|
|
Lesson 14: Pattern Work*** Today we went to Tracy for pattern work. Tracy is in the California Central Valley. I have a friend at work who lives one town up from Tracy; he spends half his life on the road between there and here, and back again. He should learn to fly :-). The takeoff from PAO went very well, one of my best yet. I'd eaten a large lunch; a Togo's pastrami sandwich, before coming out. Would I get sick...? On the way, he demonstrated slips. He had me take us up to 4500MSL, and pointed at a clump of trees, oh, about 25-30 degrees under the horizon. "Watch this..." The airplane leaned way over, the nose pointed THAT way, the plane went THIS way, and down.. ...steeply down. The little ball was all the way at one end. In a surprisingly short time, we were within a stone's throw of the clump of trees. Then he straightened out the airplane, pushed in the throttle ..... .....HICCCUP!.... Have you ever seen one of those movies where an airplane is in trouble? "Vrrooooom -hic-hic- Vrrooom - pop - pop - vrrroooooooom - putt-putt-putt - vrroooom". He put it on the other tank, it straightened right out. Climbed us back up to 4000 feet. Switched tanks again. "Putt-putt-hiccup!" Back to the good tank: "Vrrooooooooooooooooooooom!". Then back to the bad tank "Vrrroooooooooooooom!". "Was there any water in the tank?" "Nope, none at all". And there hadn't been, either. I may suffer overload and student paralysis and forget things in flight, but my preflights are thorough. I'm damned proud of my preflights :-). We continued on to Tracy, landed. He drained some fuel, yup, there was a bit of water there. Since there was plenty of fuel in the other tank, we continued the lesson. Take off, climb out at Vy, turn left crosswind past the runway, turn downwind, pull the power to 2000RPM, speed to 80MPH, power->1500 and carb heat abeam the numbers, turn base, turn final.... "Jerry, keep the pattern straight"..."Keep the centerline between your legs!"..."Get the speed right" "Hold it at 65!". We just went round & round, without even touching down. So you couldn't call them "touch and goes" How about "Go and Goes?" :-) The last approach came out pretty good. I used the rudder intently, just like with high-speed taxi, only in the air. The runway centerline stayed centered. We cut the lesson off and went home, because he didn't want to depend on that bad tank. Looks like he'll be draining it and blowing out the lines this weekend.... Today's lesson was the longest yet: 2.0 hours. And no, I didn't get sick ( bg ). It's funny - I thought that judging the angle to land at: when to start descending from the great height of cruising - and not overshoot the airport by miles and miles - would be the hard part about landing. But actually, that's not too bad. The traffic pattern is a recipe that virtually guarantees being in the right place at the right height and the right speed. The hard part turns out to be just following the recipe, keeping the airplane going straight, keeping the traffic pattern square, quickly attaining the appropriate speeds and trimming them out.... and not having the brain burn out from all the stuff that you have to do - and that happens so fast. - Jerry "19.4 hours" Kaidor |