The flight yesterday was wonderful! I had my first backseat passenger, flew to a new state, had a great lunch, and came home on time with tower’s compliments on my landing.
There were a few things that happened during the flight that I feel like helped me get more comfortable in the air and increased my mental stamina. That’s why I want to share my debrief. I usually do them on the drive home from the airport and talk to myself through things. Then again when I update my logbook. But let’s try writing it for a change.
Observation #1
I checked the weather so many times before we got to the airport, while I was preflighting, and before we even taxied out of the parking area. Everything was relatively clear until we were about halfway through the flight. I was cruising happily at 5500ft and then I saw these unforecasted, unexpected clouds. Immediately I knew I had to descend so I wouldn’t fly into them since I don’t have an instrument rating yet.
So I start the descent to 3500ft and see that’s still not quite low enough. So we go to 3000ft. The MEF for the area is 2300ft, but the terrain is hilly and the clouds aren’t clearing. But they stay at roughly 3500ft the whole way to the new airfield.
That was a little unnerving. Where there are clouds, there’s usually turbulence and there was. Nothing crazy, but just enough to keep me locked in. This was wonderful because now I have a better feel and intuition for turbulence and my power settings than I had before. Plus that boost of experience helps me know how to better handle it when it happens again.
Observation #2
About 30 minutes out from the airfield, I realized I couldn’t see my little plane on Foreflight. Thankfully I was still on the heading for my course and those checkpoints I planned really came in handy. Without those I would have been lost.
It was still made me a little nervous since this was my first time in the area. Eventually I got passed from Center to Tower. Tower gave me instructions I couldn’t follow because I didn’t have the field in sight yet so I told them I was new to the area and need some help navigating in.
They were great about it and as soon as I flew over a large hill I saw the field. They had me fly a 5 mile final which gave me plenty of time to set up and grease the landing. But for a brief moment I had to control my emotions about the feelings of being lost with the low clouds in VFR.
I spent time chair-flying the route on Google Earth which helped, but I didn’t expect that hill and not having my location showing. I had to cycle the avionics when we landed because our squawk wasn’t showing for Tower either.
This was a lesson I used immediately because the same thing happened on the way back and all I needed to do was toggle the squawk between my assigned one and VFR one time.
Observation #3
The lunch we flew in for was totally worth it and we even got a short tour from a local Uber driver! The taxi and run-up were uneventful, the fuel was plentiful, and the takeoff was smooth despite a crosswind. I climb to my altitude and get configured for everything and just cruise on home.
Then that pesky turbulence came back. My passenger trusted me enough with their life to just sleep through it and riding the bumps wasn’t the worst. It was the right amount to give me that “get-there-itis”. We were only about 20 minutes from my home field and Approach was super busy with big and small traffic. I just wanted to be passed to Tower and land as soon as I could.
At the point they cleared me to fly direct base to final, I saw I was still way too high and too fast. I wasn’t totally configured for landing because my mind drifted to what we were doing later. So when I entered base I had a mild scramble.
Everything went fine and I got that nice compliment on the crosswind, short field landing I did from Tower and the pilot holding short. It reminded me of that statistic that most car accidents happen close to home. It’s the same in aviation and those stats back it up as well.
Realizing I was distracted was a wake up call to how important it is to fly the plane to the fly. Even when we’re on the ground, there’s still wind to account for and other taxi conditions so you don’t stop flying until the engine’s off.
Observation #4
I’ve been making a game out of how well I can stay within ACS standards on every flight and it’s helped. Staying on course with wind, staying at the right altitude and speed. I’m starting to develop that “feel” for the plane. It was nice to have that experience. A couple of books that helped me get more of this intuition are Fate is the Hunter and Stick and Rudder.
Something else I’m trying is incorporating some of the skills I’m learning from the IFR ground school, in particular the instrument scanning techniques. That’s the main thing that’s helped me keep tighter tolerances on my instruments.
Playing these little games has improved my proficiency and I’ll keep playing them and coming up with new ones.