Dan’s Pilot Times

One of the first questions I’ve gotten when I’ve told people I’m taking flying lessons is some variation of them asking: “is it safe?” Or, the statement I’m sure most pilots get frequently: “I’m never getting into one of those planes, they are so unsafe“. My wife still vows to never fly with me (although she’s already buckling I can tell). Naturally, I’ve personally felt that general aviation planes are safe (otherwise the government wouldn’t allow us to fly), but I also love to prove people wrong and I knew there must be data to back me up. Thankfully the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) keeps incredibly detailed records about every aviation accident - big and small, fatal and non-fatal.

The AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) Air Safety Foundation prepares an annual summary report of this data from the NTSB - called the “Nall Report”. The most recent Nall Report shows that general aviation is the safest it has been in its history. In an estimated 24+ million flight hours in 2006, there was 1,319 total accidents, 273 of those being fatal accidents. I found this statistic to be very telling in that only 1 in 5 aviation accidents are fatal (much less than what my friends/family seem to think). To put that into perspective, that means for every 100,000 hours of general aviation flight time, there are approximately 6.32 accidents (and only 1.26 being fatal).

For the heck of it, I took this summary stat one step further and translated it to 1 accident per every 15,823 flight hours, or 1 fatal accident per 79,365 flight hours. In realistic terms (albeit hypothetical), if I flew 2 hours a day, every day for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t statistically have a fatal accident for 108 years! I think I’m comfortable flying! (Note - I KNOW this is NOT a statistically sound way of evaluating this data, but I like fun-with-numbers.)

The report has a ton of other great information and I highly recommend reading it. The ASF has other great articles and reports well worth reading as well.

My CFI had been nice enough to let me use one his extra headsets for my first couple of lessons (I hear stories of some CFI’s and FBO’s even charging rental fees for sets). However, I knew I’d eventually have to get one of my own. Me being me, I had to research the crap out of headsets and find the “best bang for the buck”…my usual mantra. Of course, I picked the brain of my CFI and got some general thoughts on what to look for in a headset: comfort, comfort, comfort, noise reduction, and reliability. I heard wonderful things about the Active Noise Reduction (ANR) headsets, but they start at around $400 (and go up to $1,000+) and I knew that was simply out of my price range. Furthermore, eventually this first headset would become my passenger set (hopefully years down the road), so I didn’t want to break the bank on something I have no experience with before.

Therefore, I quickly decided a passive set (PNR) was the way to go for me. I found a neat little headset comparison tool on MyPilotStore.com which I found useful to compare general features. I checked the manufacturer websites as well. My CFI mentioned that Flightcom made good quality sets that rivaled David Clarks (the apparent Lexus of headsets). The DC’s come very highly recommended all over the net, but they are a little too pricey for my first set. That being said, I knew one of the three Flightcom models would work. I settled on the middle of the road model, the Flightcom 4DLX. It had good padding, good all-around features, and didn’t break the bank. Actually, the LC Flight Shop had the lowest prices I could find on the net (barring used sets on Ebay).

The 4DLX does provide great ear protection and is pretty darn comfortable. Though, I do have to admit it starts to pinch my head a little after an hour or so (but maybe I need to re-adjust it a bit). The fact all passive headsets seal around your ear by a clamping action leads me to believe this isn’t anything out of the ordinary. What does slightly worry me is that the microphone seems to need a loud voice to register (although my CFI mentions the pilot side mic jack in the plane we use has always been finicky…so I don’t know if the problem is the jack or the headset…only testing in another plane will tell). I should probably do that before the 30-day money back guarantee is up!!

Anyways, I’m fairly happy with my purchase though and I must admit this makes me feel more like a “real” pilot!

This Sunday I had yet another lesson of mostly takeoffs and landings. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and we’re finally starting to change into Spring around Chicago (it’s about time). I had my “alternate” CFI again, although I probably shouldn’t call him my alternate any longer since I’ve had 3 of my 8 lessons with him. Anyways, we decided to head over to Burlington (BUU) airport to practice. It was nice to go somewhere moderately far (although I think it’s only about 20 miles away). My CFI had me running the radios mostly, which was a bit intimidating, especially since Burlington is much busier than Westosha. Burlington has a much wider runway than Westosha (seems twice as wide) and I thought I’d nail some landings that day there, but I never got one quite perfect. My CFI said I’m progressing fine, but I still wasn’t thrilled. After about 7 landings, we headed back to Westosha.

My CFI taught me a lot of the visual cues to navigate back and forth from Westosha, along with an introduction to radio navigation. Back at Westosha, I attempted 4 more landings. We had a slight crosswind, and I got only one perfect (but I think it was just luck). I had one go-around as well (the wind and the plane were just not cooperating). We also worked on forward slips, a technique to get the plane down in altitude fast without raising the air speed (so you can still land the plane). Slips are pretty neat, it’s like skidding through the air down towards the runway (see the attached animated picture). Anyways, like my early lessons, this lesson threw a lot of new stuff at me in a short time period.

This lesson I logged 1.9 hours of flight time.

It seemed like forever since my last lesson (last Thursday) and it was great to get back into the air.  My usual CFI doesn’t work on Sundays and I flew with the same CFI I had last lesson.  He’s another great instructor and it was nice to work with him again.  The weather was nice today compared to the rain we had we had all week,  but still chilly for April (only about 40° F) and decent winds with gusts of almost 20mph.  All-in-all quite manageable and kept traffic down to nothing (which was nice).

After taking off we headed to the usual practice area (within sight of Lake Geneva) and reviewed ground reference maneuvers (which I started on my Fourth Lesson).  Some turns around points and s-turns helped me gain more understanding of how wind effects everything.  These maneuvers are also required for the practical FAA test.  I’ll be practicing these much more once I’m soloing, but for now my CFI was satisfied I understand them and can manage on my own.

We then headed back to Westosha and worked on landings again.  I’m getting more and more the hang and feel of the proper glide slope and the last “flare” before landing.  Working the pattern is becoming second nature, and I’m getting the “normal” power and flap settings ingrained in my head as well.  Due to the wind some of my landings were a little bumpy, but nothing horrible.  We practiced a go-around also (admittedly out of necessity because the wind really took us off centerline).

All-in-all another tremendously fun lesson.  I logged 1.8 hours of flight time this lesson (my longest flight yet).

My usual CFI had to go out of town this week to ferry a plane, but luckily another CFI at Westosha was able to meet and have a lesson with me. Yesterday’s weather was threatening rain all day, and of course once I got to the airport it started raining lightly. That being said, there wasn’t much wind at the surface, which made it still okay to practice landings. The clouds were right at about 2000 ft and if we were doing anything other than staying in the pattern, we probably would have had to scrub the flight. As such, we worked solely on takeoffs and landings again…which was fine by me.

Our plane also had new brakes put on, so even before we took off, we had to “break in” these new brakes. Fortunately, this meant we could also practice aborted takeoffs. We basically throttled up and proceeded halfway down the runway, aborted, pulled back the throttle and slammed on the breaks. Not terribly exciting, and something not a lot of student pilots practice, but I’m glad I got the opportunity.

The takeoffs and landings weren’t very exciting either, just the usual stuff. I’m starting to get the whole routine down, although I’m still not 100% on it, especially with the final turn to line up the landing. I’ll hopefully get it nailed by my next lesson (maybe tomorrow if a plane opens up).

I logged 0.9 hours of flight time this lesson.

I realized last night that I never realized wrote about my first flight in a general aviation aircraft, my “Discovery Flight.” As I mention on my About Dan page, after moving out to Volo, Illinois this past year, and working in Lake Forest, I drive down Route 120 every day from work. Along this drive, in Grayslake, there is “Campbell Airport” (C81). I would see the sign for this strip every day and eventually I had to Google it to learn more about it. They have a nice little website which advertises their $59 “Discovery Flight“. For $59, it was worth a shot…I booked it.

I get to Campbell airport early on a Saturday morning in February 2008 and was surprised at how “small” things seemed. (Comparing that to my cozy Westosha airport now, Campbell is pretty bustling.) Anyways, I meet my pilot for the day (a CFI) there and we preflight a Piper Warrior (here’s a pic of a Piper Warrior - not the one we flew though). He was very nice in showing me (almost a pre-lesson) how to generally pre-flight a plane. We jump in and he tells me about how the flight will go and that, if I was interested (which of course I was), I could handle most of the controls and definitely follow along at all times.

We take off (I did the pull up) and I was hooked…I KNEW I had to continue learning how to fly somehow. Anyways, we putzed around for about 30 minutes in the sky, even flew right over my new home. It was very cool. I would highly recommend anyone even remotely interested in aviation (regardless if you want to become a pilot) to take advantage of these “Discovery Flights” at most local airports…they are just a blast!

Well, I realize this story wasn’t as amazing as I thought it would be, but I think it’s important to share all my experiences about this great journey I’ve undertaken. Hopefully I’ll have a lesson tonight (if the weather cooperates)…and hopefully Saturday morning too! Will write then.

This morning, in lesson #5, we focused on takeoffs and landings. My CFI is also starting to not talk as we go through things, letting me fully control and decide upon controls. It’s exciting and kinda’ scary to know I’m basically totally controlling the plane (he even keeps his hands off the controls most of the time).  I also started calling out the radio announcements,  like “Westosha Traffic, Cessna 920, Departing Runway 3, Remaining in Pattern”…I felt more and more like a real pilot today.

There was a slight (roughly 9 mph) crosswind on the 3/21 paved runway at Westosha, so we tried a few crosswind landings and takeoffs. Because the turf runway is almost perpendicular to the paved one, we also practiced short field landings and takeoffs on the turf. This was particularly challenging as we even shortened the turf runway further (to about 1/3) because there was a little snow on the crossing between the runways. The turf is surprisingly bumpy and swampy because of all the melted snow…it really felt like “bush flying.” However, after a bunch of those takeoffs and landings, running on the pavement was a breeze!

Obviously we also worked on the climb-outs and approaches, as well as general pattern/traffic flying. There is a LOT to remember and control for…it definitely felt like another sub-par performance by me, but my CFI keeps telling me I’m way ahead of the curve. I trust him and I know with each and every repetition of these maneuvers it becomes more easy and second-nature. It’s just tooo fun!

This lesson I logged 1.2 hours.

I’m told that wind can make flying a very difficult experience. I quickly learned yesterday during my fourth lesson how true that is! There were steady west winds of 20+ mph during my entire flight experience. Besides the challenge of the wind, we worked on some pretty complicated stuff (or at least seemed complicated to me at this point). By the end of my lesson, my head was spinning for a variety of reasons:

1) We worked more on stalls and recovery procedures. This time my CFI had me stall the plane in various situations (power on, power off, while banking) and recover quickly. Luckily, the plane literally DOES indeed want to fly itself and making the corrections came very natural to me (they are all pretty logical anyways) and the plane reacts fine. However, going up and down in altitude as frequently as we did did twinge my stomach of steel even.

2) My CFI demonstrated a spin/spiral and how to recover. Thankfully, I’LL hopefully never be forced into this situation, but my CFI urged me to experience it (even though it’s not necessary). I must admit, heading straight for the ground and spinning (although I knew I was safe and it was indeed thrilling) is not really fun. I’m glad my CFI had the controls and literally had to work to get the plane to do something this unnatural. I’m always glad to see how much the plane wants to fly straight and normal.

3) S-Turns and Ground Reference Maneuvers. These aren’t normally that difficult, but the winds make it really “fun”. Lots of extra compensating to keep the plane from drifting and going off course.

4) Finally, we had to land in a strong crosswind. This is the “most difficult thing to do in flying” and I guess I did pretty good. Obviously my CFI helped me a ton (honestly, I think he landed)…but seeing the amount of extra that goes into a crosswind landing definitely makes me want to review a few chapters in my reference book again!

Needless to say, this was a very busy and complicated lesson and when we landed I had a LOT to think about and process. I AM excited to get back in the air on Saturday though (if the weather plays nice).

This lesson I logged 1.4 hours of flight time.

So my CFI calls me right before dinner to let me know his “airplane ferrying” gig fell through this week. Bad news for him, great news for me! So, we’re booked to fly tomorrow (Tuesday) after work, I’m psyched! I tell ya, after getting my Medical Certificate today, all I have been thinking about is flying.

I think I’m gonna’ hit the Gleim Reference book and start reading about navigating. I’ll probably also review the section on stalls since I know we’ll be working on that again. Goodnight!

Before you can fly solo (as a student) you need to be examined by a physician certified by the FAA. My CFI mentioned that I would probably want to get this sooner rather than later so my not having it wouldn’t be a hindrance when I was ready to fly solo. After checking the FAA website and starting the appropriate forms, I called my local AME (Aviation Medical Examiner) and he had an opening the same afternoon! I made the appointment, went, and passed with “flying colors” today.

Basically the doctor just checked my eyes, made sure I wasn’t color-blind (which I’m not), and made me pee in a cup. Apparently I’m clean and have adequate eyesight. My blood pressure was a little elevated, but I’m always nervous in doctor offices. He said I was still in the normal range. My new Medical Certificate Third Class and Student Pilot Certificate also doubles basically and officially as my “learners permit” for flying. I must admit it was nice NOT to having to go to some governmental agency and stand in line for hours to get this!

Anyways, I’m one step closer to becoming a licensed pilot! My next planned lesson is Saturday, but I’m going to try to see if another CFI at my airport is available tomorrow afternoon for a lesson. I doubt it, but I’m itching to fly!