Mark's Pilot Log

I finished my checkout in the club's Saratoga today. Today's flight was all about flying the plane close to maximum gross. I've had plenty of experience flying PA32-300's near max gross, but the club rules don't account for that, so I had to do it all.

So, we filled up the tanks, found a couple of "sandbags" to sit in the back seats, and took off. Other than the obvious take offs and landings, we also did some medium bank turns and slow flight. We finished off with a no-flap landing, which I hadn't done in any plane in many years (I know, shame on me). By the end I was pretty tired, so the no-flap landing was pretty ugly, but safe.

So know I'm all set for vacation in June. Unfortunately, the plane is scheduled to get a new engine right before we're supposed to leave...

To become a CFI, you must be trained in spin entry and recovery. The theory is that you should have some experience recovering from spins in case a student puts you into a spin during training. I suppose that makes sense, but that didn't make me any happier about doing it. Generally, my fear of heights doesn't bother me when I'm flying. But when I'm doing stalls, it seems to get to me. It really comes down to whether I'm looking straight ahead or if I'm looking all around while doing the stall. If I'm looking straight ahead, I always feel like I'm in a much steeper attitude than I really am (like 45 degrees or something). Reality is that in a power on stall, 15 degrees is about it, unless you just yank it up hard. In a power off stall it's even less. But again, that didn't help my nerves when we went out to do spin training.

We used a Cessna 152, which is incredibly forgiving and takes work to put into a spin. We spent most of the flight getting up to altitude. Once we got to about 5,000 ft, we did a power off stall, and just as it started to stall, kicked in full left rudder. Over we go and about .75 seconds later we're in a steep dive. Not much of a spin. Maybe a half turn. The "recovery" was letting off the rudder. So we climbed back up to altitude and did the same thing to the right. I remembered to hold the rudder in a little longer this time so we got about 2/3 of a turn. Then we flew home.

Less than 45 minutes in the air and about two minutes of it was spent in stalling, spinning and recovering the plane. The rest was flying to the practice area, climbing to altitude, and flying home.

I'm planning on taking some acrobatic training one day. Maybe I'll get to do some good spins then...

In prepping for my CFI checkride, I decided to take a non-pilot friend flying and "teach" him to fly. So we drove up to the airport, pulled the Archer out of the hangar, preflighted, and climbed in. I sat right seat, which is the first time I've sat right seat without and instructor in the left. It's odd, but the right seat is starting to feel like the normal seat.

I had talked to my friend yesterday about this flight and he had seemed up for the idea then, but today, he changed his mind. His allergies were acting up, so he had dosed up with his allergy medicine before driving out to meet me. So much for the the little training cruise.

That didn't stop us from flying, though. It was a beautifully calm morning without a bump in the sky. The visibility was pretty bad for this time of the year, but we had about five miles, so all was good. As we got closer to Portsmouth, however, the visibility started to close up a little bit and I was starting to think that we may have to file to get home.

On the ground, you couldn't tell how bad the in-flight visibility was. It looked like a bright sunny day with blue skies. As they say, looks can be deceiving.

Anyway, we had lunch at the Skyline Family Restaurant (no relation to Skyline Chili), a nice little burger joint on the field at PMH. It's one of my favorite $100 hamburger stops.

After lunch, a quick check of the weather showed no change in visibility (reporting greater than six miles). I decided to depart VFR and if the visibility looked like it was going to be problem, file in the air. Fortunately, the visibility had actually improved somewhat. Unfortunately, that improvement was caused by vertical air currents that made the flight home feel like we were flying a popcorn maker instead of an airplane.

It's days like these that make me appreciate winter flying. If it wasn't so cold, it would be perfect!