Samurai Husky

got bumped to monday if i pass the check ride on saturday

Solo XC i will want more approach work; Most of the time i dont know where we are going until my CFI shows up at the plane. So i dont have time to review sectionals or airport diagrams with runway numbers. I have been creating my own list of airports with runway numbers, frequencies, traffic patterns & TPAs etc. But it would be nice to do somem flight planning so that i dont show up at the airport and look all confused. When i do show up at airport X i have to really think where the entrance to the pattern is for what runway etc. IE we'll be 10nm out and say, ask for runway 25R. Then i have to think 25R? so if Im heading towards the airport at 90 and the runway runs 250 and you have to enter on on the 45, which means enter in at 205 the 25 R is a right pattern but im on the other side which means i have to transition over the airport to enter the pattern...... its a lot to think about in 10nm including getting down to altitude, communicating with ATC, etc. If i knew where we were going prior to the flight, i could have reviewed the sectional and the airport diagram and know exactly what i am going to do before i arrive. For weather, I am really good at turning around and running away @Marcopolo your early; I keep canceling it because my CFI has to go through required topics for ground school. So i didnt want to take the test and pass then go through that material again. We have 6 more topics to get through, 3 of which are directly related to x-country. I was also advised to go through flight school again prior to the oral so that everything is fresh. I think i was a little to ambitious and got through all the ground school work early and now some of the more detailed concepts i am forgetting.

@bradp Sounds about right. Though you have to pass the PPL check ride before you can get sign off for the FAA one. None of the CFI's i have flown with take it easy on their students. All in all, my flight club is very cautious about safety. Which is why the insurance rates there are very low. They have the best accident record in the bay area. So i can see where they would want to protect that title. So while they might hold your hand for longer than normal, you still cant PPL until they think you are ready. I guess my statement was more of a 'the required hours remaining' less than the actual time left to PPL, which can vary based on skill. But solo is pretty limited in general. My sign off is only 2 airports KPAO and KLVK. So i imagine most my time will be either spent on maneuvers or bouncing between the 2 airports to practice approaches, patterns and landings.

20-25hrs?. i dont know to me that sounds close. I have 1.5 of night left of which is 8 more TO/Landing to a full stop. Dual X-country of which he said we will do 2 of. Not sure where we go, i think it depends on the day and marine layer. Solo X-country which is 5 hours. Solo normal which is minimum of 5 hours. PPL check ride 3 hours. so 15+xcountry so maybe another 8 for that? so 23hrs? But thats just what i consider the mandatory stuff; I am sure i will have extra time in there for other maneuver practice. I have over 30hrs now; over 100 landings. Weather has been good, summer is finally coming and every day its been sunny with 7knt winds almost down the runway +10-15d Nothing on soft field, i did some short field at KPAO and nailed it. I am starting to get pretty good at landings. Now they are one of the funnest thing of the flight Either way, i think i will come in at what the average is, which is 75hrs for ppl at my club. But if its longer, its longer.

seems that even if i pass tomorrow, my first solo wouldn't be until sunday's lesson. Tomorrow is just a check ride Though i did confirm, after solo, PPL check ride is very close behind. Basically 5 hours of solo, then back with the CFI for X-country, then Cross Country solo then PPL check ride. So maybe 15 more hours? depending on how well i do with all of the maneuvers. My CFI's are mean, they want me to learn stall recovery when uncoordinated. So let the wing drop and recover, freaks me out everytime. So i am building in more CFI practice time to learn that enough where i'm not nervous anymore. Overall, I have done a lot of 'extra' lessons to get things right; We did 1.5hrs of night flight last night and got the x-country night out of the way. We would have done more, but during flight the ALT2 failed and we didnt want to risk anything with the marine layer starting to roll in.

I was told when I PPL, my CFI will teach me the 'bay tour' since he is the one that wrote it

didnt even know about it; Though my ipad doesnt have a GPS chip in it. I would have to use my iphone. Can foreflight do the same thing?

Actually the student that crashed was in a 172... not a cirrus. So no parashoots available. But even if he had one, i dont think he would have used it. I think the better lesson is, if it doesn't feel right, then go around try again. If it still doesn't feel right, redirect to a airport with a wide long runway and land there. If solo is just pattern work, then I think I am ready for PPL I can do patterns with no issues, i can land with no issues. Right now the only thing i need to brush up on are steep turns with in check ride standards and ground reference maneuvers (i really dont like the spot we use for that, its basically 8 salt ponds surrounded by more salt ponds, which arnt all square. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.5143109,-122.0152641,2087m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

lol; thats the first thing you notice? I responded on my iphone, i guess it has the old account on there from when i created an account but realized i spelled it wrong The fluffball in question is ok, though might be suffering from high colesterol after eating a lb of butter when i wasnt looking

Sorry not happening Saturday is the check ride test I pass that, then I can solo. There were a ton of forms to fill out and 3 different tests i had to take just to schedule the check ride test at my club. On test for solo a bunch of 'what if' scenarios, personal minimums, instructor limits etc. One test for the plane including reading the entire POH and memorizing all of its performance attributes, one for general aviation knowledge as well as area specific information. Then there were about 5 different forms to fill out and had to have approved. Defiantly not the 'im getting a burger, stay in the pattern' i was expecting.

My guess is he did stall into the building. I sure wouldnt think to crash land into a roof of a building, especially that one when there is a large concrete wall just feet in front of you. If you look at where it crashed on google maps, he was probably trying to make it over the highway and into the field on the other side. https://www.google.com/maps/place/California+Department+of+Corrections/@34.060217,-117.8061076,660m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m8!1m2!2m1!1spomona+ca+sate+parol+board!3m4!1s0x0000000000000000:0x72af7d1ac3bce653!8m2!3d34.0609475!4d-117.8036311 unless there were cars in the parking lot, that would have been a better choice. Not the parking lot where he went down, but the one father north east, where he might of had a little more time and altitude to put it down before stalling.

Had another lesson today, this is the last lesson until next week Thursday. It looks like the plane is going in for maintenance to fix some of the squawks; There is a chance they were addressed during the annual, but the book still has them in there, so its a ??? as to if its ready to go or not. That means we will just be going through the mandatory ground school stuff for the next week. Today over all another really good day. There is some light rain moving through the area, but yet calm winds. By the time we were ready to go the winds went from 5knts variable to 17knts perpendicular to the runway i smile because thats what we had been looking for. The wind was short lived through, 3 crabs and 2 forward slips, all 5 on the center line with varying levels of how good i did the flare; 1 small bounce that was controlled perfectly all of them passable. Once the wind changed I ended up switching to power off approaches. 2 were perfect, 1 go around after i slide slipped and didnt come out of it soon enough to have the plane parallel to the runway, ended up touching down the left wheel first an in the small bounce did a go around (there was no saving it, i made the call); Overall, I am pretty confident landing at kpao now. I can still use some work on my flare as i am either late or early and flaring high, but thats only about 20% of the time. Even roll outs are going really, really well. I still wait longer than i need to for applying BRAKES, but better that then risking uneven pressure; I end up having to add power near the end of the runway to make the turn off, I could coast, but i like making sure i am in control and that i dont have to worry about breaking hard if i keep rolling fast. Once or twice i made the earlier turn off, but it took considerable BRAKING, i was told to just let it roll since it was better for the plane. I was also very comfortable on the comms, only 1 other person in the pattern today, everybody else left because of weather. Now its just a question of if today was enough cross wind practice or if he wants to see some more before trying a solo. (fingers crossed);

We are following jeppesen curriculum. So the only things left are cross wind landings, night and x-country. We also need to do all the ground work to get signed off. The club requirement is 2 practice check rides with different instructors before they will endorse for the FAA one. So from the sounds of it, a lot is just on me to insure i can do all of the maneuvers correctly to check ride standards. Whats funny is that all during my early training, we had tons of cross wind, now? nothing.... 4 lessons in a row, little to no cross wind.

Good call! I only stick around because i keep getting fantastic advice from all these people. By far they have been the most helpful out of any of the other forums i have been to. Dont get me wrong, i didnt like what i heard most of the time, but that didnt make it wrong I think i still am mentally blocking some of it out because i keep looking at planes. I say keep renting. At least with renting you can control the costs. If something happend and you had an unexpected expense, you can just not fly for a while. If you own the plane then you still have payments, tie down, insurance, etc that you have to pay regardless of if you fly. There will always be another plane!

Sorry lots to go over today; Before i go over today's lesson, The guy defiantly had a radio, he called out that he was departing on the runway and that was the only time we ever heard from him. I know he didnt break any rules and that you always have to be prepared to go around, but just because there isnt a rule for it, doesn't mean that its a a good idea not to communicate. I'm over it now, again, I just hold pilots to a higher standard then just a guy on the freeway. Im starting to learn that my adoration is misplaced and that pilots are just sky drivers, including those that fly with their blinkers on So another block buster lesson; We were in search of cross wind and we couldn't find anything of real value, so instead of ground school i said 'lets do pattern work here!' and so we did. 3 hours of pattern work at palo alto. You might say to yourself 3 hours?! thats a lot of pattern work. Which is true, buutttt, we did EVERYTHING; Plus there was a ton of air traffic. At one time we had 6 students in the pattern plus normal traffic; So i had a ton of practice on slow flight as the SR20 is doing 110kts on the downwind and the cessna's were doing maybe 90knts. I feel really bad for the ATC guy, he was probably ready to pass out by the end. But once people gave up, we had a nice clean pattern to play with and we were able to do power off landings and side slip landings at palo alto. Needless to say, after today, its no longer my white whale. I had 1 gold star landing that was just perfect; 1 i thought was perfect but was another one of those lucky flare onto the runway kisses and a bunch of okay ones which were serviceable. I had a few go arounds on the first few power off landings; One that my instructor said go around, but said we could make it, tried it out and landed like a champ! I had one complete failure of a landing where i did a side slip but came out of the slip late and just was completely misaligned, touched down on one wheel all crooked and correctly called a go around and one perfect side slip landing with out him saying or doing anything. We also did some short field landings, which after the side slip was really no big deal at all. I was a bit nervous because it involved heavy breaking, but somehow i managed. We are starting to get into a pattern of letting me call the go around, he will let me take it to the edge to see if i will call it; If i dont then he say go around with his hand hovering above the stick just in case. Overall the final result was 'we'll see how you do in cross winds, you get through that and we'll try solo' He also offered to adopt me, i said i was a little old and already taken, but he said if that changes to let him know I thought i had to do cross country and night flight before solo, but i guess not. He said thats reserved for the last 3rd of training. He also does ferry flights, I said if the other guy is paying i would be happy to go with. I guess he needs to pick up a DA-40 in new mexico in 2 weeks and the new owner keeps canceling. My CFI said that he doesn't do 800nm solo for ferry flights and always wants a 2nd; So i offered, we'll see if anything comes out of it. I figure its a good experience and basically follows the route i want to take to PHX, so why not the pups will need to spend a night in doggy day care, but for one night it should be no problem.

I dont think there is anything that time wont fix. The problem i see is that it sounds like the instructor is only in town for a 'few days'? If so i think that adds a lot of pressure to absorb things. If he is local, then just go at your own pace to be safe. If you dont get it in 10hrs or 20hrs or 30hrs then be ok with that. Its the price we(loosely used) pay as newly minted PPLs for choosing a complex plane I personally cant wait until i get to where you are now! Stress and all!

stress? the only thing stressed is my bank account I dont expect people to be good on comms; but you should at least either A. respect the plane on final and wait. B. Announce that you will be taking off prior to the plane entering final. The only thing is maybe he accidentally had his RX volume off and didnt hear any of the calls, but this wasn't a student, this was an older gentleman, so he either didnt check his radio or just didnt care. He was in run up for a good 2 landings (it was me and another student doing a ring around the rosy for landing practice); So i would have thought that he would of thought 'there are planes landing and i dont hear them calling, i should check my radio'; The only reason I am even bringing this up, is this is now the 2nd time it's happened at uncontrolled airports. I guess i just hold pilots to higher standards than the average person on the freeway. We already did some slow flight practice earlier on; Overall I am being told that we are moving into the 'finesse' stage of landings. Meaning i can land safely but not to maybe check ride standards or better. What we are mostly working on now are fine touches (ie better speed control, getting on the center line, flaring at the right height (what to do if i flare high, ie add power, etc.); Everything is serviceable right now, but now we have to make it consistent and fine tune it so that its smooth and i can recover if i make a bad decision along the way.

Very true about the power setting; I will ask him about that today. I do glance down at speed feq, i guess what i meant to say is that i am not constantly looking at the panel like i used to. I have to hit the 3 different speeds in the pattern. IE <119 for first notch, 90 in base for 2nd notch 75 in final. So thats what I aim for. I think the problem is that students can become interment fixated; where they say 'hey im at 110knts need to be at 100knts for flaps; and just look at the gauge until its reached. In the mean time you just overshot your runway I guess thats what i was alluding to. I didnt mean to say the guy broke and rules; but i figured there is a pilot code of respect at non towered airports. Pulling out onto the runway in front of someone on final seems like it should be a rule.

YEP! its funny because my CFI is starting to get pumped up too. Even after the training he was pouring on the compliments which is really unusual. Its amazing how fast things are clicking now; I am far from perfect and probably still far from being independent, but the confidence is building fast. BTW, all of you pilots out there that think just because you are at a non towered airport you get to skip on the comms, SHAME ON YOU! We had a old cessna today that only announced he was taking off even after we had announced we were on short final. We ended up having to go around because the dork pulled out in front of us. Then we asked him which way he was turning so we could turn the opposite way and NOTHING. Guy just completely stayed off the comms after that. So we ended up having to climb higher and faster then him just so that he didnt decide to turn into us. Whats even more funny, about 30 minutes later we caught up to him outside of KPAO; Tower reported 'unknown' traffic and it was the SAME GUY. ATC called him 3 times to IDENT and he never did. I think he was skimming the area between KPAO and SFO's airspace in route to hayward, but who knows. Seems he was trying awfully hard to stay off the radio.

Today was power off landings (short approach), side slips and no flap landings. Power off side slips are crazy; Its like your a helicopter and come almost straight down. Landings in general are also improving; I have a much better feeling of being lined up with using a forward slip than crabbing. So in general i was told its ok to use that as long as the cross wind isn't over 20knts (full crosswind, not crosswind component); If the cross wind is over 20knts; then i shouldn't have been flying but would need to crab if i got stuck. Tomorrow will be the official cross wind landing lesson; Everything up til now has just been look and feel rather than knowing exactly what i am doing. Though i guess crabbing is 'look and feel'; Also landed at KPAO all by myself today on the land-o-meter i got a 7/10; i lost 3 points because i released back pressure again after touchdown so the nose came down harder than it needed to. I really have to fix that. All in all, my CFI is very happy with the progress and got a handshake afterwards.

Wait, You owned your 231 for a year and just PPL'ed? or am i misreading that? Also; keep me updated on your conversion process. I plan on going through the same thing eventually and it would be good to hear the progress while its still fresh.

Excellent job! was it harder or easier than you were expecting?

To stop the bleeding, i went though my last post and corrected it to brake instead of breaks As stated before, the power % is just a est of where i need to be to get the speed i need. Sometimes i have it at 25% sometimes at 33% sometimes at 19%; The difference in throw on the throttle between those numbers is literally centimeters. If i have to extend down wind, i put it at about 33% or what ever stalls my decent with out picking up too much speed; We have had plenty of practices of extending downwind out here, probably at least 2-3 per lesson. But yea, i have stopped looking at the panel almost completely. The only time i look at it now is when i have to hit my speed targets for flaps. The flaps switch isnt stiff at all, in a previous lesson i accidentally went full flaps at 117 and immediately my CFI cut power and pitched the nose way up to bleed off the speed. So im a little paranoid about making sure that im going the right speed for the right level of flaps and that i am carefully moving the flaps switch down. After that im just glancing down at final to see what my speed is so i can adjust accordingly. Other than that, my eyes are outside. When landing, i dont have time to look at the panel all day, i have a plane to land

yep... there are a lot of things early on that you say to yourself 'gee, this sounds like a good idea' and then you get closer to solo and you think, If my CFI wasn't here i would be screwed. Compound that with adding additional complexities and i can see where things can start getting you messed up; I for one would NOT want to learn to land in my own plane. I think the turning point was getting to landings and then being told 'my mic jack doesnt work, its all on you today' puts things into perspective. Its one thing to fly the plan, another to land it and entirely different thing to do everything and be on the comms,

So for the SR20 the pattern is like this: Downwind @ 50% power (i have been doing % instead of MFP, its easier to see on the screen) Reach the numbers at the beginning of the runway and cut power to 25% Bleed off speed to <119knts and hit one notch of flaps (50%); (though at 50% power on the downwind your hardly going faster than 110knts anyway, unless you have some good wind pushing you along); Enter base and bleed off more speed to <100knts trim for 100knts and enter in the last notch of flaps; Turn final at 85knts, which i normally hit on the turn. Short final be at 75knts, touch down at 75knts; I was told below 75 is considered slow; We had a good 15knt wind coming straight down the runway that day so its why i was a few knts slow, needed maybe 3% more power on final and it would have been enough. I had been fast just because i didnt understand the characteristics for pitching to bleed speed and cutting power to drop; So i would end up pitching lower to drop and end up picking up speed; Then i would level out to take the speed away; So i end up doing this stair step type decent (or at some point ballooning) instead of a nice glide slope. The 2nd to last landing of the day i was the most proud of (my CFI basically stopped talking after the 3rd landing, except any critiques after the fact) during that landing i was able to properly identify that i was high and fast and was able to just cut all power to the engine and glide it in; (the CFI thought it was destined for a go around); On that one i landed softly flat, so i didn't get full marks, i was at about 2.5% in my flare instead of 5% (so i was told) but it felt really smooth The stall characteristic on this thing is insane. When we did power off stalls it seemed to glide forever before we finally stalled out. We had a good 5 seconds or more of warning before it finally stalled and that was intentionally trying to make it happen; i think only once or twice did we kick off the stall warning in flare; As far as retention goes; I think its going exceptionally well; actually for the last lesson i was nervous because it was a full week between flying and i thought i would have regressed, turns out after about 2 landings i was in the groove in all aspects, including comm; I think i am at the point in training where you are really starting to use all of the skills at once, so doing 3 days a week is perfect; 2 days take extra time on the 2nd lesson to get some jitters out; 1 day and im a nervous wreck because i had a whole week to think about all the stuff i did wrong and worry about if i can correct it. As far as braking goes, on a 2400ft runway, you need to brake; and the brakes on a the SR20 are hard as rock; so even slight pressure and you could be flying off in any one direction. I wish it was more like a car brake where there is some give to it so that you can ease into them over a longer travel. By the end of the runway im basically standing up in my seat with full pressure on the brakes. The problem isnt braking too early, like i am not braking in the air; my heels are on the ground and my toes are on the rudder. So its not something that i would worry about where i would touch down with locked brakes (My CFI beat that into my head, heels down on take off and landing); Its more like im going to fast when I apply the brakes and so (as stated above) even light uneven pressure on them causes the plane to go one way or another. I figure at about 65knts its ok to start braking, that 10knt (or 20knt difference early on) makes a big difference in both getting the plane to drop and in the touchy nature of braking at that speed. The last lesson i learned, once i am on the ground for about 3 seconds, i can safely take pressure off of the right rudder and slowly start applying brakes; about 3 seconds of light braking allows me to see where the plane wants to veer to and i can start braking harder and harder while adjusting for that. As long as the plane is good to go next week, Im loaded up with 4 lessons and no rain or high winds in the forecast after that though things start getting backed up. I really need to solo before may 20th, after that both my CFI and the planes start to get over booked. sorry this post was probably not the most well thought out or sequential I kinda commented as i remembered the information.