My first lesson back had an inauspicious start: during my initial call to the tower, I got a little mixed up. It sounded something like this: “Ann Arbor ground, Cessna 222 Uniform Mike is at the northwest tees with information yankee, ready to … um … go to the runway?” That’s right, I forgot the word “taxi.”

After my instructor, Will, stopped laughing, we proceeded to taxi and take off, and things got a lot better from there. My worries of getting rusty weren’t realized, and after we spent some time in the practice area, we came back to the airport and things were going great. There was a light wind right down the runway, and I had a smooth, stabilized approach. I felt in control, and when the wheels touched down, I was genuinely surprised by how smooth it was. I think I said something like “hey, look at that,” but the highlight was when calm, unfazeable Will pronounced, “That was a damn good landing.” I grinned and wanted to soak it in, but had to immediately move on to the takeoff (we were going around for more touch-and-gos): flaps up, carb heat off, and full throttle. I did two more landings in that lesson, and each felt terrific, although none of them beat the first one.

There were two things that I think helped with this set of landings: first, I was trying a technique that Will had mentioned a few times, and I’ve read in a few other places. The goal is to have the stall horn sound and have the control yoke reach its back stop at the moment the wheels touch the ground. This helps to smoothly time and execute the landing flare, and it really helped here.

The other factor was that we had practiced slow flight earlier in the lesson, which is essentially flying the plane at the slowest possible speed (around 40mph). This is perfect practice for the landing approach, because both take place in the back side of the power curve. This essentially means that if you pitch up, the plane will actually descend, because it’s moving so slowly. The proper way to control altitude and speed here is the opposite of how it is controlled during normal flight. To change speed, you use your pitch, and to ascend or descend, you use the throttle. Even though I’ve had this concept in my head, it has been difficult to translate into action. That day, during our slow flight practice, the “region of reverse command” finally clicked, and I think this helped immensely with my approaches.

Unfortunately, this great lesson didn’t stick around, and the next lesson just felt “off.” We did a lot of stall practice, and the various stalls require different setups. I kept confusing these and feeling mixed up in general. Will even noticed this and reassured me that everybody has those kinds of days. Landings were no better, and though they weren’t terrible, I was still a bit discouraged. I topped off the lesson by splashing fuel while filling up the tanks. But, any landing you walk away from is a good landing, and my hope is that my brain is absorbing just as much on the bad days.

And in hindsight, I don’t even think I can call it a bad day — I am, after all, still flying an airplane.

My most recent lesson was on Saturday. The visibility was low that day and was a good introduction into how easy it could be to get lost. It was also my first time flying in light rain, which when combined with busier airspace, made for an interesting time flying near the airport, while the tower gave us four or five traffic alerts on our way out. We practiced steep turns and emergency landings, which are some of my favorite maneuvers. We were low on fuel (which actually means over an hour remaining), so we didn’t have time to practice more than one landing. There was a decent crosswind which gave good practice, though I’ll be glad to have a few more calm days to really cement the easier landings.

Again, thanks for reading, and stay tuned — there should be some more exciting news coming soon!    

The Planes

My flight club owns four single-engine Cessnas: two 152s (circa mid-80s) and two 172s, both only a few years old. I chose to train in the 152s, N222UM and N333UM, primarily because they’re 30% cheaper per hour. They only have two seats, no GPS, and pretty wimpy engines. In my introductory post, I mentioned how it’s almost comical at times: the plane is less than half the weight and horsepower of my car, but give it a few minutes and it’s a thousand feet off of the ground. I took one of the 172s up for a lesson on a particularly windy day and was surprised at the difference. I felt like the plane was constantly getting ahead of me.

I’m loving the 152 and even if cost weren’t an issue, I’d continue to train in it. It’s designed as a stable training airplane — the most popular trainer by some accounts. It’s difficult to stall (and easy to recognize an impending stall), easy to control, efficient on fuel, etc. Still, I’m flying in a plane that’s older than I am, and with technology much older than that. The engine is carbureted, requires manual fuel-air mixture adjustment, and the fuel is gravity-fed. The only devices on the plane that use electricity are the starter, lights, radio and the motors that extend the flaps.

All of this makes the learning and flying process more tactile and (to me) enjoyable. Like a driver who prefers a manual transmission, there’s a gritty feeling to manually leaning the mixture by listening for the engine to cough, or hand-tuning the analog dial on the radio.

Of course, if I were to use a plane for more utilitarian purposes — say, going somewhere — I could appreciate the bells and whistles on the club’s nicer planes (which by many standards are still pared-down trainers). In my single flight in the 172, I immediately felt how an autopilot can make things significantly less stressful, even when it’s just holding an altitude and heading. The GPS map, additional radios, and electric trim selectors all make a pretty big difference in the amount of time spent on housekeeping. Eventually I’ll fly in N1377S, the club’s G1000-equipped Cessna 172. This plane has a glass cockpit, which means that all of the analog gauges are replaced with large LCD panels, displaying information in a markedly different format. Sounds like a huge help on long cross-country flights, but for now, I’m loving the simplicity of the little 152s.

First Trip

Last week, Will and I took our first trip in which we landed at an airport other than Ann Arbor (KARB), and it was a blast. We flew 30 miles north to Livingston County airport (KOZW), then 5 miles east to Brighton airport (K45G). The biggest learning experience was the navigation component. For this flight, we were using “pilotage” — which means we just look outside for landmarks and compare them to the chart. Because I’m new to the area, and rarely leave downtown, I was as dependent on the chart as I would be over a foreign state.

The navigation part was really exciting, because it gave me one more good reason to keep my eyes out of the cockpit. We spent a half hour reviewing the charts for the trip, as well as those specifically for the KOZW airfield. I memorized a few landmarks to watch for along the way, but most of the navigation would require watching the chart along the way. As we left town, I saw the mountain bike trails I ride, the Huron River and its notable dams, and the surprisingly large amount of lakes in the area. Just as we were leaving the KARB airspace, the 5000-foot broken layer of clouds burned away and gave us a brilliantly sunny trip. Of course, the warming weather also began to add some light turbulence, which I hadn’t experienced as often on cold practice days.

During the quick 10 minute trip, we also reviewed the procedures for landing at an uncontrolled (non-towered) airport. It requires more acute observation for other planes, modified radio calls and a lot of radio announcements while circling the field. Once we arrived, we entered the pattern and practiced six landings. This runway is wider than KARB, which adds an optical illusion of feeling lower than you actually are. The wind was continuing to pick up and blow through some trees just off the runway, which required corrections during the trickiest part of the landing. I was glad to practice somewhere new under more difficult situations.

Which brings me to one of the big-picture ideas I’ve noticed in my training: any time I’ve had a chance to practice something more difficult, is has greatly improved my execution of the simpler maneuvers. I guess this is pretty obvious, but it has been a relief when I worry about being able to accomplish simple tasks. As an example, after I began to practice steep turns (performed at a 45º bank angle, compare to the typical 15-30º), standard turns suddenly began to feel effortless. I hope that landings will continue to work this way, as I practice on windier days, and especially when I begin to practice simulated short field and grass field landings. In the next few weeks, KARB’s actual grass field will be reopening, and eventually I’ll have the opportunity to practice there.

Back to the trip. We left KOZW for the short trek to Brighton. As we approached, I realized that Brighton was a town I had recently visited for some skiing (like I said, I’m still learning Michigan geography). It suddenly sunk in that even though the plane is relatively slow (to most others in the sky), we still cruise over 120 MPH, making quick work of what was a 30-minute drive. Someday that’ll come in handy.

The Brighton leg was a blast — the wind had continued to pick up, and with good judgement, Will decided that I shouldn’t attempt any landings there. Not that I was even considering it: the runway wasn’t visible until we were right on top of it. It’s 25 feet wide, compared to the 100 feet we had just used at KOZW, the 75 feet at KARB, and the wingspan of the plane at 33 feet (the wings hang over the side of the runway). The strip is really just a neighborhood runway for nearby houses. I could tell that Will was both itching to try it and worried that I’d be nervous over the approach. I had a grin on my face the whole time. It was actually quite educational to watch Will fly the plane in for a perfect landing, despite the conditions. It had been a few lessons since I sat through a completely hands-off landing, and it was a good reminder of how smooth and controlled a practiced landing can be. Next time we fly up there, I’ll be sure to take a video. A calm flight home ended a great first trip.

Substitute Teacher

As I mentioned, a series of delays had given me a period of 14 days without a flight. By the time I flew again, I could tell that I had gotten a bit rusty — not only actual skills, but I was slipping on some of the rote procedures and memory items. At this stage, I feel like many of those things are pretty fragile, so I’m determined not to fall out of practice. Since Will was out of town for a week, I scheduled a lesson with another instructor at the club, Jayne, and I’m really glad that I did. I really like Will’s training style and personality, but it was great to have a fresh set of eyes for a number of reasons.

First, I was trying to make a good impression — both of myself and of Will as an instructor. This made me extra vigilant with the basics, like radio calls, checklists, etc. It also meant that I couldn’t depend on the little things that Will often helps with, like positioning the plane during the pre-takeoff run-up. I think I’ll try to have a fill-in every 9-10 lessons, just for the different perspective: both mine and the instructor’s.

We also practiced a procedure that Will hadn’t gotten to yet: simulated emergency landings. While I had covered them in my book work, it was a different beast once I was in the plane. The maneuver starts when the instructor (usually unexpectedly) pulls the throttle to idle, and tells me that the engine has died. I then have to keep the plane at its best glide speed (where it experiences the least drag, and will stay airborne as long as possible), begin turning in circles, look for potential landing sites (factoring in the wind), attempt to troubleshoot the engine, then approach the site, and land. When we’re about 700 feet from the ground, and lined up on final approach for the emergency landing, we re-apply power and end the procedure.

During my first attempt, I was discombobulated from at almost every step. First, I was extremely nervous over the airspeed. In this plane, the best glide speed is 60 knots, which feels rather slow, and feels even slower because the engine is quiet. Stall speed is 40 knots, but it feels a lot closer than that. After I had trimmed the plane to hold that speed, I had some indecision over choosing a field, and during the final part of the maneuver I spotted power lines, which made me change my mind once more.

We ended the maneuver, climbed back up, and tried again later in the lesson. This time I felt a lot more comfortable, chose a field and stuck to it. I was only surprised by how long I had to fly in circles above it before I was low enough to attempt to “land.” I was feeling a bit worried that I was too high to land, but too low to turn one more circle. Jayne encouraged me to circle once more, and I was surprised to find that I still had plenty of altitude, even after the turn was completed.

The most enlightening part of the emergency landings was when I came home and reopened the chapter on emergency landings. It mentioned that “the student” will experience everything I experienced: hesitation over airspeed, attempting to change landing sites at the last minute, and an eagerness to land sooner than necessary.

To end the lesson, we practiced three landings, and I was eager yet nervous to practice these with a new instructor. On that day, the wind wasn’t as strong as it was variable: it changed 40 degrees between two landings (the tower helped me out by announcing the change during the approach — I’m not so great at watching the windsock yet). My larger mistake (that I didn’t catch until I was driving home) was flying in the pattern 200 feet higher than normal. This was because I had just flown at KOZW last time, where the pattern is different. So all three of my landings began high, which was compounded by the fact that I was flying a tighter pattern (trying to look good for the instructor).

On the third approach, we were high enough that Jayne recommended I add a final notch of flaps, which I hadn’t done on any landing yet. In the final stage of landing, this essentially allows you a steeper angle of descent. Which from my perspective felt like we were dive-bombing the runway. It also means that the roundout and flare need to happen faster, to pull out of the steeper descent. I think that this actually helped in my case, because the roundout and flare have been the trickiest part for me: pulling up too early and floating down the runway before landing, or not pulling up fast enough, for a harder landing. In this case, I knew that the roundout needed to be right, so I had less time to overthink it.

From Here

Thanks to improving weather, I should have fewer missed lessons, and my next big milestone is my first solo. I won’t sound even remotely professional if I start to gush over how excited I am for that day, so I’ll just leave it there. Stay tuned for more updates, and feel free to ask me to focus on any particulars that I’ve missed. Thanks for reading!

Here’s where I’m at: I’ve had eight lessons and logged a total of 9.3 hours. I try to fly twice a week (which gets tough with the weather), and a typical lesson is 2 hours at the airport — about an hour of which is actually in the sky.

Preflight

During our first two lessons, my instructor, Will, showed me how to preflight the plane, and I now handle this on my own. It consists of walking around the plane, looking for any obvious problems, manipulating all of the control surfaces, checking for their connections, examining tires, intakes and sensors. I also check the oil, double-check the fuel levels with a dipstick, and even take three fuel samples, looking for water or dirt.

From the very beginning, I’ve learned that pilots are a cautious bunch, with many routines and idiosyncrasies to keep themselves and their passengers safe. For example, when in flight or on the ground, we have a system so that there is never confusion over who is actually flying the plane. When control is transferred, the original pilot states, “Your controls,” the new pilot states, “my controls,” and the original pilot states, “your controls.” It feels a bit silly sometimes, but after a few times when I was unsure if Will was flying the plane or if I was supposed to, I realized why this is done.

Taxiing

This took me a few lessons to get the hang of. You steer with your feet, while keeping a hand on the throttle. The pedals are a bit tricky, because the bottom half controls the steering of the nosewheel (and the rudder when in flight), but the top of each pedal controls the braking for that side. To make a sharp left turn, you push the left rudder pedal in (which pushes the right pedal out), and then feather the left brake with your toes, to make the plane pivot around the tire.

This gets easier after a bit, but is complicated when there is wind on the ground, in which case your other hand is on the control column, adjusting with each turn to keep the wind from lifting up a wing. As soon as I would grab the column, I’d begin to forget to steer with my feet, and try to steer with the column. Which doesn’t work. Thankfully, the Ann Arbor airport has wide taxiways and I had plenty of room to practice. At this point, the only time I get nervous is when I’m pulling up to the fuel tank.

Turns, Climbs and Descents

On my first lesson, we tackled these simple maneuvers. I was expecting to blow through this stuff — I had played enough fighter plane fight simulators to know about pitch, bank, and yaw, right? Well, not at all. Like I mentioned in my first post, getting the hang of the instruments is like getting information from a firehose. Once over the practice area (about 10 miles north of Ann Arbor), my first task was to make a turn from north to west. This actually meant:

1. Checking for other planes
2. Turning the yoke to the left
3. Waiting until the plane reaches the correct amount of bank (in this case, 30º)
4. Watching my altitude, and slowly pulling back on the column, to keep from descending
5. Watching the turn coordinator, which indicates how much rudder I need to simultaneously push
6. Neutralizing the yoke once the plane reaches 30º of bank, but maintaining back pressure
7. Watching the heading indicator until the plane reaches the right heading.
8. Turning the yoke to the right until the plane rolls level, simultaneously releasing rudder pressure

So that’s a slightly simplified list of things to do during my first turn — I didn’t even try to maintain my speed, which would have required a bit of extra throttle during the turn. Obviously, those things become second nature rather quickly, but for those first few turns, my brain was just struggling to remember what to be watching.

In particular, I began by fixating too much within the cockpit, instead of watching outside. From what I read, this is pretty common among student pilots. Until I learned what the outside is “supposed” to look like in various situations (normal climb, 30º turn, etc.), it was easier to use the gauges. The problem is that gauges are slow, require more time to parse, and they take you away from watching for other planes. At this point, I feel a lot better about my progress with scanning the gauges and the horizon. It’s still tempting to occasionally fixate on one gauge, though. Even 5-6 short seconds focusing on the altimeter means that I’m unaware of airspeed changes during that time. This becomes infinitely more important during landing, as I’ll explain later.

Climbing and Descending Turns

My second lesson was a lot of continuation from the first, though I began to incorporate simultaneous climbs and turns. This more than doubles the amount of concentration, because you will likely finish one part of the maneuver before the other, which forces you to watch every piece of information. These maneuvers are also much more common than 1-axis changes. A plane that is both climbing and turning is easier for other planes to spot, and when flying around an airport, one will frequently be continuing to climb while turning through the traffic pattern. When turning, the plane also has a higher stall speed, requiring a careful watch on airspeed during climbing turns.

This is when I first began to understand the problem of “letting the airplane get ahead of you,” which is a frequent dilemma for student pilots. If I’m not thinking ahead during these maneuvers, suddenly the plane has reached my target altitude, and I need to think about my next move. By the time I execute it, I’m 100 feet above my target, which adds five more steps to descend back down. All the while, the plane continues to turn and is likely to overshoot the turn while I’m still catching up on altitude. This phenomena is particularly troubling during landings, when I find myself 20 seconds from touching down, while my mental checklists are a minute behind. Just another thing to learn and practice!

Stalls

Before I go further, I need to explain a bit about stalls. First, when speaking of stalls in an airplane, I’m talking about aerodynamic stalls, which don’t have anything to do with an engine stalling. An aerodynamic stall occurs when there is no longer enough air flowing over the wing to provide lift. This typically happens at low speeds, but can happen at any speed if the plane pitches up sharply (causing an excessive angle-of-attack). Stalls typically occur during landings and takeoffs, because the plane is moving slower than normal. They are most dangerous at this time, because the plane has less altitude to recover.

A pilot should have plenty of warning before a stall occurs: the plane gets quieter, because less air is flowing around it, the controls become mushy, then the stall warning horn begins to sound. Finally, the plane begins to buffet, which is felt through the control yoke, and when the stall is fully realized, the plane pitches down, without any command from the pilot. This is actually a designed behavior, because as soon as the nose pitches down, the plane quickly recovers airspeed, breaking the stall and allowing the pilot to pull the plane up to a level attitude.

By my third lesson, I was practicing stall recognition and recovery. We practice a few different types of stalls, especially approach and departure stalls, simulating landings and takeoffs. To practice these, we configure the plane as it would be during that stage of flight (flaps, throttle, airspeed, etc.), except we’re 2,000 feet above the ground, instead of a few hundred. This gives plenty of time to recover.

To execute the stall, I would simply pull back on the yoke, which causes the nose to pitch up, and airspeed to decrease. It’s a bit tricky to convince yourself to do this because the plane is obviously informing you that something is wrong: the controls feel terrible and the horn is blaring. As soon as the stall happens, the nose drops, and the recovery phase of the maneuver happens. This means applying full throttle, allowing the nose to dip to gain speed, then quickly recovering level flight, all before descending below the simulated “ground,” (which, again, Mom, is 2000 feet above the real, solid ground). This all happens in under 5 seconds.

This practice was a whole lot of fun because so much is happening and the plane is behaving in a lot of different ways. My biggest problem was keeping myself from adding power and recovering before the stall actually occurred. I was wimping out.

Conclusion

I have much more to cover, including radio calls, slow flight, steep turns, takeoffs, landings, and my successful FAA physical, but I underestimated how much I have to say. Stay tuned for more updates as I work to become a pilot!

I’ve had an obsession with flight for as long as I can remember — as a kid, I wore out the tape in the space camp promotional VHS tape, flew flight simulators on every computer I owned, and loved trips to the Air and Space Museum. I explored flight training when I was nearing graduation from high school, but I ended up taking a different direction.

The day before I graduated from college, my friend Graham invited me and my buddy Zambo to see a few of his dad’s old planes. After gawking for an hour, and taking turns sitting in a P-52, Zambo and I talked ourselves into a flight in a T-6 Texan, which immediately became one of my top 5 college experiences. Nowadays, even a normal airline flight is still a thrill — something no amount of security overload or ticketing confusion can squelch.

This past summer, I had a chance to talk to my uncle, a helicopter pilot in the National Guard, and my grandfather, who learned to fly in ROTC, about their experiences. A few hours of their stories, (including one where my grandfather took my grandmother for a flight that dipped a bit close to a Ferris wheel) rejuvenated the dream. But even at that point, I was still thinking of flying as a pie-in-the-sky, “someday I’ll do it,” idea.

For Christmas, my parents gave me the starter kit to flight lessons: a discovery flight, and a few hours to get me started. It was just the motivation I needed, even though flying has always been something I’ve wanted to do, actually getting started always seemed “too big.” Even when I had the lessons, I ended up putting off my first flight for several, weeks — the idea of being so close to something so big was just intimidating!

I began by scheduling a “discovery flight,” with the Michigan Flyers, a non-profit flying club with a few Cessna 152s and 172s, based here in Ann Arbor. A discovery flight is offered by nearly every flight club out there, and is something I’d encourage everybody to try. For mine, I paid $60, which is approximately the club’s cost of renting a plane for 45 minutes. The instructor, Will, volunteered his time.

I found out that I got to hop in the left-hand pilot’s seat, and for nearly all of the taxi and takeoff, Will was explaining the gauges, procedures, etc. One of the most remarkable things about learning to fly is the smallness and lightness of the planes. This discovery flight was in a Cessna 152: a 2-seater plane built in 1980, weighing in around 1,000lbs with a 108 HP engine. Pushing it around on the ground, feeling the light aluminum frame, and climbing in, I’m constantly astounded that such a machine will soon be thousands of feet in the air. To me, that’s one of the most beguiling aspects of general aviation — that one doesn’t need jet engines or big airframes — only the nimble Cessnas and Pipers.

Will took us north over Ann Arbor, dipping the wing for a better view of downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan Stadium, and my house. A few minutes later, we were in a practice area north of the city, where I was thrilled to have a chance to try a few turns and climbs for myself. I began to realize why learning to fly was such a long process. Even the simplest turn requires many coordinated control inputs, as well as watching several gauges, the sky and the ground. I’m not uncomfortable with multitasking, but it’s much more difficult when each item being multitasked is also being learned! I’ve heard many pilots describe the process as getting information from a firehose, which seems pretty accurate — or maybe an understatement.

20 minutes later, we were returning to the airport for a flawless landing. It was a bit gusty that day, and I was learning how such a small plane feels in the sky. Unlike a jetliner that groans, creaks and shudders with the wind, this plane simply goes where the wind pushes it. Which could be more or less unnerving, depending on how you look at it.

Needless to say, I was hooked, and I now have six lessons and (a meager) 5.7 hours under my belt. I’ll be writing a new post covering the lessons that I’ve had so far, but an adventure like this needs an introduction. In some ways, I’ve been hesitant to write about it — it’s something that I get so excited about, but is so personal, I wonder if I’ll be able to effectively convey the thrill. I’ve been quite inspired by podcasts and articles from other student pilots (especially Bill Williams’ Student Pilot Cast), and I know that I should document the process. Hope you’ll stay tuned for the adventure!