@ MJ!!!
Day 15 - Monday 24 November
Arrived this morning to find the Arrow back on the line, with two new tyres. (And four new brake pads, too!)
Just one flight today, but it was a much longer flight than normal. The aim was to finish everything on the syllabus which we still needed to do, and I think we were pretty successful. But for me, the best bit was that I have finally completed a navigation exercise which I was happy with!
The navigation was to yet another private strip - this time it was Lykes Brighton, just to the west of Lake Okeechobee. I did my gross error check, set my heading, got a traffic advisory service from Miami Centre, ran through all the other checks I needed to run through, and waited for the 1/4-way point to arrive. Part of the route was parallel to a road, so I could see we were roughly on track. The 1/4-way point was adjacent to a corner in the canal system, and sure enough the corner was just off my left wingtip exactly on time. It seemed a little closer than I expeted, so I made some small heading corrections. We passed a large mound a little before the half-way point slightly early, and since there was no way of identifying the half-way point I used this mound to adjust my ETA slightly. I cancelled the radar service when we reached Miami's radio blackspot (the one I discovered a couple of weeks ago), and called up Okeechobee to let them know I'd be overflying their airfield. Okeechobee appeared exactly where it was supposed to, and then there weren't very many more features, except for some canals, until the destination. The vis was good enough to be able to see the canal all the way into the distance, and spot a junction which was roughly abeam my destination, so I had plenty of time to find the strip - but I still didn't see it. But I had positively identified two roads and a canal, so when the stopwatch said that we were there I knew we were in the right place. I circled twice, and then saw the grass strip - my first VFR navigation using this technique which has gone exactly according to plan!
The diversion was interesting. My passenger wanted to go to another private airfield to the east of Lake Okeechobee. The direct route would take us right over the lake - something I wasn't going to do without survival equipment. (The locals here don't like flying over the lake even when they have life-jackets and so on. The chances of becoming crocodile-dinner if the engine quits are a little too high!) So it would have to be a two-leg diversion, first of all to the northern corner of the lake, and then turning en-route.
I put the foggles on and did the necessary checks. My first position fix showed me being slightly right of track, which I corrected for, and my second position fix showed me being back on track, so I took half of the correction out. I had set the second OBS to the radial at which I would need to turn. I got another position fix, which showed me being a couple of miles from my turning point... but both the stopwatch and the OBS told me I was there already. Two against one - I figured that the position fix was wrong, since both the stopwatch and the OBS were contradicting it. I turned onto the second leg, got several more position fixes, and "popped out of the cloud" with the airifled about a mile in front of me, just off to the right of the nose!
I later asked my instructor why my position fix appeared wrong. He told me that it wasn't wrong - but that it took me a minute to plot it, and in that minutes we'd travelled two miles. In future, when I plot a position fix, I must say to my passenger (as well as myself) that "this is where we were a minute ago" (or two minutes ago, or whatever), rather than "this is where we are". And that really was the only thing wrong with the whole navigation. I am extremely happy about that - I just hope it goes this well on the test!
We still hadn't done any stalls in the Arrow, so that was the next thing on the agenda. The clean stall was very easy - the standard technique, with the standard recovery - the only difference being to remember to fine the prop below 100kts. The other two (incipient) stalls were a little bit tricky. Not the stalls themselves - entering the incipient stall and recovering from it are standard, and not difficult. But the procedure for entering the stall is a little more complex than on the Cessna, since you have to integrate the lowering of the gear and flaps, and the fining of the prop, into the lookout and the stall entry. There really isn't anything hard here, it's just a case of remembering which levers to pull, how far to pull them, and in what order. After two or three goes they were acceptable - not perfect, but with a bit of thought put into it away from the aeroplane they will be fine.
The rest of the lesson was a recap of things like steep turns, just to make sure I'm happy with all the general handling. And then I had an engine fire.
I quickly pitched for 80kts, nearly but not quite forgot to coarsen the prop, and shut the engine down. The fire hadn't gone out, so I entered an emergency descent. During the emergency descent, one large green field to the north stood out as an emergency landing sight, so after the fire went out and I'd set up Vg and re-coarsened the prop, I planned the approach to that field. I was too low to make the high-key point, but if I flew straight across the field I should reach the low-key point at around 1500'. That worked out pretty well, and I turned downwind and then base. I had turned base too early - I knew it, and my instructor knew it. I had the option of S-turns, flaps and gear to get the Arrow down... but the field I had picked was right in the middle of the green bit, so the easiest thing to do was to re-plan, and head for the next field instead. I overflew the edge of the field at exactly the right height to flare for a wheels-down forced landing (wheels down to help get me down quicker, and also because the field was long enough that I wasn't worried about going off the end), and then went around. During the de-brief, my instructor told me what I already - that my choice of field was what made the PFL easy, because I've finally learnt to fly towards the biggest greenest area I can see! This is the first time that I've chosen the field that he had in mind when he pulled the power on me.
We headed back for a couple of circuits, which were ok but not fantastic. On the last one, we were downwind for runway 9, when my instructor contacted ATC and asked for a short approach (i.e. glide approach) to runway 14. We were given permission to do that, cutting in front of the traffic on base for runway 9. I had one of those incidents where you hear what you expect to hear, rather than what is actually said, and when my instructor cut the power I began to position for the threshold of runway 9. Oops! Once my instructor realised what I was doing, and pointed out my mistake, I repositioned (and my instructor very kindly gave me a short burst of power, since I had been planning the descent for the wrong place!) and landed safely on 14. But there were two lessons. Number one - if the instructor or examiner asks ATC for something, listen to what he's saying! And number two - if you're downwind for runway 9, and you have a
real engine failure, you're not commited to runway 9 - runway 14 may be the better option!
I felt pretty good about today's flight. I don't feel ready for the test, but I feel good. My instructor disagrees, though - he thinks I'm ready. Tomorrow morning, I'm doing the practice test. Keygrip will be my examiner for the real test (so I'll remember to bring my sunglasses!) and he's free to do that either on Wednesday, or, if I need to brush up on anything after the practice test, the real test will be on Thursday. That's weather-permitting, of course - there's a little bit of weather forecast for Wednesday - it looks like it won't be bad enough to cause me any trouble, but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed!
FFF
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