgeport is an airport with a VOR located on the south shore of Connecticut. While I was doing this, my instructor got on the radio with New York Approach. NY approach is the approach pilots called up before going into McArthur Airport; a class C airport. This allowed NY approach to monitor us and tell us about other traffic in the area. Once I was on track to Bridgeport VOR, I was heading north. After about 3 minutes, my instructor took the controls. I didn’t know it because I was still wearing the foggles, but we had flown over some clouds. He told me to look where we were. I took off the set and looked outside. We were only 20 feet above a cloud layer and turning to go back to Long Island. Student pilots who do not have an Instrument Flight Rating aren’t allowed to fly over clouds. I didn’t do anything wrong; my instructor didn’t know the clouds were worse over the sound. Once turned around, I started tracking Calverton VOR. Again, I tuned into its’ frequency and identified it.

Once I flew over the VOR, I started tracking FROM the station. This took us out over the Ocean now. We had flown down Long Island, which took about 6 minutes, and were headed out to sea. Finally, after making it out to the ocean, I was going to practice some maneuvers. I took the foggles off for the VOR tracking of Calverton, but for a power off and power on stall, my instructor wanted me to put them back on. I got the plane ready for the stall. I stalled the plane and couldn’t remember a thing about stall recoveries. My mind went blank and I was confused from the foggles. My instructor didn’t want me to practice another power off stall, just a power on stall this time. This recovery went a little better, but still not very good. It was a lot harder to recover from a stall while under the hood than in VFR conditions. Without the outside references, maneuvers get a lot harder.

At this point we were over Captree Island and radioed Republic tower to come in for a landing. Since the weather wasn’t so good today, there was no one else in the pattern and it took us only a few minutes to taxi back to Echo ramp

What I learned today:
VOR tracking is very important for navigation. For example, today I would have gotten lost in the clouds if I was flying alone. However, if I did get lost, than I would still know where I was going because I was tracking the VOR. Also, being proficient in maneuvers as a private pilot will greatly help me once I start instrument flying. Everything gets harder when you can’t see outside.

Today was the first time I flew the simulator. The flight school has a large room with flight simulators in them for the students to use. There are pros and cons with using the sims. First off, using the sim as a lesson is much cheaper than a plane. There’s no fuel, and landing fees. Another pro is that there’s no danger, like when flying an airplane. However, the feel of using the sim is not even close to the feel of a real airplane. While piloting the sim, there is pressure on the yolk, like in a real plane, but it is infrequent and can’t be relied on to know what the plane wants to do. The instruments are extremely sensitive also, which makes it hard to stay on a specific heading and altitude for an extended period of time. What the simulator is good for is what I did today; practicing VOR navigation.

VOR navigation is a way to know where you’re going, while flying. Simply put, VORs are stations on the ground, which emit a signal in all directions. The signal is picked up by the transponder in the airplane and displays data in the cockpit. Basically, the plane will track a signal from the VOR. Then the pilot can fly on a specified heading to or away from the VOR station, and know where he or she is.

I was using the largest and most expensive simulator today. There’s a real sized cockpit in the room with a 180 degree screen in front of it which displays a picture of what I would see if I was actually flying outside. All geographical landmarks, airports, VORs, and other navigation aids are 100% accurate in the simulator, compared to reality.

When the sim turned on, I was already lined up with the runway. Instructors don’t really care about taxiing and contacting tower while using the sim. I used the throttle to accelerate, and took off, trying to maintain what I would do in a real flight. (climb out at Vy, and keep a heading of the centerline) When I got to 2000 feet I leveled off as best as I could, and assessed my flight so far

First, my instructor told me how to use the GPS to find the nearest VORs to me. I found the closest one, deer park, and noted the frequency. With my instructor’s help, I put in the frequency, and listened to the Morse code. After confirming the Morse code signal, I turned the needle on the VOR instrument in the cockpit, until it was lined up with the center line. If the line moves left or right, that means I’m off course. From turning the CDI knob, I read a heading of 165. I flew this course and eventually intersected the course I needed to fly in order to get to the VOR. Unfortunately, I still need more practice using VORs. My instructor had to help me a lot while flying. I practiced tuning to 2 more VORs before trying to figure out the GPS

The GPS is much simpler to use, and contains more information. The GPS has many functions, but one of them is that a pilot can use it just like a VOR. The only difference is that the VOR is digitally displayed on the GPS interface instead of on an analogue dial. Another function of the GPS is that it can tune into more than just VOR signals, or stations. There is a database pre-programmed into the GPS system that has a lot of waypoints that the GPS can also tune into. The advantage of this is that the GPS isn’t limited to what it can identify. Instead of tuning into a VOR’s signal, we tuned into Republic airport’s signal. The GPS automatically identified the station and displayed a direct route to the field. Because I was in a simulator, airspace was no factor. (no factor is a term used in aviation which means it doesn’t matter. For example, often while on final approach over 3 miles out, the tower will tell me that another plane is going to be taking off before I land. After the airplane on the ground takes off, the tower will radio to me and say that the traffic is no factor; meaning the taking off airplane doesn’t pose a problem to my landing)I made an ok landing, not bad for a simulation, and turned the machine off. Hopefully next lesson, in two days, I’ll be able to fly a real airplane and practice VOR navigation.

SOLO! Third one, finally. My last solo was over two months ago because I ran out of money last semester, and because the weather hasn’t cooperated this semester. Before going to the flight center around noon, 1700 zulu, I was unsure about the weather; the clouds were starting to roll in for an afternoon snow storm. The morning was sunny and cold, perfect for flying. Winds were coming out of 320, right down the runway, at only 4 knots. I was thinking that if the clouds hold off for a little bit, I’d be able to solo for my third time.

I got to the flight center and checked the weather. Winds 32004; visibility 10SM, ceiling OVC050 (5,000 ft); and an altimeter setting of 30.12. I met with my instructor and he told me it was good for a solo. He told me I needed to be up there for at least 1.6 hours. This is because I already had 2.5 hours solo so far, and need at least 10 solo hours to get my private pilot license. With the 3, 2 hour each, solo cross countries in stage 3 of the course, a minimum of 1.5 today would ensure I would reach 10 solo hours.

I did the preflight paperwork, and realized that without my instructor in the plane with me, the takeoff and landing distances were much shorter than I’m use to. This wasn’t a problem, in fact, I prefered it. Once he signed my logbook and student pilot certificate, I went out to the plane and did the preflight inspection. During the walk around, I found a missing nut and washer inside the air intake, on the engine cowling. I was hoping it wouldn’t stop me from my flight, but I told the air boss anyway. He had a mechanic come out within minutes to fix it. I checked his work (after all, I would be flying the plane alone. I wanted to make sure the plane was perfect). The oil was fine, fuel was just put in both wing tanks, and the brake fluid was at the correct level. I hopped in and started the engine. Once I was ready to taxi, I cleared myself with the Airboss, “State 66 outbound” and taxied to the edge of the ramp.

The taxiing went alright and I got to the run-up area without any problems. Every time I looked to my right at the empty seat, I felt a little rush of adrenalin. At the run-up area, I checked the magnetos (the magnetic batteries which are responsible for turning the engine crankshaft), set the flaps to 0, and prepared the plane for takeoff.  I taxied out of the run-up area, and stopped at the runway threshold hold line. As I turned to tower frequency, I was already being called from the tower. They saw that I was number one on Bravo side (the name of the taxiway) for runway 32. I responded “Farmingdale State 66 number 1 on Bravo for runway 32.” The tower told me to line-up and wait. I increased rpms to taxi speed and lined up with the runway centerline (line up and wait means that I line up with the runway’s centerline and wait for a takeoff clearance). As I was lining up, I got the clearance to takeoff.

The plane started rolling and got to rotation speed. I slightly pulled the controls back and the wheels left the ground. Since I do most of my training between 2000 and 3000 feet, I wanted to climb to 5000 feet. So I climbed out and did the climb checklist. I was headed for a VFR waypoint, Captree Island. I looked at my frequencies to make sure they were correct, and when I looked up, I couldn’t see anything. I looked all around, out every window but everything turned white. I had flown into the clouds by accident. The clouds had lowered from 5000 ft to about 2900 feet. I immediately took the power out to descent power and pitched the nose down 3 degrees. I was probably at 3100 feet when everything went white, so I didn’t have far to descent. After 50 feet, Captree Island started to come into view, out of the white haze. I decided to stay at 2500 feet until I got to the practice ground.

This was the first time I was out of the airport traffic pattern by myself. I knew right away that if anything goes wrong, it was me only me who could solve the problem. This thought got my heart racing a little more, but also made me smile. I was out over the Atlantic Ocean, in an airplane by myself, and I was the only one flying the plane! It made me feel amazing at what I have had accomplished so far, but also made me realize that I had a lot of work still to do.

In the practice area, I did some slow flight, and stall recoveries. My instructor told me to do whatever I wanted, since there wouldn’t really be anyone to tell me what to do. I also made my way down the southern coast of Long Island. I made it to east Hampton, and could even see Montauk point. By the time I got out there, I only had enough time to get back home. I was aiming for 1.5 hours, so I knew I could get at least that.

After the 10 minute flight back to Captree Island, I got the weather report and was ready to call tower for a landing.

                “Farmingdale State 66 is at Captree with Charlie, requesting touch and goes”

                                -nothing

                “Farmingdale State 66 is at Captree with Charlie, requesting touch and goes”

                                -nothing

                Again: “Farmingdale State 66 is at Captree with Charlie, requesting touch and goes”

                                -again nothing

I thought right away, not again. My last solo, almost 2 months ago, I had problems with the communications. I circled back out over the ocean because I was getting too close to Republic’s airspace. Again I called out “Farmingdale State 66 is at Captree with Charlie, requesting touch and goes” but again nothing. Great, a communication failure while I was in flight, alone. I was trying to think of the transponder code for a communication failure, when I remembered what I did last time. I switched my headset to comms 2, the communications the co-pilot uses. This time I said, with a little urgency in my voice,

                “Republic tower, Farmingdale state 66, inbound for a landing”

                “Republic tower, State 66 report to final”

Finally, after 8 minutes of thinking I had a real problem, I was in communication with the tower. From then on, I had to press the button on comms 2 instead of 1, but I had avoided a situation on a solo.

The approach and landing went fine, and I taxied to Echo ramp to tie the plane down. I met with my instructor and we went over my flight. As I walked out to my car, my heart started to slow down to a normal beat and I thought how much fun I just had.

What I Learned:
Not every bad situation is an emergency. Often times, there is a simple solution to a problem that people overlook. Being a pilot is 50% flying airplanes and 50% overcoming situations. Today gave me a huge boost of confidence in both areas of piloting.

_My last flight was last Friday, but I never wrote anything about it. So here it is

 The flight picked up where I left my training the lesson before. I started the flight talking off with a simulated short field. This means that I lined up on the runway centerline with as much runway left as possible. With 25 degrees of flaps set, I applied full power while pressing the brakes at the same time. Before I let the brakes go, I made sure the instruments were in the green. One I released the foot brakes, the plane shot forward and accelerated to rotation speed in seconds. Since the field was “short,” rotation speed was 5 knots slower than normal. At 55 knots, I pitched the p[lane up and climbed away from the field. Unfortunately, I forgot that on a short field takeoff, you need to climb out at 55 knots instead of the normal 63. This allows the plane to clear any obstacle if there is one. Once my instructor told me to correct for the 55 knot climb out, I would have been already cleared of the obstacle.

I did a downwind departure and headed for the practice ground. Friday was the first time I practiced unusual attitude recovery. I liked it a lot because while you’re looking down, the instructor takes the plane and flies it in unusual movements. The first few turns and pitches I was able to keep track of in my head. But then one big negative G turn and my brain was thrown off.  When he told me to recover, I looked up and was completely surprised by how the plane was oriented. There are two different types of recoveries; one for a pitch up attitude and one for a pitch down. The first one was a pitch down. So I cut power to idle, neutralized the ailerons and brought the nose back up. This ensures that we don’t speed up as we descend, and by neutralizing the ailerons before pitching the nose up, the plane won’t go into a spiral. The second time he had me recover, the plane was pitched up. So I increased the throttle to full power and pitched the airplane down. The second the nose was lowered, I neutralized the ailerons. This recovery ensures that the plane doesn’t stall and that the nose of the plane pitches to normal quickly.

For the remainder of the flight, I practiced ground reference maneuvers. At first, my circles around a point were horrible. My instructor told me I was fixating on the point too much. This meant that I was neglecting the instruments and was looking outside too much. After he demonstrated a maneuver for me, I was able to do the point turns much better. It was a lot easier when I kept glancing inside the plane to see what my altitude and airspeed was.

After getting the ATIS and contacting tower for touch and goes, I made my way back to the airport. Last time I did touch and goes, they weren’t very good. I couldn’t get the hang of the power setting for the type of landing I was trying to do. Unfortunately, last Friday, the winds were coming 60 degrees off the runway centerline and it was challenging again. Because I practiced so many short field landings last time, I did a few soft field landings this time. They went a little better than the last attempts but still need much improvement.

What I learned today:

No matter what you think a plane is doing (attitude the plane’s in) you need to trust the instruments. If you use only your nervous system to determine what attitude the plane is in, you’ll be wrong almost every time. I found this out while practicing unusual attitude recoveries. Right before I recovered, and was still looking down, I thought I knew what I should be looking at when I picked my head up; either the ground, or the sky. But each time I was wrong.

_ Today was a ground day. The next major part of my flight training is cross country trips. However, in order to do this, I need to learn a lot of things I haven’t yet learned. I can’t just hop in a plane and go to some airport 100 miles (Nautical) away. Something I don’t know yet is how to open and close a flight plan. In fact, I didn’t even know how to fill out a flight plan, or what it looked like before today. Basically, a flight plan is opened when a pilot starts a leg of a trip. The length of the trip is irrelevant. I can open a flight plan for a trip off only 20 miles if I wanted to. In order to make sure pilots are where they’re supposed to be at the correct time, or close to it, flight plans are submitted to an FSS (flight service station). These let the FSS know where, when, what plane, cargo, and any other important things about the flight they would need to know. Upon reaching the destination, the pilot closes the flight plan to affirm his arrival at the destined airport. If a flight plan is not closed within a certain amount of time of the expected arrival, a search and rescue operation is dispatched.

Another thing I learned today, which I only had limited knowledge of prior to today’s lesson, was VOR navigation. VOR stands for VHF (very high frequency) Omni-directional Radial. A VOR is a station on the ground which emits signals in all directions (360. However, it’s more like infinite directions, since there can be decimals of degrees of a circle. ) and a plane flying in the air can tune in to the signal. Based on the time it takes the signal to get to the plane and back, the VOR and plane know where it is in relation to the station. VORs help pilots travel from one VOR to the next, in order to get to a destination without getting lost.

VORs are complicated (or at least too complicated for a blog post) and need practice using. I haven’t ever used the VOR in the plane while in flight, so I need to get practice first. This is why my next “flight” will be in the simulator we have at the flight center.

Something I’m still concerned, or uncertain about, is what happens when I get to the airport I’m traveling to? How am I going to know where to get fuel, or where I’m allowed to park my plane? I’m excited to get started on my cross countries. My instructor describes it as real flying. No one gets on airplanes to fly around for a little and land at the same airport. They want to go places. Cross country flying will get me ready for the rest of my career.

_ No solo today, but definitely a learning experience. After a morning full of rain and humidity, the skies opened up around 11 am, just in time for my 12:15 flight. Today’s goals were to perfect short/soft field take offs; as well as short/soft field landings. I had practiced all four of them once last semester with my last instructor, but forgot most of what you need to know in order to do the maneuver properly. Before the flight, I read up on the standard operating procedures, SOP’s, and got familiar with them

Obviously, first Drew had me practice short field takeoffs. You can’t practice landings without taking off, so I decided to do the short field first. From what I had remembered from last semester, and read in the SOP’s, they’re fun. The point of practicing a short field takeoff is because not every airport is going to have nice long, wide runways like Republic Airport has. The best way to get the most out of the plane on a short field is to line up all the way at the end of the runway.

The first step is to put flaps to 25 degrees during the pre-takeoff run-up. This allows the plane to generate lift at a slower speed. I got as close as I could to the runway threshold and lined up with the centerline. In order to get the most speed in the quickest time, you need to open the throttle while holding the brake pedals. I then fully opened the throttle so that the engine reached its’ red line rpm’s, 2700. The point of this is so that once I let go the brakes, the plane is accelerating at a greater rate than from a slow roll. As I let go the brakes, the plane jolted forward and I was at 45 knots within half a second. I checked to make sure all instruments were in the green and released the brake pedals. I called out as the airspeed came alive and waited for rotation speed. Because the runway was “short” rotation speed was 5 knots slower than normal. So once the plane reached 50 knots, not 55, I pulled back on the controls. Once wheels off ground, I lowered the nose so that the airspeed increased to 60 knots. This would have insured that I cleared any obstacle at the end of the runway, had there been one. Once over the “obstacle,” 150 AGL, I lower the nose to accelerate to 63 knots, which is Vx (Vx is the speed at which the plane will climb for the shortest horizontal distance). Upon reaching 63 knots, one notch of flaps came out and I accelerated to 79 knots, Vy (Vy is the best speed to climb so that the climb is shortest it can be in duration). Once at 79 knots, I took out the last notch of flaps and flew a normal traffic pattern.

The first landing, my instructor had me practice a normal crosswind landing (the winds were 25013G21. So they were coming out of 70degrees of runway center line at 13 knots. They were also gusting at times to 21 knots). I landed with the upwind wheel touching down first and revved up the rpm’s to start the takeoff roll again. The second landing Drew wanted me to do a short field landing. Before I start saying how they went, I’ll admit that 4 out of the 5 were real bad. I smashed the wheels down on a few of them and couldn’t hit the center line for my life. Having said that, the first one wasn’t so bad. In order to approach a short field, with an obstacle at the beginning end of the runway, you need to come in slow, 60 knots. A normal final approach speed is 65 knots. In order to come in so slow, all flaps need to be in and the nose needs to be slightly pitched up. The power is then adjusted to control the speed. The main problem I had was that the wind was knocking me around a lot. There were some attempts where I was lined up on center line, but then got blown off downwind. On another one, I had to go-around because the approach and lineup was so bad. Towards the end of the lesson, I got the hang of it. But still not to the standards that an FAA examiner would test me on.

Today, we were supposed to do four maneuvers, short field takeoffs and landings, as well as soft field takeoffs and landings. Unfortunately, because of the wind and my inexperience, we only had time for the short field maneuvers

What I Learned Today:
Landings are all about power control. Whether you’re practicing a normal approach and landing, crosswind landing, short or soft field landing, good power control is what makes the landings successful. Today, I didn’t have as good power control as I had last semester. It takes time to judge whether more or less power is needed during an approach. On some of my landing attempts, I could tell I needed more power because it looked like the ground was coming up to meet me. With more practice, I’ll get better at the landings. I think it was partially because I hadn’t gone out and done only touch and goes since last October and also partly because of the wind. I know that I have good power control; I just need to find it again.