METAR: KXXX 281700Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM OVC012 M01/M03 A3006 RMK AO2
It’s not the best day to fly today, at least not for cross country or maneuvers, but today was intended to be about pattern work. I had every ambition to see if my epiphanies held true in real life the way they worked in the simulator.
The Archer II was pulled from the hanger and I did the preflight. There’s one thing I missed, and I’ll get to that in a bit. Everything looked good, we hopped in, finished the checklist and away we go. “…traffic, Archer thirty five kilo is taxiing to runway two niner…” Oops, I said thirty five, not three five.
Pre-take off complete, run-up complete, clear left, clear right, “…traffic, Archer three five kilo is taking off runway two niner, remaining in the pattern.” Now to take off ahead of the airplane. Power to 2000 RPM, gauges are in the green, release and go. Right rudder input to correct for p-factor, airspeed alive, ready with the rudder on rotation, 60 knots, and rotate. Every time I rotate I feel the nose wheel grumble as it leaves the surface. Pitch up for 80 knots, horizon just touching the nose cowling, climb for 1300. It wasn’t my prettiest takeoff. Not enough right rudder.
We completed the circuit and I did the radio calls, “…traffic, Archer three five kilo turning left crosswind runway two niner…” I blew the altitude again. A few patters in I finally realized what it was. I was trying to arrest the ascent with the throttle alone, being too slow on the power down, and not pitching down to arrest the climb. But after a while another thought dawned on me. We were in cold, high-pressure air – air with a lot of performance. When throttling down I was aiming for 2200 RPM but even 1900 would work.
The first landing didn’t need any correction but it wasn’t great. Base was a little low, tried to arrest the descent, turned final, but didn’t hold the center line. At one point I scanned my body and realized I was too tense. Relax, take a shake, and just put in little corrections. I transitioned too high but we made it down and we landed on the center line but drifted left and I flared too high. This time I worked on “transition, don’t flare.” It’s all about getting to slow-flight above the runway.
Next circuit, much better, but I left the power in too long and I hit my aim point but much faster than I wanted. Still it felt better.
After this the instructor demonstrated a slip to land. Now this is an interesting experience the simulator does not really prepare you for in the way that it feels. You feel the descent rate, see it in your peripheral vision, and it’s a bit scary. There’s also this element of fear of stalling so you keep the nose down, which you don’t want to do because you’re sinking at 1000 feet per minute or more. Once you hit the glide slope you slowly take out the cross-controlled inputs and begin the normal landing, except instead of a mile to get this set up you’re already basically over the runway and the throttle is already idle. Okay my turn.
We did the patter with a long downwind to set up for a high final and proceed to slip. The instructor told me the wrong input – left aileron right rudder, but the wind was from the north, so he had me reverse it half way through. Take out the inputs but we’re not where I want to be and have to reestablish the centerline. Put in flaps, flaps again, transition to slow flight, hold it off…I did not like this landing. The stall horn went off because the transition was a the wrong height because I still felt like I was sinking fast.
On to the next scary one – power off landing. Abeam the aim point, power to idle, radio call, “…traffic, Archer three five kilo left short base and final…” 10° flaps and gradual turn towards the runway (3-5° bank), pitch for 76 KIAS (best glide speed). No throttle here, all about pitch. There’s a wide water tower near the end of the runway that is sort of a mental landmark for me to say that we’ve passed the end of the runway. This time we’re turning inside of it. Turning past 20° still turning, still pitching for 76, put in flaps 25°, make the property and flaps to 40°, sort of over the runway and turn to final. This is really weird for me because we never did flaps 40° before. Next lap is my turn.
This is scary! I pretty well got the pitch control for speed in well. This maneuver, even worse than the slip to landing, throws out all of the “initial conditions” that I’ve been trying to achieve before, and there’s very little time to set up the runway alignment. Yet this was my best landing yet. A little side force due to not enough rudder, but the transition to slow flight and sink to the runway felt the best yet. We did another one of these and it felt pretty good.
My takeoffs got better and better with each lap. With each lap it was less about what was going on inside of the airplane and more and more about looking out the window, reacting ahead of the airplane, climbing, turning, making the radio calls, and stopping the climb on the pattern altitude. Enough right rudder on the left turn to correct for the skid caused by the p-factor. By the end I was feeling awesome about the takeoffs.
With the last landing, flaps to 40°, the transition to slow flight felt better too. I am going to start practicing normal landings with flaps to 40° and see if the same holds true. Today was a fun and scary day, doing something double-alien. “Nothing about flying is natural,” yet making landings feel natural and then doing something unnatural to even that is extra daunting! These are maneuvers to have in the toolbox for when things to especially bad – if you have to make your target in an emergency. The rest of the time, it’s all about the normal landings and procedures.
So what did I forget in the preflight? I forgot to hook up the camera! I was going to get video of all of this, but it was only after the shutdown, putting the headset away, that I realized I had that in my bag. No video this time.
FencerPTS 