Started Flying Again Today.

K

ki4lzk

Pre-takeoff checklist
Joined
Jul 8, 2011
Messages
172
Location
Milford, KS
Display Name
Display name:
Joshua Jones
I took a flight lesson for the first time in basically 4 years today. It was a lot of fun and I remember why I was interested in the first place. I got to the airport about 12:45, met the flight instructor and we went over all the materials that I have. The only additional thing I 'had' to buy was the private pilot test prep book.

It was a little breezy at KMHK this afternoon. Sustained winds of 18 with Gusts of 26. I did the preflight and we got in the plane. I remembered a few things but had forgotten quite a bit as well. I only had 1/2 an hour prior today in my logbook so that isn't surprising (I have flown with other pilots that... taught me about the instruments, so I have some background with them.) We went through the pre-taxi checklist when the Instructor went over everything that is included in communicating with ground and the tower. A minute went by and he asked If I was ready to taxi... Well Yeah... I was just waiting for him to get clearance. At this point he informs me I get to handle the radios too.

"Manhattan Ground, November 4 8 9 2 Juliet, At the Kansas Air Center ready for taxi."

"Cessna 4 8 9 Juliet, Manhattan Ground, Taxi via Delta Alpha Crossing Runway 31 to Runway 21."

At this point I was stuck. Then I remembered I need to repeat what was said.
"Taxi via Delta Alpha Crossing Runway 31 to Runway 21, Skyhawk 92 Juliet."

So we get down to the run-up area we get finished with that and we get clearance to take off. Up we go! At 1000 ft AGL I make a left turn and fly east toward manhattan. We fly over the football stadium and into the practice area. We do a couple of turns, Ascend, Descend and then a few Descending Turns and we head back to the airport.

I look over at the instructor and say "Well, since I am doing the radios you are landing right?" We both laugh a little. We get permission to land. and we start our approach. I for some reason felt like I was coming in pretty steep but he didn't think so. We landed and taxied back to the FBO and that was that.

I asked the instructor how much he helped me land and he replied "I didn't at all." :hair raise: I still don't believe that :D

It was a lot of fun and I can't wait until Thursday when I go up again. Now all I have to decide is do I keep flying at the FBO with the 172 at $115.00 hr or do I join the Flying Club and only pay $78.00/hr . I know tough choice right. :no:

I am excited to have a flight instructor I seem to mesh well with and like. I have started flying twice in the past but both instructors just seemed like jerks. You could tell the only reason the were doing flight instruction was to build time. My flight instructor today i flat out asked him if that was the only reason he was doing it. He said yes, but now. He said that he wants to fly Corporate, but he really enjoys flight instruction and will continue to do it once he gets the ideal job. He said that he likes to see how students progress and the since of accomplishment that he gets after a student gets signed off. I liked his answer and I believe it was the honest truth.

thanks for reading my book :rofl:
 
Good on you for getting back in the Saddle! Wishing you many happy safe flights and lots of learning.
 
You are doing so well if he didn't help you. On a horrible takeoff my SEVENTH lesson, I asked my instructor what went wrong. He said it was my very first takeoff.... turns out he had been secretly helping me.

Kimberly
 
It is good to hear that you had such a pleasant experience and that you are getting back into flight training. I think that you will enjoy it a lot more if you have an instructor that you can communicate with and be happy with. I know that the final instructor I had was easy to work with, did a great job in teaching me, and made it fun.

I look forward to hearing about your further adventures.
 
I am looking around the house for some of the books I used to have and I think my wife :rolleyes2: has misplaced them. I am sure I will find them. It doesn't help that I have moved twice since looking at them last.
 
Good to hear about the excellent lesson!

In my book, the 172 at $115/hr wet is a decent deal to have an instructor as you described.

Sure the club looks cheaper, but if you can work with the one you flew with today and have a written curriculum, you might find yourself finishing in fewer hours and the better experience worth the additional per hour dollars.
 
Joshua, ain't it great to have air under the wings again? Keep us posted so we can continue to urge you along. That makes it new all over again.
 
AggieMike88 said:
Good to hear about the excellent lesson!

In my book, the 172 at $115/hr wet is a decent deal to have an instructor as you described.

Sure the club looks cheaper, but if you can work with the one you flew with today and have a written curriculum, you might find yourself finishing in fewer hours and the better experience worth the additional per hour dollars.
Click to expand...

Sorry I wasn't more clear on this. He also provides instruction at the club as well. This is something I am thinking about down the road as I really like the owner of the FBO as well. I have had a few conversations with him over the years. If you ever need anything and you are in the Topeka/Manhattan/Junction City area stop into Kansas Air Centers Ron will take care of you. One thing that Kansas Air Center does that is kind of nice is that if you buy a $1000.00 block of time they add 10% onto your tab. The instructor said he would also reduce his hourly rate by 10% if I decide to do this.
 
Block time can be a good deal if the school is financially stable, offers deals as you describe, and has a policy to return what you don't use. Check a little further and you might find a discount on the rental rates too.
 
Welcome back to flying Joshua!

I had a twenty year layoff from flying and started back last Spring. I passed my Private checkride two weeks ago today.

Enjoy and stay with it. There is a TON of support to be had from this forum, so keep us posted and take advantage of the support.
 
Hey everyone!
I just got back from my second lesson, boy was it fun! It is a beautiful day, no wind with the temperature at 63F. You can't beat that here in KS in January. We worked on Steep Turns, Power on Stalls and Power off stalls. I overshot my heading once because I was paying more attention to the CFI gabbing than flying the airplane. That won't happen again... hopefully :D. We were up in the air for a total of 1.3 hours. It was beautiful. We landed and went in to the FBO.

I couldn't believe how much more comfortable I was today. I wasn't as nervous, and the radios didn't bother me at all. When we got inside the FBO one of the local Geewiz pilots was getting in to prepare to fly his clients down to the Cotton Bowl, he was a nice guy. My cfi was bragging about how well I was able to trim the aircraft. I didn't think it was that big of a deal but I would rather be bragged about then ragged on :D.

I am going up again next Tuesday and Thursday.
 
Stalls sound a little intimidating at first, but once you understand what's going on and how to do them correctly, they can be kinda fun.

Keep up the two lesson a week as much as you can, and add a third if possible. Lots of evidence out there that at least two lessons a week is the best way to acquire and keep your new skills.
 
Yes, don't let stalls scare you. Beyond that, get good at them as soon as possible so you won't be anxious when you do slow flight. Get to a point where you can slow fly right on the edge and make turns with confidence. Even though it's on down the road in your training, if you build a good foundation for each step, the next step will come together better.

When my DPE was debriefing my instructor, one of the areas he was really happy with was my slow flight skill. It's actually fun to see how slow you can fly and then turn while you're doing it.

Doc
 
We did slow flight as part of the stalls, it was quite a bit of fun.
 
The most important tool you can have during your flight training is an instructor that you get along with and that makes you feel comfortable during your interactions.

Keep us updated, I'm sure we'll soon be reading about how well your check ride went.
 
Hey Everyone;

The weather has been insanely nice for flying! It was was 55F with winds from 200 at 05kts. It was a pretty nice day to go flying. We went up and worked on Emergency Procedures as well as ground maneuvers. Emergency procedures was pretty easy. It is just kind of common since IMHO. Ground maneuvers wasn't to difficult but I must say it was slightly harder than I thought It would be! We did Turns about a point as well as S turns. After this we went back and did some pattern work.

I think all my landings were pretty good. I need to pull back a little harder on the flare, for some reason I keep the plain a little shallow. The first take off on the touch and go, I drifted quite a bit. On the next I made "check points" of places I wanted to pass over on the climb out. I found this worked pretty well for me and insured I was staying in line. Prior to doing this I was trying to rely on the heading indicator to much.

At one time I thought flying "Flight Simulator" would help me in my learning to fly. I think the opposite is true in some regards. I started out focusing to much on the instruments and not enough on outside visual cues. I am trying to correct this. So once I started focusing outside more, I feel like my flying has improved.

While on downwind for our final landing of the lesson we got extended for a CRJ on final. That was pretty neat to see the CRJ fly past us.

On another note:
I have been looking at the receipt wrong for the air craft rental :(. The plane is $105 per hour. The reason I thought it was $115 is because we had it for 1.1 hours the first lesson the total was $115. Also I talked to the owner of the FBO and told him I was thinking about going to the Flight Club because it would save me some money. He is now giving me a discount. :D I am paying more than I would at the Flight Club but not much. He said he would rather get something from me then see me flying with someone else.
 
Welcome back too flying. It was a beautiful day in the Midwest to fly. I'm about 80 miles east of Chicago. It was 29* and calm when I took off at 9AM. This afternoon it was 49* and winds were only 5kts. Unheard of here in mid-Jan!

I'm glad you're back into it and enjoying it!
 
It is nice to read this stuff... Brings me back to my PP training days, when I'd skip out of work early (relax, I went in early, too) to head to the airport for a lesson at least twice a week. I went from first logged hour to check ride in three months, one day, which was not too bad for full-time employed individual.

Keep posting your experiences!
 
Thanks for the encouragement! I find the flying to be the easy part. I am currently working on the ground school studying quite diligently. I wanted to through the book with weight and balance earlier. I understand how to get the movement and arms, etc. what i am having a difficult time with is some of the graphical depictions. The chart goes from basically 34 in - 47, my arms are 103" from the datum... Confused :D
 
Which aircraft? ( Different manufacturers depict their W&B charts differently. )

Sounds like the chart is depicting the range of inches aft of the datum that the box of allowable *final* center of gravity calculations must fall inside.

You're looking at distances things are from the datum and thinking every one of those items has to be inside the final W&B window, forgetting the aircraft has a mass and arm also. Total mass and arm of everything on board have to balance out to be inside that box above, but individual items will be way out.

(Example, the engine is forward of the arbitrary datum line which is often the firewall in many aircraft. Thus, in reference to the datum line it's at a negative station number.)

Tell us which aircraft and surely one of us can show you how the particular chart in your PoH works. ;)

If you have real numbers for your airplane, share those too. We can show ya how they relate to the graph.

If that chart is what I think it is...

Imagine the chart is the window in the middle of a big carpenters bubble level. You can hang two equal weights out at the ends of the bubble level WAY off that chart left and right but if they're equal weights, the bubble will still end up in the middle of your overlaid miniature graph that's in the middle of the bubble level. Assuming the chart you're looking at is the W&B (allowed) envelope...
 
The airplane is a Cessna 172N. Empty weight is 1484, useful load is 1065.8. The plane has long range tanks and holds a total of 50 gallons.
 
ki4lzk said:
I think all my landings were pretty good. I need to pull back a little harder on the flare, for some reason I keep the plain a little shallow.
Click to expand...

That could be a MSFS thing - in the game it works best to land shallow / hot and it'd harder to hold it off to near stall due to the lack of visual queues and the poor modeling of the airplane / ground interface.

You will get over it.

Sounds like you are doing real well.
 
ki4lzk said:
Thanks for the encouragement! I find the flying to be the easy part. I am currently working on the ground school studying quite diligently. I wanted to through the book with weight and balance earlier. I understand how to get the movement and arms, etc. what i am having a difficult time with is some of the graphical depictions. The chart goes from basically 34 in - 47, my arms are 103" from the datum... Confused :D
Click to expand...

Hmmm....

Looking here, it appears that most of the arms are around 40 for the front seat / fuel. Only the baggage gets out beyond 100.

But as was pointed out, individual items can be off the chart, it's only the grand total that needs to be inside.


BTW: Looks like if you don't put much fuel in it, you have enough useful load to carry my entire airplane inside - it would just have to be cut up into small enough pieces...
 
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ki4lzk said:
Hey Everyone;

The weather has been insanely nice for flying! It was was 55F with winds from 200 at 05kts. It was a pretty nice day to go flying. We went up and worked on Emergency Procedures as well as ground maneuvers. Emergency procedures was pretty easy. It is just kind of common since IMHO. Ground maneuvers wasn't to difficult but I must say it was slightly harder than I thought It would be! We did Turns about a point as well as S turns. After this we went back and did some pattern work.

I think all my landings were pretty good. I need to pull back a little harder on the flare, for some reason I keep the plain a little shallow. The first take off on the touch and go, I drifted quite a bit. On the next I made "check points" of places I wanted to pass over on the climb out. I found this worked pretty well for me and insured I was staying in line. Prior to doing this I was trying to rely on the heading indicator to much.

At one time I thought flying "Flight Simulator" would help me in my learning to fly. I think the opposite is true in some regards. I started out focusing to much on the instruments and not enough on outside visual cues. I am trying to correct this. So once I started focusing outside more, I feel like my flying has improved.

While on downwind for our final landing of the lesson we got extended for a CRJ on final. That was pretty neat to see the CRJ fly past us.

On another note:
I have been looking at the receipt wrong for the air craft rental :(. The plane is $105 per hour. The reason I thought it was $115 is because we had it for 1.1 hours the first lesson the total was $115. Also I talked to the owner of the FBO and told him I was thinking about going to the Flight Club because it would save me some money. He is now giving me a discount. :D I am paying more than I would at the Flight Club but not much. He said he would rather get something from me then see me flying with someone else.
Click to expand...


Except for learning a little about how the instruments interact, Flight Simulator is not much help. I used to think that FS might be helpful for instrument training, but now that I'm on the very beginning edge of my instrument training, I don't believe that is even true.
 
ki4lzk said:
Thanks for the encouragement! I find the flying to be the easy part. I am currently working on the ground school studying quite diligently. I wanted to through the book with weight and balance earlier. I understand how to get the movement and arms, etc. what i am having a difficult time with is some of the graphical depictions. The chart goes from basically 34 in - 47, my arms are 103" from the datum... Confused :D
Click to expand...


Your stick and rudder skills AS WELL AS the ground school learning are BOTH important so you are wise to be studying closely.

There are people who die because they don't understand some of the basic things that really have nothing to do with your stick and rudder skills. I've been reading "The Killing Zone" which I would recommend to ANY new pilot. The latest example I've read in there was a pilot who flew the same trip to a NASCAR race every year. One year he ended up running out of fuel shy of his destination. He said "I don't know why I ran out of gas, I've made it every year without running out of gas." Evidently the guy did not understand that the wind is not always the same and evidently didn't understand the effects of that.

Your ground learning has lots of stuff that is EVERY BIT as important to know as is how to fly an airplane. If you could handle an airplane like Chuck Yeager, you could easily kill yourself if you didn't understand all the stuff involved with flying.

Lecture over.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Hmmm....

Looking here, it appears that most of the arms are around 40 for the front seat / fuel. Only the baggage gets out beyond 100.

But as was pointed out, individual items can be off the chart, it's only the grand total that needs to be inside.


BTW: Looks like if you don't put much fuel in it, you have enough useful load to carry my entire airplane inside - it would just have to be cut up into small enough pieces...
Click to expand...

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT FORM!!!!! The one my flight instructor really was confusing me. I was dividing the moment by 1000 and that is where I was screwing up.
 
Good to see you back flying. Does Ft. Leavenworth still have a flying club? What is your radio and antenna?
Jim de NO0B
 
jnmeade said:
Good to see you back flying. Does Ft. Leavenworth still have a flying club? What is your radio and antenna?
Jim de NO0B
Click to expand...

Jim,
I am pretty sure that Fort Leavenworth does still have a flying club. I will probably end up joining the K-State Flying Club as they have several aircraft. Radio wise I have a Yaesu FT-897d the antenna is a dipole. I have a 6 band vertical that I use as well.

Thanks

Josh
 
AggieMike88 said:
Keep up the two lesson a week as much as you can, and add a third if possible. Lots of evidence out there that at least two lessons a week is the best way to acquire and keep your new skills.
Click to expand...

yeahthat.gif
 
So is this Fort Leavenworth Flying Club inside or outside of the stockade?:lol:
 
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ki4lzk said:
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT FORM!!!!! The one my flight instructor really was confusing me. I was dividing the moment by 1000 and that is where I was screwing up.
Click to expand...

Joshua,
Just realize that the form linked here is not for your particular plane, it is for a 180 HP 172, so probably an S model. Check the numbers from the form your instructor provided you against this one. You'll find that they are different, but the comparison should allow you to better understand and use the form your instructor provided.
 
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