Student Pilot Guinea Pig

Today, I volunteered to be a student pilot guinea pig.

A pilot is studying for his CFI rating and wanted practice showing and explaining maneuvers to someone who isn’t a current CFI. Me? I was thrilled to “help”. No logable hours, but it was fun.

He flies a Cherokee and today was my first time manipulating controls in a low wing aircraft.

Preflight was done before I got the airport. I let Mr. pre-CFI to do radio calls because I felt completely unprepared to do so (I haven’t touched controls in foreeeever – over a year; am not comfortable with it anymore). It was a good call, I couldn’t really even understand the runway Fairbanks ground told us to use.

I did my normal unsteady taxi to the runway. There had been quite a few inches of new snow on the ground this week which hadn’t been removed yet, so it was really impossible to see the pavement.

Runup had all the same checkpoints I’m used to in Cessnas. Take-off was normal and mostly along the centerline: yay me. Pre-CFI did a great job in talking  me though all procedures before it was my time to put hands on the controls. Even though I couldn’t explain or do any procedure he asked when first asked, after his explanations, it was all very doable.

We went out the practice area and did slow flight. Pull power, pull up, wait for white arc, add flaps. Turns with rudder control mostly. Climbs and descents by changing power. Seems so long ago that I first did that. And it was all too fast to truly appreciate it then. I feel really good about it all now.

4 steep turns, whee! The faster they’re done, the better one seems to stay on altitude. I need to stop taking forever to roll 45 degrees, it feels like cheating to roll slowly since you can circle about 180 degrees “getting” to the right bank angle. Adding a touch of power once you get to 30 degrees was something I can’t remember doing in the past. Maintaining altitude is now what I need to practice. Although it was all within +/- 100ft, I want to be better.

S-turns and turns about a point, also whee! As was explained to me, the easiest way is to pick your reference point/line/road. Then pick your radial distance from the reference. Then pick points on the Earth’s surface at the correct distances from that reference (clumps of trees, water features, etc). Simply aim to fly over your clumps of trees, water features, etc and you will automatically fly with the correct bank angles to compensate for winds without extra effort. Worked beautifully and it didn’t take any effort to maintain altitude.

Landings. Here is where it kinda fell apart. Trim was a turn handle above the head and I kept forgetting to adjust it (out of sight, out of mind). Downwind was easy but turns to base and final were very sloppy/round. Correct glideslope? Nope. Lined up remotely close? Nope. Kept rounding out too high and actual touchdown was way too far to the right of centerline (the entire plane was to the right of the centerline). To be fair, it was slightly gusty at the airport, but that’s no good excuse. Touchdown was pillowly soft on one landing and certainly harder than I’d like on the other two (not so terrible pre-CFI was going to step in, but embarrassing for myself). Pre-CFI says I’m being too hard on myself since I’ve never flown a low-wing aircraft, haven’t looked at anything flying related in about a year, and didn’t study for today’s impromptu flight since I only had 15 minutes to drive to the airport once I got the call. I’ll accept the compliment and be motivated to fly better.

Blue skies!!! Lovely 1.5 hour flight today.