A little excitement for my 2nd complex lesson
Well, the two most memorable parts of today's flight (my 2nd towards a complex endorsement) were:
I had scheduled the flight for 9am, knowing full well the heat wave we've had recently, and hoping that an early flight would help. I'm sure it was cooler than say, 2pm, but even when doing the preflight, with a slight breeze blowing, I was sweating and wishing there was a huge tree or awning providing some shade.
I guess it would be hard to shade the tarmac without limiting the size of airplanes that could taxi in, and generally making the airport overly dangerous when a takeoff/landing goes awry. In fact, later I would see why a tarmac with shade would be a bad thing, but I'll get to that in a bit.
After the preflight, we hop in and I start gaining in contortionist skill while learning how to bend and flex from a perch on the right wing of the airplane, down in the door, and over to the left seat - dodging the yokes, flap control, and seat belts. I open the little window vent (pictured on the right) in the vain hope that air might reach me in this oven of a cabin. Tucker smartly keeps the door open as I start my clumsy step-through of the pre-start checklist.
OK, parking brake - check, prop full forward - check, proper fuel tank selected - check! Before too long we are ready to get the big fan up in front of the airplane operating. I do the prime by turning on the fuel pump, bringing the mixture to rich, counting to 3 seconds "1-1000, 2-1000, 3-1000" setting mixture back to lean, and turning the pump off. A little bit of throttle in, I turn the key to "start" and the engine starts slowly rotating but won't catch. I let it go through about 8 revolutions using the starter, and we decide that it is either flooded or not quite primed enough. So we prime it for 1 more second and try again. Nothing. Not even the slightest hint of the engine firing up.
Tucker, who is the go-to guy for getting this temperamental engine going, says "well, we flooded it" and tries a few techniques to clear the gas out and get it started. The engine teases us once or twice that she might want to fire up, but after a few more tries, we are getting nowhere. We make the decision to let her sit on the ramp for a bit and clear out on her own (lest we kill the battery with the starter).
The last place we want to be is in that cabin with no air coming in so we hop out and stretch our legs for a bit. I use that opportunity to snap these pictures (below). See that gas puddle right behind the nose wheel in the left and middle pics? Yeah, I flooded it alright. :) Next time I will count to 2 instead of 3 on a hot day like this.
After about 5-10 minutes we get in to try again, and - long story short - just as we were giving up, she finally cranked up. At first the engine sounded like a cylinder or two were "missing" (not firing properly) but after a few more moments it started sounding like its normal, smooth self.
What do they say about airplane engines? Something like:"The good thing about an airplane engine is that, even though it can be a bitch to start, it tends to keep running once you do".
So we finally had some air flowing - I readied the plane for the taxi out to runway 13. Down at the hold short line, we go through the last bit of the checklist (the engine was still not happy at idle speed) and start looking for other traffic in the pattern.
As my head tilts to look up over the final approach course, a bit of sweat runs run down my temple and I catch it with my shirt sleeve. Ugh. I think to myself about how air conditioning has spoiled me, and that I shouldn't be griping about the heat and sweat. To tell you the truth, I'd take that "flying oven" over an air conditioned office any day. And that flying oven with retractable gear was finally ready to take flight.
We take off, pitch for 95 MPH, raise the gear, bring the power back a bit on the upwind leg to give the engine a minor rest, and head out to the practice area over the Chickahominy river - where it heads north out of the James river.
We quickly realize that the haze is not going to help out in our plan do to some power-on stalls. The horizon, if I can call it that, is entirely obscured by a smooth gradient of color from the brown earth to the white sky. Without that reference in my peripheral vision, the high pitch attitude of a power-on stall in an airplane I am not familiar with is not something to seek out.
We stick to the power-off stalls, and after a few of them I am beginning to get the feel for how N44084 drops off when she can no longer fly. The stalls were quite manageable. The only thing sticking in my head was that she needs plenty of right rudder when the 200 horses are turned back on in the recovery.
We decide to head back for a few landings back at KJGG. I was having a terrible time nailing altitude and heading, letting them go by the wayside as I focused on some of the new systems (mainly how power changes work with the prop lever involved and when to raise/lower the gear for the stalls). But I focus on altitude and heading more as we setup to re-enter the landing pattern and start to get a little more precise.
We make 2 stop-and-go landings that work out OK and then taxi back to the parking spot. With the engine shutdown after an hour's worth of running, Tucker opens the door to let some air in.
This is when I get a concrete example of how a shaded ramp would be bad news.
With the door open, we hear a pair of large engines running at low power. We look up to see a large twin coming in for left hand traffic to runway 13. Now, runway 13 has a right hand traffic pattern, I think mainly for noise abatement, so we have an idea that this twin engine guy might not be up-to-speed on his planning for this approach.
It quickly becomes apparent from our spot on the ramp that his base leg approach is quite tight and that his turn to final is going to be way too late. He brings the airplane around, trying to get centered on the final approach but ends up way too wide and right of the course. So I think to myself, "Well, he'll go around now, there's no way to correct the approach from out there, so close to the runway end". But no, instead he turns the 50-60 degrees he needs to get pointed to the runway threshold and tries to salvage the approach.
This turn has him, and his high-power engines, pointing right for Tucker and me. We are still strapped in the airplane and starting to think that we should get the hell out of dodge. For a brief 2 seconds I envision this guy plowing into the ramp, and imagine the terrible scene of a crash and airplane parts cart-wheeling right at Tucker and me.
There is no way he can safely straighten out his course to get on the runway centerline in time. Just as I start to move to exit the plane, I hear the sound of his engines spooling back up. He is finally "going around" and makes a turn to the right after roaring over the ramp (and Tucker and me!) at 80' - 100' AGL. Thankfully there was nothing for him to knock into as he made the maneuver. I breathe a sigh of relief as Tucker expresses his unhappiness at what we had just witnessed.
We look to the SE and see the twin transitioning back into another left hand traffic pattern. After a few seconds, the gentleman on Williamsburg UNICOM lets the guy know to make right hand traffic and he corrects his pattern and comes in for a landing where it seemed he almost let his wheel go off the left shoulder of the runway after touchdown (I can't be sure, but it looked that way - the runway is pretty narrow, especially for a large airplane).
So, yes, a shaded tarmac would be a terrible, terrible idea, as that twin might have taken out anything that was providing shade.
The new things I learned today and the biggest places for improvement are:
- The heat - even at 9am we had reached 85 degrees with plenty of humidity
- A few moments of uneasiness when a large twin engine tried to salvage an approach that was un-salvageable from early on
I had scheduled the flight for 9am, knowing full well the heat wave we've had recently, and hoping that an early flight would help. I'm sure it was cooler than say, 2pm, but even when doing the preflight, with a slight breeze blowing, I was sweating and wishing there was a huge tree or awning providing some shade.
I guess it would be hard to shade the tarmac without limiting the size of airplanes that could taxi in, and generally making the airport overly dangerous when a takeoff/landing goes awry. In fact, later I would see why a tarmac with shade would be a bad thing, but I'll get to that in a bit.
After the preflight, we hop in and I start gaining in contortionist skill while learning how to bend and flex from a perch on the right wing of the airplane, down in the door, and over to the left seat - dodging the yokes, flap control, and seat belts. I open the little window vent (pictured on the right) in the vain hope that air might reach me in this oven of a cabin. Tucker smartly keeps the door open as I start my clumsy step-through of the pre-start checklist.
OK, parking brake - check, prop full forward - check, proper fuel tank selected - check! Before too long we are ready to get the big fan up in front of the airplane operating. I do the prime by turning on the fuel pump, bringing the mixture to rich, counting to 3 seconds "1-1000, 2-1000, 3-1000" setting mixture back to lean, and turning the pump off. A little bit of throttle in, I turn the key to "start" and the engine starts slowly rotating but won't catch. I let it go through about 8 revolutions using the starter, and we decide that it is either flooded or not quite primed enough. So we prime it for 1 more second and try again. Nothing. Not even the slightest hint of the engine firing up.
Tucker, who is the go-to guy for getting this temperamental engine going, says "well, we flooded it" and tries a few techniques to clear the gas out and get it started. The engine teases us once or twice that she might want to fire up, but after a few more tries, we are getting nowhere. We make the decision to let her sit on the ramp for a bit and clear out on her own (lest we kill the battery with the starter).
The last place we want to be is in that cabin with no air coming in so we hop out and stretch our legs for a bit. I use that opportunity to snap these pictures (below). See that gas puddle right behind the nose wheel in the left and middle pics? Yeah, I flooded it alright. :) Next time I will count to 2 instead of 3 on a hot day like this.
After about 5-10 minutes we get in to try again, and - long story short - just as we were giving up, she finally cranked up. At first the engine sounded like a cylinder or two were "missing" (not firing properly) but after a few more moments it started sounding like its normal, smooth self.
What do they say about airplane engines? Something like:"The good thing about an airplane engine is that, even though it can be a bitch to start, it tends to keep running once you do".
So we finally had some air flowing - I readied the plane for the taxi out to runway 13. Down at the hold short line, we go through the last bit of the checklist (the engine was still not happy at idle speed) and start looking for other traffic in the pattern.
As my head tilts to look up over the final approach course, a bit of sweat runs run down my temple and I catch it with my shirt sleeve. Ugh. I think to myself about how air conditioning has spoiled me, and that I shouldn't be griping about the heat and sweat. To tell you the truth, I'd take that "flying oven" over an air conditioned office any day. And that flying oven with retractable gear was finally ready to take flight.
We take off, pitch for 95 MPH, raise the gear, bring the power back a bit on the upwind leg to give the engine a minor rest, and head out to the practice area over the Chickahominy river - where it heads north out of the James river.
We quickly realize that the haze is not going to help out in our plan do to some power-on stalls. The horizon, if I can call it that, is entirely obscured by a smooth gradient of color from the brown earth to the white sky. Without that reference in my peripheral vision, the high pitch attitude of a power-on stall in an airplane I am not familiar with is not something to seek out.
We stick to the power-off stalls, and after a few of them I am beginning to get the feel for how N44084 drops off when she can no longer fly. The stalls were quite manageable. The only thing sticking in my head was that she needs plenty of right rudder when the 200 horses are turned back on in the recovery.
We decide to head back for a few landings back at KJGG. I was having a terrible time nailing altitude and heading, letting them go by the wayside as I focused on some of the new systems (mainly how power changes work with the prop lever involved and when to raise/lower the gear for the stalls). But I focus on altitude and heading more as we setup to re-enter the landing pattern and start to get a little more precise.
We make 2 stop-and-go landings that work out OK and then taxi back to the parking spot. With the engine shutdown after an hour's worth of running, Tucker opens the door to let some air in.
This is when I get a concrete example of how a shaded ramp would be bad news.
With the door open, we hear a pair of large engines running at low power. We look up to see a large twin coming in for left hand traffic to runway 13. Now, runway 13 has a right hand traffic pattern, I think mainly for noise abatement, so we have an idea that this twin engine guy might not be up-to-speed on his planning for this approach.
It quickly becomes apparent from our spot on the ramp that his base leg approach is quite tight and that his turn to final is going to be way too late. He brings the airplane around, trying to get centered on the final approach but ends up way too wide and right of the course. So I think to myself, "Well, he'll go around now, there's no way to correct the approach from out there, so close to the runway end". But no, instead he turns the 50-60 degrees he needs to get pointed to the runway threshold and tries to salvage the approach.
This turn has him, and his high-power engines, pointing right for Tucker and me. We are still strapped in the airplane and starting to think that we should get the hell out of dodge. For a brief 2 seconds I envision this guy plowing into the ramp, and imagine the terrible scene of a crash and airplane parts cart-wheeling right at Tucker and me.
There is no way he can safely straighten out his course to get on the runway centerline in time. Just as I start to move to exit the plane, I hear the sound of his engines spooling back up. He is finally "going around" and makes a turn to the right after roaring over the ramp (and Tucker and me!) at 80' - 100' AGL. Thankfully there was nothing for him to knock into as he made the maneuver. I breathe a sigh of relief as Tucker expresses his unhappiness at what we had just witnessed.
We look to the SE and see the twin transitioning back into another left hand traffic pattern. After a few seconds, the gentleman on Williamsburg UNICOM lets the guy know to make right hand traffic and he corrects his pattern and comes in for a landing where it seemed he almost let his wheel go off the left shoulder of the runway after touchdown (I can't be sure, but it looked that way - the runway is pretty narrow, especially for a large airplane).
So, yes, a shaded tarmac would be a terrible, terrible idea, as that twin might have taken out anything that was providing shade.
The new things I learned today and the biggest places for improvement are:
- USE THE CHECKLISTS I still have not developed a good checklist habit
- Don't do anything to configure the airplane on the ground unless you are stopped - no flipping switches or raising the flaps when rolling
- Tighten up the traffic pattern, this airplane drops like a rock when you have no power
- Don't add flaps when in a turn - I had to ask why this is bad
- Manifold pressure changes with altitude, so check it every 1000' or so in a climb or descent
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