7th Lesson

I went in for my 7th lesson yesterday. Jim and I covered the two questions that I missed on the knowledge test, and he gave the the appropriate endorsement indicating this. It was a fun lesson this time (they all are though). Winds were pretty calm - 310 at 4-5kt, so we took off on runway 31 again. Jim took off this time to demonstrate how close I should hold the plane to the turf runway once airborne because I had been going a little high during the acceleration phase. After reaching altitude, we practiced some more 720 steep turns. Jim encouraged me to use trim during these turns since I hadn't been, and it made a big difference. Once I started using the trim I was able to hold nice steady steep turns without much change in altitude or airspeed throughout. After a few of these, we headed over to Osceola airport again. On the way, Jim cut the power and asked what I would do. I pitched for 80, and picked a field headed into the the prevailing wind and started setting myself up for the landing in that field. It went really well, and we would have made a safe landing in the snowy corn field. At Osceola, I got to practice.... LANDINGS. We entered the downwind leg at a 45 and Jim directed me through the various parts of the landing procedure, and I did the landing. Not the smoothest, but that's what practice is for. Then, we did 5 more takeoffs and landings through the traffic pattern to practice. I can land the plane okay, but not great. I need more practice. The main thing I need to get better at is the flare. I was generally touching down too early and not flaring long enough. Also, I can generally keep the plane aligned with the runway centerline, but more practice with this will be beneficial. After spending a half hour or so practicing landings at KOEO, we departed to the west. Next, we did some fire emergency simulations. If you have an electrical fire in the dash, the best bet is to shut off the master switch and spray up under and into the dash with the fire extinguisher. (The engine will continue to run with the electrical system off because the ignition system is electrically isolated in airplanes). If you have an engine fire, the solution invariably involves shutting off all sources of fuel and some sort of rapid decent. If you are relatively close to the ground (within a few thousand feet AGL), the goal is to rapidly descend and land as quickly as possible so you can exit the airplane and get away. You don't want to pick up too much airspeed during the descent or it will take you a long time to land once you get down to ground level. So, you descend either using flaps, a slip, or both. Jim first had me do a rapid descent with full flaps extended. The Vfe of a C172 is 100mph, so that's what we did - descend at 100mph with full flaps. This gave us a descent rate somewhere in the neighborhood of 1700FPM. With all that drag, you've got to get the nose pretty steep to go 100mph. Next, we climbed back up and did a slip descent. Jim had my put the plane into a slip and descend at 120mph. This gave us a descent rate of about 2000FPM (which is the max that the VSI can indicate). Seemed even more effective than the flaps, and you had to get the nose REALLY steep to get up to that speed in a slip. Felt like we were going straight down. Next, we supposed that we were at high altitude like on a cross country trip, say, 10,000 AGL. At 2,000 FPM descent, it would take you almost 5 minutes to get to the ground, and that's a long time to have a blazing engine fire in front of you. So, the approach here is to do a high speed dive in a clean configuration to "blow" the fire out, leaning it by providing it with too much oxygen, extinguishing the fire. Next we did a dive in a clean configuration, and Jim had me target 150mph. Cessnas have so much drag that it's difficult to get them going that fast with power at idle, and you're practically pointing straight down to get there. These exercise sound kind of scary, but I thought it was pretty fun. After this, we headed back to Forest Lake, and I did the flyover, entered the pattern, and did the landing. I feel pretty comfortable going through the pattern, and lining myself up on final, but I need more practice with the flare to get that nice smooth landing. I really like the landing process though - it was a lot of fun doing the touch and goes at Osceola. Next lesson is Friday.