Lesson 5
Date:- 28 July 2017
Aircraft: – ZS-BOR
Route: – FALA – Magalies GFA – FALA
METAR: – FALA 18110Z VRB05KT 9999 FEW030 17/03 Q1031 NOSIG
Hours:- 1.4
Total Hours:- 8.4
Power + Attitude = Performance
This mantra is drummed into student pilots and has been for years. But I believe it goes beyond the physics of flying. Power is easy – Either you have it or you don't. So for me it isn't as important as attitude.
On Friday I had a revelation while flying. My instructor kept telling me to lower the nose, lower the nose, get the bloody nose down while we were in level flight. I was convinced the nose was low enough (in my defense the horizon consisted of 3 fingers of haze…). 70% power and ZS-BOR (my favourite SR20 in the school) is wallowing along at 105kts. So, in line with my stated policy of listening to the instructor, I trim the nose down 2 clicks. And…. as I expected, she starts to accelerate. And descend (OK, the VSI drops) – I hear my instructor telling me to look outside. I'm about to say, "I AM looking outside" but then it occurs to me I've noticed the VSI and I can't have noticed the VSI if I was looking outside. So I bite my tongue. And then I feel it.
There is a subtle shift I feel in my butt. And she accelerates to 120kts. The nose comes up, I trim her down and bingo. We are on the correct side of the power curve. Attitude. And now we're really flying…. I can feel now in retrospect how we weren't doing so well before – definitely on the wrong side of the curve.
That got me thinking about attitude – with the right attitude you can really fly. I want to fly with the right attitude. I'm too old and have too many people depending on me to take a slapdash approach to my flying. So I make sure I dress correctly and smartly for lessons, and have a pen in my pocket, pitch up on time, and learn the flows (OK, I'm trying to learn the flows).
"Just because you aren't getting paid doesn't mean you don't have to be professional"
I can't remember where I heard this but I think it's a good philosophy. Hopefully I'm still using it when I can't fly anymore.
Equipment
I used my old iPhone and MotionX GPS to record our track for the flight – I was amazed to see we flew almost 200km – lots of back and forth through the GFA – see pic below.
I also tried (again) to record ATC/Intercom audio from my GoPro – but as we leveled off in the cruise the cable fell out – which I thought was weird, until I looked at it and saw the plug was completely bent out of shape. Which was very weird – until I reviewed the footage – I must have kicked the cable and ruined the plug when I got into the plane. Bother. So now waiting for a new one. Which despite paying Amazon for expedited shipping will still only arrive on Thursday according to Amazon and more annoyingly on Monday NEXT week according to UPS.
The flying
This was a lesson to firm up the stalls because next week I have my stall/spin/high GFA work signoff eval – with the chief instructor – it also forms part of the dual check which they use to make sure the instructors are up to spec – which means I'm flying with a new instructor for this. So we did power off, power on, landing and clean config stalls, reinforced HASELL checks, and even a quick rudder spiral dive for good measure. A selection of the stalls are shown in the video below – I was surprised at how benign the power on stall was – definitely less of an event than I imagined – still not something to take lightly. I'm finally nailing the power off stall – much less aggressive forward pressure and more of a check forward – still a bit hard on the right rudder as power comes in – interestingly I didn't appreciate this fully until reviewing the GoPro footage – I do have an inkling of how much to put in now though. I did appreciate it when the instructor said, "your'e good enough to get signed out, but I know you want to do them better, so let's do some more". – that's the attitude.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMJGyMurpN8&w=560&h=315]
Landing was much better – although I did round out a meter or two too high so we had a very positive touchdown – but all in all not too bad at all.
