Wake Turbulence

My friend took me up in his Navion again last night for a quick little flight before dinner. We took our daughters along for the ride. His daughter is two, and quite used to flying with daddy. My daughter is three, and this was her first time in a small plane. She really enjoyed it, and did much better than I thought she would, even in a couple of 60 degree turns. Her greatest discomfort was from the headset.

But anyway… Michael let me fly for a little while and talked me through some turns. We did a 30 degree turn to the left, and ended up flying through our own wake turbulence. It was pretty cool! We hit the turbulence just as we rolled out, and I was so excited about it, I busted my altitude and started climbing. Oops!

Flying back to the field, we were all set up for a 45 entry to a left downwind for 27, except that we needed to be on a right downwind for 9, so he let me fly the turn to enter the pattern. He let me fly most of the downwind, which was pretty cool, but again, I’ve got this little altitude problem. I was about 100 feet lower than I should have been.

Michael flew the base, and set up for the final, and then let me fly most of the final. He said I did really well holding my airspeed through the decent. As we got lower, I really started feeling the ‘mushiness’ of the controls, as it was pretty hard to hold the centerline. He said later that I was headed for the grass, but I reminded him that *technically* that grass *is* an active runway! He took over, and greased the landing (as usual).

It’s not loggable time, but it was very fun, and I learned a lot.

I did try a 60 degree turn, but we won’t talk about that……

38.2 Hours to go!

Well, to get to the FAA’s minimum, anyway.

I received my first 1.2 hours Dual on Friday, May 28, 2004.

I met the CFI, Dave, at KDPA at 5:00 on a very calm, clear Friday evening, which has been rare around here lately. We pulled the plane, a 1947 Ryan Navion (not your usual trainer) out of the hanger, and did a basic preflight. At this point, I still wasn’t sure what to expect from this flight, or even what seat I’d be sitting in. Dave then hopped up and got in the right hand seat. WooHoo!

I got to taxi a bit (like a drunken sailor), and when we were clear, Dave took off. We climbed out, and turned to the west, and then the information overload began!

We started with some basic turns at 30 degrees. The Navion has the linkage between the ailerons and rudder, so I actually didn’t use the rudder pedels in the air at all. It might be a good idea to learn how those work some day…

I had a hard time holding my altitude, especially in the beginning when I was looking more at the vertical speed indicator instead of the altimeter. I learned quickly that the vsi lags quite a bit. Once I switched to the altimeter, holding altitude was a *little* better.

We continued to do different turns climbs, and descents at different power settings, most of which I didn’t yet comprehend. Did I mention the information overload? Dave demonstrated a couple of maneuvers, including 60 degree turns, a power off, and a power on stall. The 60 degree turns are fun. I’ve experienced them before, and really enjoy feeling 2 g’s. As we turned to the left, I looked out the window straight down at the wing and a farmhouse below. What a cool sight to see the wing just ’sitting’ there, not doing much flying. The power off stall was very fun too. I had some trepidation about stalls, but they weren’t as bad as I was expecting them to be. The power off stall was started at about 4500 feet. Dave dropped the power, and put the plane into landing configuration with flaps and the gear down. Holding, holding, holding, break! Wow! How fun!

We spent a lot of time doing basic stuff, and I spent most of my time looking at instruments and watching for traffic. So, when Dave asked if there was anything I wanted to see or do, I looked out to get my bearings. I had thought about buzzing my brother’s house. It turned out that we were a lot further north than I thought we were, so instead of flying over my brother’s house, we fly past my friend’s airpark. There was traffic in the area, and Dave didn’t know the airpark’s frequency, so we couldn’t do a low pass, but it was still pretty cool anyway.

Dave set the VOR, and I followed that back in the direction of DuPage. When we were 10 miles out, Dave took over for the landing, which allowed me to take in the incredible view. Landing on runway 10, we pass right over the Fox river. The river below us, the runway straight ahead, and Chicago’s Loop beyond made a great sight. Boy, those VASI(?) lights were pretty hard for me to pick up until we were much closer to the field. I’m glad Dave had no problem watching those.

We did more drunken sailor taxiing to get fuel, and then back to the hangar to complete my first 1.2 hours. What a blast!

I took a couple of pictures of the plane both before and after the flight, and attempted to take one picture in-fight of my friend’s house, but when I tried to download the camera, XP’s wizard ended up nuking all of my pictures. Boy, was I pissed! At least I have a ground track to show for it!