Birds on the runway, Birds in the sky....

Lesson #7
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Flight Time: 8:00am
Length: 1.5 hrs
Total Time in logbook: 22.6 (7.8 since starting lessons again)

Notes:
Awoke this morning to the most beautiful weather for a month at least now. Clear blue skies, temps in the high 40s at 6:30am. I think to myself "now this should be fun, no crosswind".

Upon arrival to the airport, my instructor greets me, and I proceed to preflight the aircraft. One of the things I dont like about rentals is the fact that each person has a different opinion of "full" fuel tanks. On inspection of the left wing tank, it was apparently 5 gallons low or so. I pointed it out to my instructor, and I got a credit for it so no biggie, just frustrating, as I take great care when refueling the plane. Today we decided stalls and VOR navigation were on tap. My takeoffs are getting much better, almost a no brainer. Im still having an issue correcting stalls. I want to correct with rudder into the stalled wing, not opposite....Ill get it one of these days.

I decided to ask about VOR navigation, as Ive been reading about it for awhile now. I have very little exposure to it as my last instructor did no instruction regarding that subject. We dialed in travis VOR, and maintained our 5000ft alt. I learned about Flight Following as well, and good thing we got it. Once out over fairfield area, Travis AFB became visible. WOW what a sight. About 4 miles of paved surface all said, and whats that a c-5 just departing the active headed our way ... too cool! At this point Travis approach asked we climb to 5500. 3 more departures quickly left the area, all within about 1500ft of us (all below thankfully). What a thrill, a c-5, 2 dc-10s and a c-130. Needless to say I was a little unnerved, but having the Flight Following really helped. We crossed the VOR, and told approach we were headed back to the nut tree. Flight Following cancelled, and I dialed in 122.7 (UNICOM for nut tree).

There was traffic reporting 5 miles out, and heading for runway 20. First of all, we were about 7 miles out, and secondly automated weather was reporting conditions favoring runway 2. I had visual on the traffic first, and called him to see if he had us. After what seemed forever, we decided that as we were higher and further out, hed lead us in. Ive never landed with a tail wind, and it showed. I really pancaked in hard. Indicated airspeed was lower than normal, about 60kts, but the ground speed was way higher. I didnt like that at all. I taxid back around to runway 2 and took off for some pattern work.

My best landings to date. All 4 of them were "greasers". My instructor congraulated me after each one. Im going to solo next time :) My plans of taking the written were a little adventageous. Theres so much to learn with just manuevers and commit those to memory I cant imagine all that at once. Oh yeah, birds every where in this everywhere during the AM hours it seems. A flock of birds all around us again on short finals.

Flight Planning can be fun......

I signed up for the weather service provided by DUATS, the other day, and this morning I woke up to find access to their website in my inbox. What a really incredible tool! I just wish they would let me do some work on how the site looks :) Sinve Ive been working on doing some flight planning, with the assistance of Rod Machados' book, and the trusty old handbook for the e6b, I should now be able to produce a fully functional flight plan.....

I decided that for the first flight plan, Id go ahead and do the example straight out of the book. WOW, not only is it an area Im familiar with, but the airport Im based out of, how cool is that! The e6b seems to be able to compute any value known to man, assuming you know how to read it right (which takes some practice I might add), but after about an hour or so I manage to plan a 33 minute flight. A little later, I had a great idea. I thought to my self, wouldnt it be neat to take all this planning and be able to fly it right now? I THINK I CAN! Plug the winds aloft values into flight sim, and we should be good to go!.

Once inside flight sim, I selected healdsburg as the departure, and using the 'advanced' weather tab, you can set what ever meterological condition your heart desires. In this case I set winds aloft and temp info to match my flight plan Id just completed. Using only my sectional and times/checkpoints on my flightplan, I navigated to the nut tree with hardly any problems. It turned out I needed a little more right course correction than Id planned for, but using virtual pilotage skills, I was able to find the field with no issues. It was nice to see that from planning to virtual implementaion I was able to successfully navigate to and from the areas of my choice. I hope it goes this well in real life.

Im still looking at headsets, but I know the David Clarks are still the ones to buy for my budget right now. Just need to pull the trigger on that, but money just seems to go oh so quickly with hobbies.........

I can smell the solo coming....

Lesson #6
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Flight Time: 8:00am
Length: 1.2 hrs
Total Time in logbook: 21.5 (6.7 since starting lessons again)

Got up way too early for a sunday morning, but the only time avaiable for the plane Ive been flying (N328SP), was early this morning. As it turns out it was a beautiful morning, with the exception of the winds gusting to 16 at 7am :)

After preflight, we headed up and out of the nut tree and I asked my instructor "where to?", and he promptly replied "yolo county, winds seem to be more aligned with the runway out there". Ok, were off to Yolo County! After about 10 or 15 mins, just east of winters I saw the airport. Im getting better at aerial recognition, I always figured airports would be easier to spot, but they really do blend in! As we entered on the downwind, I noticed lots of birds in the area of the runway, that really gets me, but I guess we are invading their airspace afterall.

Yolo county was a rather nice field, very nicely paved surface and nice and wide. On finals, I was getting batted about rather well by the winds and had to keep in alot more power than Im used to (about 2000 RPM vs 1500 or less normally). Just after my first touch and go, one of my new acquaintences entered the traffic pattern with his instructor. It was really cool to follow each other around the pattern. My radio work is getting like clock work now, which is great progress from just a short time ago. After about 10 t/o and landings we decided to head back home as the wind was starting to pick up even more. I got ATIS headed back home, and it was gusting to 23! yikes this one will be fun.

Entered on the downwind just above pattern alt., for runway 2. Im glad my instructor was in the plane with me as it was really a drastic crosswind, just about or above the 15 rated for the aircraft. I made it stick, but it wasnt pretty.

Back at the fuel pumps, I saw N286SP, the plane that was doing pattern work out at yolo with us. We parked and tied down, and shot the breeze for a bit. We both commented on the winds and the turbulence below 1500ft. I feel bad for the pilot on his checkride this morning, best of luck to him!

After a while back at the FBO, my instructor and I went over the Pre-Solo test Id taken home with me after the last flight. There was a few questions I had about 1 or 2 questions, but overall I did very well. I dont think there was a major correction to any one of my answers, which admittedly I had to go back to my study guides alot for, but still I feel ready its just a matter of convincing my instructor now.