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My Sixth Lesson: Emergency Engine-out ProceduresIt had been raining yesterday, and today dawned with with low, dark clouds. Would we be able to fly? I used my new DUATS access to get the local weather reports, they promised VFR conditions in the afternoon. Sure enough, there were 3000-foot ceilings this afternoon, the sky was about half clear, but decorated with a cornucopia of clouds - cirrus clouds, cumulus clouds, stratus clouds, they were all there. It was a simply awesome sky.Got to the airport, my instructor was already there. I preflighted the airplane, we taxied to the active runway without incident. He let me try to take off again, I muffed it again. This time, I'd tried to steer with the ailerons before the airplane had quite taken off. So we bounced on the runway a few times. Oops. It had been four days since I last drove an airplane, it took a few minutes to figure out how to coordinate again. One nice thing about being a real beginner, is that even getting out to the practice area is worthwhile practice. On the way out, we practiced ascents, descents, and standard-rate turns. Once there, we tried something new: slow flight. With his patient instruction, I soon had the airplane mushing along at 50 miles an hour, about 5 above stall speed. The next new thing: engine-out procedures. He talked me through the checklist: establish a best-rate glide, find a landing spot, turn towards it, then do an "L" check: the bottom of the "L" was the Fuel selector ( "Even if it's right, change it anyway: there might be a blockage in the line from just one tank" ) - carb heat on, mixture rich, throttle in the proper place, master? mags? I suppose on some planes you check circuit breakers, but this one has none that would affect the engine. We did some steep turns, some power-off stalls, some standard -rate turns. Just one of my steep turns was rewarded with that *bump* that meant I'd kept the altitude just right. At one point, we saw another airplane way down below us. He was flying - must have been just a few hundred feet above the green hills. Then we headed back to the airport. On the way out, we practiced some more steep turns, and an engine-out procedure. Yes, he'd turned off the gas. :-) We flew across the Bay, I got us into the pattern, he landed us. After these few lessons, I can really appreciate how he handles the plane. No fuss, no muss, he just points it where he wants to go, and it goes there. That's what I want! Possibly the most notable event of this flight was what _didn't_ happen: I didn't get sick! Not even a bit! As far as the quease factor was concerned, I might just as well have been sitting home reading a book. - Jerry "7.6 Hours" Kaidor
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