Current Music: AvB - ASOT 198 - Live from di.fm
Current Mood: Good

So when I first woke up at 05:30 for no good reason whatsoever, I knew things weren't starting the right way (especially since I was starting with a slight sleep deficit).
I showed up bright and early at Palo Alto airport, and things didn't look so good either: ceiling was 1000 feet, the bare minimum for VFR flight (if the cloud base is below 1000 feet, you can only fly IFR, i.e. with instruments). We checked around and confirmed that we wouldn't be able to fly anywhere else (couldn't pick up enough altitude without being in the clouds) so we stayed in pattern to practise landings, 11 landings in about 1H to be exact.
We tried with and without flaps, with too much altitude, doing extrene slips to fall sideways and get rid of the extra altitude, and other fun stuff like that. The good news is that I forced myself to be awake and alert, and with (maybe) the help of an energy drink, did so. The landings were actually all good, and pretty much all nicely centered (no crosswind though).
I'll probably be crashing big time later today (as in dead tired), but this morning was cool

The piece of crap Cesna 150 I was supposed to fly today was again not working (it's the smallest crappiest cesna you can fly, I was just curious enough to try it once, but I haven't managed to get it in working condition yet :)
Anyway, as a result I ended up flying a cessna 172SP which was only a few years old (as opposed to about 30 :)
Man, that was light and day: it had leather seats, all kinds of nice instruments, was very stable in flight and was fast. It was also nice not to have to add my weight, the instructors, our backpacks and decide how much fule we could add to the plane while it still being able to take off :)
In return, the plane definitely felt a lot less nimble but that made it more stable even if it also felt heavier to pilot.
But for my first flight in a real plane, that was quite fun.

Current Music: Markus Schulz - Global DJ Broadcast - 2004-11-15
Current Mood: Good

Just when I was finally getting used to doing intentional stalls without raising my heart beat too much, the next thing my instructors have found to toy with me is to cut power during flight and say "well, you have no more engine, I guess you gotta land somewhere now". This is in itself an interesting excercise which shows that from a reasonable altitude you actually have a fair amount of gliding time before you reach the ground (my instructor actually lost the engine and flew a plane more than 5 miles from stanford/woodside all the way down to palo alto airport, and barely made it to the runway purely on gliding from 3000 feet, impressive...)
Anyway, the second time around, we glided to less than 50 feet altitude from a field before he put the power back on. That was an interesting game of chicken...
No, I was alert, but I didn't freak out :)

Current Music: Belushi - Put Your Hands in the Air
Current Mood: Practise makes perfect

I had a couple of flight lessons this weekend and since it was with my now to be former teacher (he's moving to Texas), we just practised pattern flying and landing (take off turn in a rectangle and land). Saturday, I was just so not awake (don't ask :) and I just had a hard time getting it right at all (the crosswind didn't help).
Sunday wasn't stellar but it was starting to sink in slowly even though I was still having a hard time doing all the stuff at the same time, and I was overshooting my last 90 degree turn one mile off the runway, making landing both a sideways and up/down approach.
Let's just say that I admire my instructor for not having been too scared.

Today I flew with my new instructor, a much more seasonned guy, and after the excercises I pretty much did a perfect approach and landing. I was impressed and I'm wondering if it was luck or if I'll do just as well next time :)