SkyHog
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2005
- Messages
- 18,431
- Location
- Castle Rock, CO
- Display Name
Display name:
Everything Offends Me
After trying for weeks to do it, I finally got my BFR done today. Went pretty smoothly (aside from forgetting what the altimeter is called), although it had a rough start.
I got to the airport about 1100, which was the time agreed upon. I walked into the flight school and met my instructor, and realized immediately that I forgot my logbook. No problem, we'll just have him sign it next time I'm there. I reach for my wallet to show my driver's license, and find out that I left my wallet at home (including my medical, Pilot Cert, and driver's license). Ugh.
Drive back 30 minutes to the house, and another 30 back to the airport, and we're ready to go. We start off with a little conversation about what stuff I know, and what I've done in the last couple of years I've been flying. We go over basic stuff ("Tell me what makes an airplane fly..." "Tell me about this airport") and all went well. Until:
CFI: Tell me what instruments are typically found in the 172 we'll be flying today
Me: Attitude Indicator, Airspeed Indicator, Directional Gyro, Vertical Speed Indicator, Turn Coordinator....ummm...ummm, I know there's another....
CFI: Its probably one of the most important ones...
Me: Yeah....ummm....there's 6, I know it....
CFI (Pointing to poster on wall): Which did you miss?
Me (slapping forehead): Altimeter....dammit.
I also pulled a dummy by reversing the definitions of P-Factor and Torque Effect (I made a video on it, I can't believe I mixed it up).
After 1.2 of ground, we went flying. Today, I flew a G1000 C172 because it was the only plane available. Pretty fancy stuff. We decided to not focus on the glass and focus on flying instead, and he just showed me the basic stuff to read from the panel.
It was OVC at 1700 over KAEG, but we figured we'd poke our heads up and see if we could find blue sky, and we sure did, about 28 miles west of Albuquerque. I nailed a steep turn (my most dreaded maneuver), and did a pretty smooth power off stall. Power on, I didn't really BREAK the stall as much as just kind of dropped the nose about 2 degrees and recovered, which he said he would have liked to have seen more abrupt.
We tried to go into KABQ so he could hear my radio work, but they turned us down. He was satisfied with my inital callups though, so we moved onto landings at KAEG. Normal landing went well, soft field went okay. My first short field I came in way too shallow, and while I hit the mark, I would have hit the imaginary 50 ft trees off the threshold for sure. I tried again, and combined with an aggressive slip (with full flaps, mind you, finally an instructor that isn't a total moron), and I nailed the short field.
One last pattern, and sure enough, he pulled power about 3/4s of the way downwind and made me do an emergency landing. I kind of blew it, thinking "Gotta turn now!" and turned way too early. Thankfully, the runway is super, super long, so we had enough, but had it been a 3000 or 4000ft runway, we'd have landed long.
Good stuff, though, 1.3 flight time logged, the first of 2008, and the first since 06/2007. I'm back!!
I got to the airport about 1100, which was the time agreed upon. I walked into the flight school and met my instructor, and realized immediately that I forgot my logbook. No problem, we'll just have him sign it next time I'm there. I reach for my wallet to show my driver's license, and find out that I left my wallet at home (including my medical, Pilot Cert, and driver's license). Ugh.
Drive back 30 minutes to the house, and another 30 back to the airport, and we're ready to go. We start off with a little conversation about what stuff I know, and what I've done in the last couple of years I've been flying. We go over basic stuff ("Tell me what makes an airplane fly..." "Tell me about this airport") and all went well. Until:
CFI: Tell me what instruments are typically found in the 172 we'll be flying today
Me: Attitude Indicator, Airspeed Indicator, Directional Gyro, Vertical Speed Indicator, Turn Coordinator....ummm...ummm, I know there's another....
CFI: Its probably one of the most important ones...
Me: Yeah....ummm....there's 6, I know it....
CFI (Pointing to poster on wall): Which did you miss?
Me (slapping forehead): Altimeter....dammit.
I also pulled a dummy by reversing the definitions of P-Factor and Torque Effect (I made a video on it, I can't believe I mixed it up).
After 1.2 of ground, we went flying. Today, I flew a G1000 C172 because it was the only plane available. Pretty fancy stuff. We decided to not focus on the glass and focus on flying instead, and he just showed me the basic stuff to read from the panel.
It was OVC at 1700 over KAEG, but we figured we'd poke our heads up and see if we could find blue sky, and we sure did, about 28 miles west of Albuquerque. I nailed a steep turn (my most dreaded maneuver), and did a pretty smooth power off stall. Power on, I didn't really BREAK the stall as much as just kind of dropped the nose about 2 degrees and recovered, which he said he would have liked to have seen more abrupt.
We tried to go into KABQ so he could hear my radio work, but they turned us down. He was satisfied with my inital callups though, so we moved onto landings at KAEG. Normal landing went well, soft field went okay. My first short field I came in way too shallow, and while I hit the mark, I would have hit the imaginary 50 ft trees off the threshold for sure. I tried again, and combined with an aggressive slip (with full flaps, mind you, finally an instructor that isn't a total moron), and I nailed the short field.
One last pattern, and sure enough, he pulled power about 3/4s of the way downwind and made me do an emergency landing. I kind of blew it, thinking "Gotta turn now!" and turned way too early. Thankfully, the runway is super, super long, so we had enough, but had it been a 3000 or 4000ft runway, we'd have landed long.
Good stuff, though, 1.3 flight time logged, the first of 2008, and the first since 06/2007. I'm back!!