| 2005/08/01 Spinning... | |
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2005-08-01 08:37
by Merlin
in Flying
No, no, not the aerobic kind on a bike :)
I didn't have any flying classes on sunday, so I scheduled a free instructor, we took a Cessna 152, and went to practise induced spins and recovery. Spinning is basically the spiral dive that happens after the plane stalls sideways, causing the plane to fall in a spiral fashion. Recovering from it was actually pretty easy, but it was good practise. The funny thing is that after 5 times or so, the instructor was feeling a bit sick, and wanted to go home :) I'll have to go back though, and do fully developed spins, the instructor I was with was a little too squeemish for that ;) |
| 2005/08/05 First night flight | |
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2005-08-05 23:58
by Merlin
in Flying
Friday night, I did my first night flight. That was definitely interesting, and a very different perspective, trying to recognize things at night, with just about 0 lighting from the moon.
I found my way to the livermore airport but I couldn't see it because I thought the runway lights would be visible from any angle. Turns out they are only visible from the direction of landing. I then proceeded to do 7 landings, with the landing lights or inside dashboard lights on or off. An all light off landing was "interesting": you aim between the runway lights but because of perspective you have no idea how far you are from the ground... Got back to Palo Alto around 23:30 (which I couldn't really see either when crossing the bay), and got home a bit wiser... (the only scary thing is that if the engine quits, you are supposed to aim away from lights, and hope for the best. In real life, you have a good chance to be screwed compared to the day where you can pick a suitable landing site from the sky, aim for it, and safely land there) |