Tag Archives: slow flight

Foray into night flying

November 12, 2014AviationByron, Cessna 172, engine out, landings, Livermore, slow flight, stall, steep turnthenandakumars

Srinath’s turn to fly today. I headed straight from work to the airport. Unfortunately we forgot to pack the GoPro so today’s video was shot on a handheld iPhone and we don’t have an audio feed.

We started with high air work – steep turns, slow flight, stall and recovery. Then we headed to Byron for some landings. By now it was inching closer to dusk and since this was a training flight with our instructor, we were not constrained by the night flying rules.

Speaking of night, there are three different definitions in the FAR for different purposes. FAR 1.1 defines night as the time from the end of evening civil twilight to the beginning of morning civil twilight as published in the air almanac, converted to local time. This is for logging night flying hours. FAR 61.57(b) defines night takeoff and landing experience required for PIC. Night in this context is defined as starting one hour after sunset and ending one hour before sunrise. Three takeoffs and landings to a full stop are required within the preceding 90 days to be current. Finally FAR 91.209 talks about turning on position lights from sunset to sunrise.

Here is how I remember the three regulations. First of all, civil twilight is when the sun is at or up to 6 degrees below the horizon. At most latitudes (except as you approach the poles), civil twilight lasts less than an hour. So there are three regulations and they apply to three points in time – sunset, twilight and one-hour-after-sunset. Just as we would in a car, we should turn on the lights as early as possible. Sunset is the earliest of the three times and it makes sense to turn on position lights at this time. As a pilot in command carrying passengers, you want to be proficient in night landings. It makes sense for the regulations to stipulate currency requirements in the worst case scenario (i.e.) when it is the darkest. This is one-hour-after-sunset among the three times. That leaves night logging for hours starting with the end of evening civil twilight and ending at the start of morning twilight (i.e.) when the sun is at least 6 degrees below the horizon.

After a few landings, Srinath flew back to Livermore for a night landing.

More high air work

September 10, 2014AviationCessna 172, engine out, landing configuration, landings, Livermore, New Jerusalem, slow flight, stall, steep turn, touch and gothenandakumars

We were heading towards New Jerusalem and had entered the hills east of Livermore. Steve suddenly pulled the power (engine out simulation) and asked Srinath what he would do. Srinath suggested checking the fuel gauges (wrong), restarting the engine (wrong). Then he was scouting for a location (wrong). We were losing altitude and the terrain beneath us was climbing so the first thing to do was to turn 180 and head out of the hills back to the valley from which we approached. Steve took over the plane, made a steep turn to the left 180 degrees and got us pointing out of the hills towards the Livermore valley. This way we have increasing altitude under us. Then we scout for a place to make an emergency landing. We had a couple of back roads and some green fields and that was it. The exercise was over, we put the throttle back in, turned 180 and headed back into the hills, aimed for the valleys since we were still climbing slowly and again wanted more altitude underneath us.

Later, we headed towards New Jerusalem for steep turns, slow flight. When making turns in slow flight, look at the turn and bank indicator to make sure the turn isn’t steep. Don’t go beyond the first notch. Next, stall in the landing configuration – Steve demonstrated why you don’t dump all the flaps at once. We lost lift and descended at about 2000′ a minute even though the engine was powered up. Of course, this can be serious when you are close to the ground and starting a go-around.

Finally, some landings at New Jerusalem and then back to Livermore.

More Landings

August 12, 2014Aviationlandings, New Jerusalem, slow flightthenandakumars

Trying to make up for the last month when we couldn’t schedule even a single lesson. This week is turning out to be all about landings. It is Srinath’s turn to fly today. Flight service gave us a bird advisory in the Livermore airport vicinity – first time I’ve heard this. We flew south of R-2531 after a left downwind departure from Livermore since the restricted area was in effect today being a weekday. This time we looked for landmarks that we had studied in the sectional chart last sunday.

A the end of two attempts at slow flight, we were at 3000′ and the aircraft and almost right above the New Jerusalem runway. So Srinath put the engine in idle, looked for 65kts glide speed and we circled once to lose altitude before going in for the first landing. On the second landing, Srinath took his hands off the throttle so Steve immediately put in full power for a go-around. Srinath did a total of 5 landings and one go-around at New Jerusalem, Steve did one landing to show Srinath. Then Srinath did a 6th straight-in landing back at Livermore.

[Aug 14] Steve and I both have a hard stop in the morning so we decide to shoot landings at Livermore airport itself. We start at 7:30am and get 13 landings in an hour before calling it a day.

Instrument hood, Slow flight and Landings

June 21, 2014Aviationinstrument, landings, slow flightthenandakumars

Today was an early morning flight at 8am. We got to the hangar and started preflight before Steve arrived. It is my turn to fly today and we started with some instrument work under the hood.

Next, we worked on slow flight. Twice I put the plane into slow flight. On the second attempt, Steve asked me to make a shallow left turn. I banked to the left (wings lower on the left) and to keep the turn coordinated, I had to relax the right rudder just a little bit. I relaxed it a bit too much so there was more yaw to the left as I was also banking. The plane has an over banking tendency since the outer wings are moving faster than the inner wings leading to more lift on the outer wings. Since the plane was close to stall speed (stall horns blaring constantly during slow flight) I thought the plane could go into a stall and left spin so I instinctively went for the throttle to give it a little power. This is when Steve caught my arm and pulled it back (see 6:21 in the video). He mentioned that power in that situation could have got me into a lot of trouble. Later, he demonstrated (at 7:05) what would have happened if I had given it throttle in the middle of the left turn close to stall speed. He didn’t give any power but his demonstration showed that we would have entered a spin. He quickly corrected it but you can see that the plane was in an unusual attitude of a very high bank angle to the left. If I had given power in that situation, we could have gone into a steep spiral. Phew.

We then did three touch and go landings at New Jerusalem. But first, we flew over the airport to check wind conditions since there was no weather information for the non-towered airport. After the landings, in the way back to Livermore, at 14:08 in the video Steve demonstrates how a fixed pitch prop’s RPM increases with nose down pitch when the airspeed increases.

Lesson 1 – part 2

June 19, 2014AviationByron, Cessna 172, engine out, instrument, landings, Livermore, pattern, slow flightthenandakumars

Today we flew over the Sacramento delta just north of Byron. Srinath got to do slow flying, engine out scenario, donned the goggles for instrument work, did a couple of takeoffs and landings with full stops as well as fly over midfield at Byron airport before returning to Livermore. For the engine out scenario, he spotted a dirt track and we came down to within 100′ simulating a landing before climbing back up. Byron airport is used for parachute jumping but since there was nobody there today we were able to fly midfield.