|
|
Jerry's 39th Lesson: Whoosh!Today's lesson was an afternoon one - wind at PAO was 15 knots gusting to 20, but it was almost straight down the runway. I did the whole preflight except for the tiedowns - figured I'd untie them when my instructor arrived, and meanwhile the airplane wouldn't take off without me :-). My instructor met me on the ramp on his bicycle. He asked me what the winds were, I told him. Left it up to him as to whether we would go. "We'll give it a try, it's almost straight down the runway. You go start the airplane up, I'll drop my bike off at the hangar" "Start it alone?!?" "Sure!" So I had the thrill of sitting in the airplane, running through the pre-start checklist, starting the engine, and getting the ATIS *alone*. A small thing, to be sure, but I'm easily amused :-). He strolled up shortly, walked around BEHIND the airplane, and got in. The airplane was facing right into the setting sun, and the idling propeller chopped it into bright flashes. They made interesting patterns when I closed my eyes. That ole windsock was just standing at attention. Shortly after taking off, he asked me: "Are we still on the centerline?".... Oh no, we were wayyyy off! I crabbed into the wind to get us back on, or at least, no further off. The C120 has no rear windows; basically, if you want to see behind, you do S-turns. How come airplanes don't have rear-view mirrors? Flying across the Bay, I lost over two hundred feet while I fiddled with the radios. Drat! Thought I'd learned better! Out at HWD it was just as windy as at PAO. Damn! He judged that there was too much wind to slip all the way down, and had me crabbing until just over the blast fence. Then I'd kick the crab out and one-wing-low-it down into the flare. There was a lot of wind fighting to be done. Another problem was that the headwind rendered the VASI meaningless. On a normal day, our glideslope tends to be shallower than the VASI, but today it was considerably steeper. It was good exercise for a skill I've been trying to develop - that of seeing where you're going, in terms of slope, by seeing which spot on the runway isn't moving in the windshield. Langewiesche describes it so well - and today it was finally coming together as per his description. A couple of my landings were pretty good, and none of them were all that bad - although I still tended to flare high. And my takeoffs were coming out squirrely in that crosswind. And I was climbing at 80MPH instead of 70. And.... He even had to give a lecture on how to hold the yoke: "Hold it at the sides, not on top! On top you don't have the leverage to do a quick aileron correction". "Should I hold it at these spots where the paint is rubbed off?" At one point, a gigantic World War II bomber landed on the other runway; unfortunately, I was too busy flying the #@$% plane to ogle it properly. He cut the lesson short - said I was just having to work too hard fighting the wind, since it was strong AND gusty AND blowing partly across the runway. And what he really wanted me to work on, was the flare. - Jerry "55.3 Hours" Kaidor |