4th Lesson

I hit the books hard over the weekend, and I'm about 2/3 of the way through the ground school material at this point, and am getting in the 95% range on my practice tests. Was dreading the FARs, but it wasn't that bad really. Monday I went for my fourth flight lesson. I showed up a half hour early and did the preflight inspection. The plane was filthy with mud from the soggy runway. Inspecting the brakes was tough because the brake assemblies were caked in frozen mud and grass. Also, the right wing sump drain wasn't letting any gas out into the sample tube. We had to fiddle with it a bit later to get a gas sample out. After preflight was complete, I went inside and we reviewed some of the subjects I covered in the ground school material, such as wake turbulence, right of way, airspace, instruments, and some of the FARs. Then we went for our flight. Winds were out of the northwest on Monday afternoon, so we taxied down and took off on runway 31. This flight lesson was similar to the previous one, just expanded the envelope slightly. I practiced some more 45 degree banked steep turns with the goal of maintaining altitude and airspeed during the turns. After the first or second try I was able to do this fairly consistently. Then, he had me do some "720" steep turns, which consist of a 360 degree steep turn to the left, which immediately transitions into a 360 degree steep turn to the right. After this, we worked on stalls again. We did a few power-off stalls, a power-on stall, and some "falling leaf" stalls (where you let the plane stall repeatedly). Then he had me practice climbing and descending turns while rolling out and leveling off at specific altitudes and headings. We also did another power loss emergency simulation. The landing was as usual, although, it seems like he's letting me do a little more of the landing procedure each time. This time I basically did it, but he had the controls, and was providing some correction during the process. Yesterday, I also went up to the Fairview clinic in North Branch and had my flight physical, so I now have my 3rd class medical certificate and student pilot certificate. Don't have to deal with that again for another 5 years... Next lesson is on Friday - hoping to knock out some more of the ground school by then.