Still waiting to do my last solo. What stinks is that I can’t go onto the next lesson until I fly my third and final solo. The course is designed so that stage 1 is soloing, stage 2 is cross country and stage 3 is passing the private pilot solo flight. So because I can’t do the last solo, I can’t move on to the next stage. The only reason I didn’t do it today was because the weather didn’t allow it. The skies were clear up to FL180, but the winds were strong, and gusty. There was even a low level wind shear advisory for the airport. So instead of my solo, I practiced stage 1 maneuvers with my instructors. Last time up, which was the first time in over 6 weeks, I was a bit rusty. Today, however, went much better. Also last time, I didn’t show my new instructor any ground reference maneuvers. Because he’s a new instructor for me, he needs to see where I’m at in my ability to fly an airplane. Which means that I need to show him everything I know how to do. So today I did both turns around a point, and S turns.
The flight started out good. I did a right downwind departure so I could go south, out over the ocean. Since the runway we were using today, runway 32, faces north, northwest, a downwind departure means I stay in the pattern until I’m in a downwind for the runway but continue to climb up to whatever I want. So after doing the departure, Drew gave me his foggles so I could practice instrument flight. Private pilots need a minimum of 3 hours instrument time before they can pass the FAA test to get their license. I climbed, and headed out to the Atlantic Ocean while “under the hood” (the term for wearing the foggles.) After we got to the practice grounds, about 10 minutes after takeoff, Drew had me do slow flight, which went better than last time, a power off stall and a power on stall. Since we were at 3000 feet for these maneuvers, he cut the engine so I could practice an in flight engine failure landing. When I got to 1000 feet, I leveled off so that I could do the ground reference maneuvers.
I did the circle around a point first. I picked the Jones Beach water tower and set the plane up for 90 knots, and 1000 feet. I got the weather reports so I could enter the maneuver in the downwind. After preparing the plane, I headed towards the water tower to start the maneuver. Once I was abeam the point, I banked into a steep turn because I was going with the wind. (While in the downwind, the speed is greatest. So in order to not get blown too far downwind, a steep bank allows the circle to be turned tight). I got 90 degrees through the turn and took some bank out (while in the upwind, speed is reduced due to a headwind. This means that in order to not make the turn too tight, and spiral into the reference point, bank must come out).It was when I was about halfway around the first turn when something happened. As I was looking at the tower to keep myself equidistance throughout the turn, I heard “O Shit” from my instructor. He said it loud and firm, so I snapped my head forward to be looking directly at a Cessna 172, within 100 feet of my Piper Warrior III. As my head was turning to look forward, Drew had taken the controls from me and banked the opposite direction of the turn I had been doing. He opened the throttle full and quickly sped us away from the area. It took us another 20 seconds to make visual contact with the Cessna again. He was flying low over the inner shore line. We were over the outer shoreline at this point; meaning we were almost 2 miles safely away from him.
What happened was that while I was doing my turn, the Cessna dropped right in front of us. It’s weird that it happened because the Cessna has high wings. This means they have good visuals below the aircraft, which we were. I had done my clearing turns to make sure no other planes were in the area. Later in my flight while I was on an 8 mile final, we saw the same Cessna again flying across out flight path, just below our attitude. We couldn’t ID the plane, but it wasn’t company traffic (company traffic simply means it was from the same company as me. Our company is Farmingdale Aerospace flight school. Often, when telling pilots who to follow in the traffic pattern, the tower controller will tell us to “follow company traffic 2 miles ahead.” That means that we’re following another Farmingdale airplane who is 2 miles ahead of me.)
The close call was the closest I’ve been to another airplane while flying since I began my flying career five months ago.
What I Learned Today:
Make sure to do clearing turns before every maneuver. Even though I did both of mine, the other pilot seems to not have done his clearing turns; or he /she might have lost their bearings. Either way, it’s imperative to know where you are at all times, and who or what is around you. This is called situational awareness.
