Thoughts on Flight Training

It been several weeks since my last post. I've been doing flight training on the weekends and ground school two nights during the week. Recently, my flight training has been focused on getting ready to solo. Obviously, when you "solo", you fly the plane all by yourself (i.e. sans instructor). So each lesson usually involves some combination of slow flight, power-on and power-off stalls, emergency landing procedures, steep turns, and plenty of landings and takeoffs. I think we did 8 landing and takeoffs on my last flight.

Emergency landings are fun to practice. Unannounced, the instructor will pull the throttle out to idle (this does not stop the engine, it's still turning at about 500 rpm, but that's not enough to produce any appreciable thrust). At that point, you pitch the plane to best glide speed. This is the airspeed that will give you the most horizontal distance for a given rate of descent. You then pick the best available landing spot and set up an approach to land. We simulate trying to restart the engine and assume that we can't. We get within 500 feet of the ground and then apply full throttle and climb. It's surprising how far those little Cessnas can glide.

A couple weeks ago I flew "under the hood." This is where they put a hood over your eyes so that all you can see are your instruments. This is to simulate flying through clouds, without any visual reference. It is sort of like the training that Luke Skywalker received from Obi-Wan in Star Wars where Luke wore the helmet and had to defend himself from the laser ball thing. It's interesting how what your body is telling you can be different from what your instruments are telling you. You might feel like the plane is flying straight and level whereas it is actually turning to the left. You have to ignore what your body is sensing and trust your instruments. You also have to trust your flight instructor.

My lesson starts in a couple of hours. Time to get ready.