Monday, June 05, 2006

Off we go !!!

After a rainy saturday I had my eyes on the weather report since Sun morning. I am glad I had my lesson in the evening as the weather was getting better by the hour. By the time I got to the airport the clouds were broken at 048 and overcast at 060.

This time around I called up my instructor and he picked me up. So I got to the airport a bit early. I checked out the aircraft and started the preflight. I think I am getting better at the preflight. My instructor joined me towards the end and asked me a couple of questions to verify that I had done a proper job.

With engines running my instructor asked me to call up ground. I must say I did a pretty good job handling the radios and at the end got the compliment from the instructor about it :) (too bad the caldwell liveatc.net feed has been down otherwise I would have saved a recording, well some other time!!).

So we taxiied to the runway and I guess all the taxiing practice on saturday paid off as I was a bit better (though still a long way to go). Holding short, did engine run-up, called up tower and off we went.

Entering the practice area my instructor showed me some basic manuvers, straight and level flight, descending turns, etc and asked me to do them. Sometimes I did good, sometimes not so good. Two things I have to remember are:

a) Pitch, power trim
b) step on the ball

I also have to get comfortable with managing my time looking outside and at the same time making sure I am aware of the gauges. I think I am spending too much time outside and not monitoring the instruments enough. Also I need to stay ahead of the plane. Yesterday I felt as if I was reacting to the plane. So a lot of lessons learnt.

After an hour of so, we headed back to the airport. On the way back we encountered some confusion with the ATC as another aircraft in the area apparently reported his position wrong and the ATC thought he was very near to us. That made me realize how important it is to know where you are and what all traffic is around you. It is sooo easy to get lost up there. Well, once I am more comfortable flying I guess I'll work on the situational awareness aspect of it.

The landing was uneventful and 1.2 hours after the preflight we were back at the ramp. All in all a good day. Next lesson is fri and the instructor is going to show me some new manuvers and of course I'll practice the old ones.

Hoping for blue skies this friday, till then njoy !!!

Dual FT: 1.2

2 comments:

Prabhakar Karve said...

Hi amod
it was v.nice to know that ur learning with ur eyes open and i am sure u will get full control in a v.short time.Remember always slow and steady wins the race.thnx for posting ur experience in this blog,now i feel as if i am there & can see how u operate all instruments inside ,really thanx and all the best

Flyinkiwi said...

Hi Amod,

Spending more time with eyes outside is a good habit, not a bad one. You'll eventually learn that by looking at your nose attitude in reference to the horizon you can determine whether your turns are coordinated or not so you won't even need to look at your instruments except to backup what you see outside.