Diary of a Private Pilot

Went to the airport first thing this morning to catch up on my instrument currency in the club’s Frasca 142. Two point three hours later my currency is extended 6 months:

1. Montgomery Field to Brown Field, VOR approach and full missed approach
2. LOC approach at Gillispie, usual missed approach (as opposed to the published)
3. VOR approach at Oceanside, including extra holds, full missed approach
4. ILS approach at Carlsbad
5. VOR approach to Brown Field, partial panel to missed approach
6. LOC approach to Montgomery Field and full stop landing

Quite a work out but the good news was that my skill and knowledge were still pretty sharp, didn’t make very many mistakes (well, that my CFII caught!). I’m now all caught up except for night currency which will come this week or next depending on the weather.

In my younger days as a latin dance competitor, being grounded was a great thing, it’s one of things to be striven for, but in flying it’s not such a good thing. Well, it’s not good at all, actually.

My flying club requires an annual flight review to remain current in the scheduling system and my club review expires at the end of this month. No big deal but a couple of week’s ago I had a little tender surgery that has left me very not wanting, or able, to sit in a plane. I had to cancel the flight portion of my review (but did get the groundschool taken care of) and now just as I feel that I might be ready again, I am off to Alaska for two weeks. Then, when I get back, my CFI is in Italy so currently my flight review is scheduled for Sept 20th which seems a long time away. It’s possible that I might find someone else, especially as it seems like a good idea to have someone else criticize my flying for a change.

Looking forward to Alaska. On the advice of my CFI I have a ride booked to fly around Denali and then land on the Ruth Glacier. My CFI says that because you take off downhill, you get to watch the VSI show a descent even while climbing off the ground. Cool.

Yes, I passed with a 91%!! Many questions I had not seen during my practice runs so I was anticipating a mid-80s score when I walked out, so I’m pretty happy. I had 9 subject codes on the sheet:

• A20 Part 61 Certification - can only think of a SIC question but surely I got that right?
• H912 Aerodynamics Forces Acting on a Plane - can only think this was about ground effect
• H928 Powerplant - possibly to do with the geometric pitch of the prop
• H948 Performance Charts - ack, what a waste, they should be easy!
• H989 Radio Navigation - bet that was an HSI question
• I22 Atmospheric Pressure - probably a density altitude question, I forgot the formula
• I31 Common IFR Producers - damn advection fog question grrr
• I32 High Altitude Weather - jet stream question, I knew where it was but not if it was weaker or stronger
• J29 Potential Flight Hazards

All my pre-reqs are complete save for the most important one - flying to PTS standards.

One more practice over lunch today and then time for the real thing at 1pm tomorrow. Look for my score (if its not embarrassingly low) in the next post.

I’m still doing my near-daily practice tests over lunch, had a couple of 96% scores and most recently settled in the high 80s so I think I am ready. Just need to find the time to get to the test centre. Things that always stump me, no matter how much I try to remember:

• location and effect of the jet stream in summer
• glider towing currency requirements
• fog types and effects

In some good news, some stock options I had in my previous company are being purchased and are enough to pay off my current car loan, thereby opening up the possibility of a few hours of extra flight time each month.

If you’re looking for a little reading this afternoon, we highly recommend the following:

• Head over to Krista’s blog and congratulate her on becoming a pilot.
• Read this account of how good training overcame a stuck right throttle somewhere over FL.

Not much to report here. I’ve scheduled a couple of bookings, one this week for currency, and then a weekend in April for us to go somewhere (maybe Big Bear). Also talking to Bob about getting checked out in the club’s 210 so I can take it on a trip to Albuquerque.

Extended my instrument currency this morning for another few months with an hour and a half ‘mucking about’ in the sim with my CFI. The club is sharing a Frasca 42 with the Anglo American flight school at KSEE so I got to see a different airport than usual. Rather than blaze through the usual route I wanted something a bit different today, loosen up some cobwebs:

• VOR approach to KSDM usual take off from KMYF, vectors to the approach down to Brown Field. The sim has an HSI so I got my second look at those, I like ‘em.
• DME arc off PGY VOR haven’t done a DME arc since the checkride but, other than forgetting to turn 90 degrees when I reached 6.5 miles, it went very well. Bob had set up a 17kt wind from the west so there was some work to do in keeping close to the 6 mile radius.
• Holds at RYADH intersection exited the DME arc on a straight shot to the fix. I got there so fast that I hadn’t yet looked at my entry procedure. Fortunately its an obvious parallel entry so I turned in the outbound direction and reminded myself how I needed to turn back in. The HSI seemed to make this much easier than usual. The holds went great excepting a little timer issues thanks to the westerly wind pushing me further out on the outbound leg each time.
• LOC approach to KSEE partial panel Bob moved me to a position close to the approach and then failed the attitude indicator and DG. A few compass turns (always takes me a moment to remember to fly in the ‘opposite’ direction) and then vectors to the approach. I was doing a pretty lousy job and then it got a lot worse - you really need two navs to identify the timing point for the missed approach but the HSI was inop due to the partial panel so I only had one. This meant I had to keep flip flopping the nav frequency to check my position and in doing so my speed went up, my altitude went crazy and so on. I did manage to do a reasonable track of the localizer but I went past the airport before the timer went off.
• LOC approach to KSEE back around for another go but full panel, much better this time, timer went off almost exactly over the field. I wasn’t able to maintain 90 kts but adjusted the time based on the ‘average’ 110kts I was actually doing.
• ILS approach to KMYF partial panel a climbing turn out of KSEE and my panel failed again. I got established on the localizer but was having a lot of trouble losing altitude. 1100 rpm and 100 knots and I was still only getting 400fpm. So I was high most of the way down the slope, weaving in and out chasing the needle. Popped out of the clouds with the runway a little off to the left but thanks to some odd graphics on the screen I actually landed on a taxiway.

All in all a good workout and dusting off of some rusty skills. Now to get some flying in the real thing… time to find a safety pilot for the Archer….

Still taking daily practice tests and got my first 90+ score today which was most excellent! If I can get a few more over 90 then I will schedule the real thing. Right now my likely score is anywhere between 80 and 95 depending on the mix of questions. For instance, the following subjects just will not get square in my head:

1. anything to do with an RMI
2. anything to do with postive/negative static/dynamic stability
3. the jet stream and where it is and what its doing

and those aren’t the only ones. A score in the mid-80s would be nothing to be ashamed of but I’ll give it another week or two of training to see if I can’t nudge that up.

Checkride stories are always good to read and, although brief, Mike’s description of his Commercial checkride is no exception. Go check it out.

Last night saw the completion of all my COM rating pre-requisites (except the written test) with a night dual flight to Camarillo, a little north north west of LA.

It started off worryingly by finding that the DG had been sqawked inop a couple of days ago but my instructor had flown it earlier in the day and said it was fine. Everything else in the Archer looked good so we strapped ourselves in and got underway. This was my first time flying this particular Archer but it felt just like the other one I have flown. One cool thing about this Archer is that it has an HSI and I had never flown with one of those before.

After making our turn towards Oceanside I gave up fighting the electric trim which just did not seem to be working and used the manual wheel between the seats. Its a little too far back for my taste, especially with a passenger in the right seat; good job we are friends is all I can say. I hadn’t used the autopilot before but figured I’d make this trip as easy as possible, switched it on, coupled it to the heading bug on the HSI and let it do all the work. The air was quite smooth and once trimmed the plane pretty much kept to my desired altitude.

We had asked for the Shoreline Route through the LAX Class Bravo which can be hard to get but the alternative was the Hollywood Route at a further 2000 feet up. At Seal Beach VOR we were cleared through the Bravo via the shoreline route but were quickly given direct LAX, an outbound heading and a descent. Halfway to LAX we were given direct Santa Monica and a further descent. I hadn’t been prepared to use SMO and had to look it up on the chart - head down on a chart 4500 feet above LAX is not something I enjoy. Once past the Class B I headed direct to Camarillo VOR and landed straight-in 26.

On the ground we asked the tower for the Hawthorne Radio frequency to close our flight plan and the guy said he would close it for us. As we taxied back to the runway he asked if we’d like him to open our return flight plan once off the ground - what a great controller! We did a brief runup at the runup area and I used the opportunity to retrieve three pens that had rolled on to the floor during the flight. Then we were off again, left downwind departure back towards Van Nuys VOR for the Shoreline route back south.

When Pt Mugu approach handed us to the first SoCal controller the frequency was crazy busy, it seemed like forever before I could get on the frequency. Our route had us heading east until we picked up the 323 radial from LAX but we couldn’t do that until we had a clearance. I waited and waited and waited…. then we got a quick turn to the south east, and then another. My instructor was watching his GPS anxiously as we headed for the Class B above the floor at that location. Every time the controller started with “Cherokee …” but with some other tail number he’d fidget nervously. We slowed to 90 knots to give us more time and got ready to descend. About 2 miles from the boundary we were turned back to the north east. After a little while the controller apologized for all the turns and said that if we still knew where we were what did we want to do. I said we’d like the Shoreline Route and he gave us a turn and a direct LAX, own navigation thereafter.

The sight of all the planes lined up for LAX was quite a sight, lots of twinkling stars in the sky to the east. After LAX we were cleared all the way to Montgomery Field own navigation and any altitude. The headwinds had been stronger than forecast so once we were past Oceanside VOR we descended fast to try to make up some time. The tower had already closed so I had the odd pleasure of making position calls on the tower frequency. I had tuned the HSI to the ILS as I was curious to see it in operation but a little too much looking at it from downwind to base left me quite high on final. We landed long on the runway and had to use the last taxiway but it was never in doubt (at least in my mind!). We taxied back to parking, put the plane to bed and arranged a sim session for next month in the club’s Frasca. I’ll renew my holds currency and I want to do some DME arcs, partial panel etc.

Messing with some $$$ figures this weekend, the possibility of completing my Commercial came up so I thought I would check on what I still need to do (other than the not insignificant task of being up to PTS standards!).

• 250 hours of flight time… done
• 10 hours of instrument training… done
• 10 hours of complex training… done
• day VFR dual flight… done
• night VFR dual flight… to do
• solo day VFR flight… done
• 5 hours solo night VFR… done (9.1 hrs)
• 10 night takeoffs and landings at a controlled field… done (19)
• written exam… done, but expired

If I can get my CFI to do the night flight in the next few weeks, I might schedule a weekend course with Sheble Aviation in the summer and try to do it that way. I know a few people who have done many ratings with them and I hear nothing but good things about them.

On a final note, you may have noticed a change in how the blog looks. I’ve added some personal images to the header and will be changing the sidebar over this week. I really hated that dreary grey I had before.