Marc's Public Blog - Flying

Current Music: The Thrillseekers - Synasthesia 2004 (ASOT 181 Top 20)
Current Mood: decent, you just don't sleep as well in coach. Funny that...

It was funny how people were telling me: "have a safe flight" when I was leaving for Australia (I'm speaking in Canberra at linux.conf.au ): I could just easily answer "oh, that'll be easy, I won't be the one flying the plane" :)

But anyway, during this crazy week, I managed to squeeze in a couple of more flights in a Cesna 152 with my instructor. Unfortunately, this will be the end of the Road for Justin and I as he is moving to Texas soon, so I'm switching instructors when I come back. I'll miss him actually, he was both a good teacher, and a smartass like me, so we got along great :)

My flight tuesday, we went accross the bay for my first time so that I could practise flying circles and rectangles around given points with a strong wind. I didn't expect it to be easy, and it wasn't :) The highlight is that I actually managed my first landing (i.e. without being rescued by the instructor)

As for my other flight (and last with Justin), that one was quite challenging too. First we went over skyline to the ocean where we usually train, but this time without me being able to see anything outside. I was flying instruments only with some kind of helmet on my head that prevented me from seeing outside the plane. It was interesting (i.e. 0 outside references) and I actually didn't do that badly.
After that, we went to my dreaded slow flight excercise (slow flight = stall warning on the entire time, flying at 40 knots or less (i.e. less than 65kph, which is very slow for a plane to still stay in the air). I think I got a bit better at keeping the plane coordinated (i.e. rudder vs ailerons). As for stall recovery practise, I was a bit less freaked out this time, and even recovered the plane stalling sideways, on its way to a spin with proper rudder. Yay! (the conquer your fear thing)



Well, I guess the next flight with me holding the stick won't be before a couple of weeks or so. I'll try to use the time to read the books.

It does in a car, but even more in a plane.
This morning, after practising "flying" by going from Sunnyvale to the San Carlos airport (Redwood Shores, by Oracle) in about 10mn :) (kind of forgot about the DST switch), I got to the airport on time for my appointment.
Today was slow flight practise (down to 50knots, which is only a measly 95kph), which was ok until we turned it into stall inducing and recovery.
First, to stall the plane (Cessna 152) is hard, it just doesn't want to and you really have to push it (well pull on the stick) a *lot*. First, I was kind of failing because I was unconsciously not pulling enough, just because it didn't seem like a good thing to do :)
Recovery wasn't as much of a problem as creating a clean stall: I was getting the plane sideways at 40knots pointing up and got fairly close to inducing spins (well, maybe not, but it felt like it). By the end of practise, I was fairly nerve wracked (stalling and intentionally putting the plane out of control just sucked). Although on the way back I was half tuning out, I actually more or less managed the landing.

Anyway I noticed that my car shakes a bit around 110mph. One of my tires must be slightly out of balance. Damn... Oh well, that shouldn't matter too much for the track. I'm not above 110mph for too long on the circuit.
We'll see how it goes tomorrow.