portsmouth

Tim was busy this time, so I went up with a new instructor -- Doug. He's an ex-Navy pilot, and commutes up here from Maryland in order to teach.

We spent an hour on the ground first talking over all things aeronautical. He's flown a large number of different planes, but not the 172 that I fly, so this is something new for him, too.

I did the pre-flight and he followed me around. He wants me to tell him what I'm doing and why, which is good because it gives me some practice explaining myself, which I'll likely need for the practical test. We get in, get started, pick up ATIS and start taxiing out to the run-up area near runway 23. It's all ice, so I'm going fairly slowly. It's tough to stay on a center line that isn't visible, but at least there's no traffic here.

We start doing the run-up, and the oil temperature isn't yet in the green, so we sit and talk over a few different scenarios. What if there's an engine out? What if you see smoke? What do you do if you're lost? His approach is a bit different from Tim's. Where Tim wants to focus on one thing and get it right, Doug wants to talk through the various scenarios to make sure we have a plan for each one. I'm a bit nervous, so I don't know that I get all of them right. But I do set up the radios and nav before we call for clearance.

We take off and turn towards our heading. I'm watching the VOR, and we're getting blown to the east -- the wind is much stronger than forecast, so I start going to the left 5 degrees at a time, trying to crab into it. Eventually, I get my bearings straight and I see Exeter, so I pick up Portsmouth ATIS, write it down, and switch to tower. I call the tower and tell them only that I have information Juliet. Not where I am or where I'm going. Oops. I realize my mistake when the tower calls back and asks me to ident, and I go fumbling for the button. He might as well have said, "gee, nice to hear from you; but who and where are you?"

He tells us to report a two mile left base into 34. I can see the large body of water near PSM, but I can't really identify the runway. At least I know where it is, so I head towards where I think it ought to be. I'm a bit close on my base, but I make the call. I descend in, and it seems to take forever to get rid of my airspeed and land. It's a good thing that the runway is over 11000 feet long. I have room to land clumsily and even stop and go, with room to spare.

The wind is much stronger here than I expected. I take off and am immediately drifting across the runway because I forgot to turn into the wind as I should have. Doug briefly takes the controls to prevent us from touching down again and spinning or rolling over. But we're up again, and the tower asks for my intent. I ask permission to stay in the pattern, and he tells me to make a left pattern and report my base.

This time around, I'm not making enough correction for the wind, so I call wings-up on my turn to base, and keep going around to final. I'm far enough off the centerline, too fast, and too high, so I just push in the power and go around, telling the tower what I'm doing. The next time around, I crab out much further, and I get what looks like a somewhat stable approach. I do a forward slip to land, but Doug tells me I'm going too fast and need to pay more attention to airspeed. I'm not sure he noticed the slip. We do it one more time and then head back to Lawrence.

Doug wants to go to Beverly, but I hadn't planned on that and, fortunately, it was getting too late now, so we just head back home. After I land he asks me about the approach speed -- and we realize that he'd memorized the speeds in knots, but this instrument is marked in MPH. That relieves at least one of the mistakes.

We talk over the flight afterwards and the notes he'd jotted down during the trip. It seems I did ok given my level of experience, but I'm not thrilled with that performance, particularly completely spacing out on the initial contact to PSM.

I have time scheduled Monday, but that's probably going to be a miss, as there's a storm coming in with high winds forecast. Another session is set for Friday. I'm still hoping for calm (or near-calm) winds so that I can get that third solo. I definitely need some time where I can just practice those approaches and get more stabilized more often.

Posted at 09:47PM Dec 15, 2007 by carlson in Aviation  |