Second Lesson & Early Morning Flying

Thursday afternoon I signed up for my second lesson with Bob, scheduled for nine to eleven Saturday morning. Friday afternoon I got an email, the lesson had been rescheduled to seven AM, as Bob had a class to attend at nine.

My first reaction was "No, that's entirely too early on a Saturday, that would mean I have to get up at six! That would mean I have to go to bed early Friday night!" Second reaction, about thirty seconds later, "Hey, I can get up at six if it means I get to go flying!" I emailed Bob saying that we were still on.

I set three alarms Friday night, and arranged a wake up call from a friend, Jari, who was taking a road trip and leaving early. I actually woke up by myself four minutes before the first alarm was set to go off, and Jari called while I was getting ready to go. My loving and extremely understanding wife got up to see me off, then (as I suggested) went back to bed. I made a cup of tea, and grabbed some breakfast from McDonalds on the way to the airport. Traffic was very light, so I got to the airport about ten minutes early.

I got the 152's folder containing the Airworthiness certificate, Operating Manual and Weight and Balance sheet, and went to check the fuel level in the tanks. We had 11 gallons, so we didn't need to call the fuel truck. Bob arrived as I was climbing down, so we went inside for the ground portion of the lesson.

We talked about the three control axes of the aircraft; the Lateral or Pitch axis, controlled by the elevator, Longitudinal or Roll, controlled by the ailerons, and Vertical or Yaw, controlled by the Rudder. Bob explained that Dihedral is the angle at which the wings meet, Chord is an imaginary line drawn from the leading edge to the trailing edge of the wing, and how lowering the flaps moves that Chord line.

We also talked about the Weight and Balance sheet. The point where the three control axes meet is the Center of Gravity, or CG, which the whole plane pivots around. The idea of the Weight and Balance sheet is to make sure that CG is in an acceptable location to fly. It's effected by how much weight you take, in fuel, pilot, passengers and luggage, and their location in the plane. If the CG is towards the rear of the acceptable range, the plane will be tail-heavy. It will cruise slower, but be a bit more stable. If the CG is towards the front, or slightly nose-heavy, the plane will fly faster, but be less stable.

At this point it was almost eight AM, and the wind had started to pick up to seven knots from just east of south, but the temperature was still below ninety Fahrenheit, so pretty nice.

After the ground lesson, we went out and did the pre-flight check on the C-152, then fired up the engine. I taxied us from the parking area to the run-up area, to check everything out. We had a bit of rough running when we tested the right magnetos, but it turned out to be slightly dirty spark plugs, which were cleaned by running the RPMs up and leaning the mixture a little. They passed the second check and we were ready to go. Bob called the tower for clearance, and I took off, turned right until we were pointing north and continued the climb to 3,500 feet.

Bob showed me how the elevator trim works in practice, and I soon had the hang of adjusting it to keep the plane level with very little control input needed. We flew northeast to Tulsa International Airport for some more touch-and-go landing practice and Pattern work. Bob talked me through the procedure for landing, and rode the controls lightly for the first landing, only needing to pull back a little on the flight controls, as I wasn't flaring enough on the landing. The next landing went better, but still not enough flare, so around we went again. On the third landing, I flew us down with no assistance from Bob, it was a bit rough, but we didn't bounce at all. We climbed back to 3,500 feet, headed back to Riverside, and I did a straight in landing with no physical assistance from Bob.


After parking the plane, we went back inside where we filled out my logbook, 1.0 hours exactly, four landings. They say any landing you can walk away from is a good landing, and any landing when you can use the airplane again is a great landing. So four great, but not perfect, landings. I was grinning the whole way home!

I like this Wednesday evening, Saturday morning schedule, I have enough time to go over the reading required (chapter 2 of the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge this time), but not so long that I forget what I learned in the air.

See you next time!
-Gareth