Dan’s Pilot Times

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.

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.