Adventures in Aviation

I haven't been flying as often as I would like during the past few months, and the flying I have been doing has been mainly routine time-building exercises, so not much to broadcast about.

During a lesson a few weeks ago, there were several grass fires burning around our practice area just west of Tulsa. I got to experience some pretty powerful thermals for the first time. During one slow flight session we got into a column of quickly rising air that pushed us up almost 500 feet in a matter of seconds. The downside came a few minutes later. We were still doing slow flight, having compensated for the updraft, when we flew out of the thermal. The plane immediately stalled, the nose dropped, and I got to perform a stall recovery that I wasn't expecting. Which I guess is the entire point of training. If you know a stall is approaching you can get ready to recover ahead of time. When the plane tried to fall out of the sky with no advance warning, it was all muscle memory and routine, which was a great confidence booster.

On July 7th, I got my flight plans together and approved for my first Cross Country Solo. The only requirement on this solo is that it be at least 150 miles round trip, visiting 3 airports, including the home airport, and one leg has to be at least 75 miles. The Flight School has a standard first cross country route from Riverside (KRVS) in Tulsa, northwest to Stillwater (KSWO), then south to Shawnee (KSNL) before returning to Riverside. The information I had to supply was weather, routing, way-points, altitudes and time en route. Fortunately AOPA, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (aopa.org) has an amazing online flight planner that I was given permission to use.

So with paperwork in hand and the sign-off in my logbook, all I needed was some clear weather for a day, and an operational airplane. This magical combination didn't actually come up until August 20th. In Oklahoma, it can get windy, as an understatement, and now I had to have good flying conditions (winds less than 15 knots and no gusts reported) at three Oklahoma airports instead of just Riverside. Several weekends in a row I had an airplane booked only to have to cancel due to thunderstorms or high winds.

One beautiful weekend came up in the beginning of August, and I reported to the airport with all baggage in hand ready to go. Bob was returning from a previous lesson in 69212, the Cessna 152 I had booked to make my trip. As his student was getting the plane tied down, Bob walked over to me and informed me that something had gone wrong. The engine was running rough and smoking a bit, and the plane was grounded until maintenance could check it out. There is another aircraft rental company on the airport, Christiansen Aviation, we had rented one of their 152s the last time 69212 was down with steering linkage issues, so Bob sent me to see if they had one available at short notice.

They did have a 152 ready to go, so Bob and I went for a lesson instead of my solo Cross Country. I was fine to rent one of their planes with Bob as Pilot in Command from the co-pilots seat, but not to solo in one until my paperwork had been approved by the management, which wouldn't be until Monday.

Saturday August 20th finally rolled around bright and clear, winds had been reported as calm overnight, and by 10am when I arrived at Riverside Airport, were blowing smoothly at around 5 knots, weather stations in Stillwater and Shawnee were reporting similar conditions.

Cessna 152 N95005

I checked out my rental plane, N95005, and filed my flight plan with Lockheed Flight Services. With a flight plan filed, someone would know where I should be flying if anything unplanned happened and I had to land in some field somewhere.

But, despite the wonderful weather, Saturday's flight was also not to be. During the pre-flight inspection one of the things to check is the fuel strainer leading to the engine. You pull on a cable handle for the strainer, which is a filter / water separator, and it's supposed to stream some fuel onto the floor for you. I pulled the handle and the tube under the airplane gave me a few drips. Hmm, that's not right... I double checked the fuel selector valve was on and tried it again, still nothing. I called up the Christiansen FBO, and they sent one of their fuel guys over to take a look, as their mechanic was busy with another plane. He verified the problem, we tried playing with the mixture and primer, but nothing helped. So I cancelled my Saturday plans and rebooked the airplane for the following day.

Just as I was about to leave, my phone rang, my friend Mike and his cousin Chris had come out to the airport to watch me depart, so I visited with them for a while before heading home for the day.

Sunday Morning: I re-printed all my Nav Logs with the updated weather, which was still smooth at Riverside and Stillwater, but Shawnee was reporting winds of 6 knots gusting to 9, I talked it over with Bob, and we decided that I should fly the first leg to Stillwater, then recheck the weather. Worst case scenario, I could just turn straight around and fly home. 6 gusting to 9 is not worrying at all, but just because the report said "gusting" at all, I might not have been allowed to fly.

I arrived back at Riverside, checked out the plane, which passed all the pre-flight inspections this time, borrowed Bobs GPS, and was soon given take off clearance on runway 19 right.

I lined up on the runway listening to the fuel slosh in the brimming tanks, and pushed the throttle to the instrument panel. 26 gallons of fuel weighs in at 156 lbs, but with the co-pilots seat only holding my charts, notes, and some bottles of water and cookies packed for me by my wife Melodie, the plane leaped into the air when I reached the take off speed of 50 knots. I climbed toward my planned cruising altitude of 4,500. Riverside Tower's air traffic control passed me to Tulsa Departure, I got permission to switch frequencies to McAlester Flight Services radio and opened my flight plan, giving them the time I had taken off.

Keystone Lake

The air was a little bumpy at times, but mostly smooth, with clouds up at 10 and 12 thousand feet, so it was quite pleasant. As I pulled the throttle out to about 2250 RPM and adjusted the fuel mixture, Riverside Airport quickly disappeared in the haze behind me and I was flying over unknown territory. Having the GPS with me, as well as picking out lakes, rivers, roads and highways on my sectional map was a great comfort. I never felt lost at all. I left Tulsa's air traffic control area, and I was then talking to controllers at Kansas City air traffic control. I passed by Keystone lake, and could see some boats leaving a white wake behind them. As I got close to Stillwater, Kansas City had me contact Oklahoma City approach, who kept me until I had Stillwater Regional Airport in sight.

I called Stillwater and was told to turn to the north and watch for another Cessna that I was to land behind. I picked out the other plane about the same time he saw me, and we got lined up in the pattern to land. He landed just as I was turning onto the base leg, and came to a full stop on the runway, which was a bit worrying, I had almost decided to go-around when the other plane hit the power and took off again, I guess they had been doing short field landing practice. I performed one of my better landings, taxied to their parking area and got the plane shut down. I called Flight services, closed my first flight plan, and checked the weather for Shawnee. The winds had calmed down a bit, and were no longer gusting, but blowing about 10 knots right along the runway. I got my second flight plan filed, and got out of the plane to stretch my legs, I had been flying for about an hour at this point.

Stillwater Regional Airport - KSWO

I phoned Melodie and then my mom to let them know I had made it safe and sound, and sent text messages to Mike and Bob letting them know the same. It was really nice knowing that so many friends and family members were keeping me in their thoughts as I flew. I was 1/3rd of the way around my loop, and ready to get on with the flight.

I performed the pre-flight checks again, everything was still good to go on the airplane, so I fired it up, called Stillwater ground control and was given permission to taxi out to the runway. Stillwater Tower gave me the go ahead for a straight south departure to Shawnee, so I took off and climbed out to 3,500 feet. Shawnee doesn't have it's own Air Traffic control tower, so I stayed on the radio with Oklahoma City Approach until I had the runway in sight. I tuned the radio to Shawnee's CTAF or Common Traffic Advisory Frequency and announced "Shawnee Traffic, Cessna 95005 is 8 miles out on a straight in final for runway 17, Shawnee Traffic." If there's no airport control tower you are supposed to say who you are talking to at the start and end of radio transmissions so anyone who tunes in to the frequency halfway through can still figure out who you are talking to. There are only a handful of CTAF's and some airports within radio range of each other might be on the same frequency, so you just announce which airport you mean.

Shawnee Regional Airport - KSNL

My route from Stillwater was almost straight south, and the Shawnee Runway runs almost straight north and south (170 degrees, whereas south is 180) so I was able to fly straight in and land. I taxied to the parking area and shut down the plane, closed my flight plan, filed the new one for the home leg to Riverside and got out again to wander around for a while.
After checking in with everyone and having some cookies and water, I got back in the plane, took off into the wind to the south, and turned northeast toward home. Cruising at 3,500 feet I had a really nice tailwind, so although my airspeed indicator showed me flying at 85 knots, the air I was in was moving in the same direction I was headed. The GPS ground speed at one point showed I was doing 117 knots. Not bad for a C152!

Riverside Airport in sight ahead!

I sent Mike a text message when I was about 30 nautical miles out, so he and Melodie could meet me at Riverside when I landed. With the wind behind me, I still beat them to the airport, they arrived just as I was taxiing to the parking area.

Solo Cross Country Complete

I got the plane shut off for the last time, and tied down in it's allocated parking spot. Checking the timer, I had managed to log 2.9 of the 5 required solo cross country hours. I can choose the next destinations myself, Mike has some friends in Claremore who get together every weekend, so I might go out there, then up to Bartlesville and back to Riverside on my next voyage.

All I need now is another couple hours of simulated IFR lessons with Bob, and the Solo Cross Country time, and I will be ready to take the tests and get my license!
Hopefully with fall approaching, the weather will cooperate and let me finish this year!

Still Flying

The weather in Oklahoma has been pretty terrible for flying lately, which is more or less to be expected. Unfortunately the Flight School's insurance will not let a student pilot check out an airplane for solo flight if the weather report includes the word "gust", or if the steady winds are over 25 knots. The typical day for the past month has been winds above 10 knots, and gusting from anywhere between 15 and 30 knots.

I managed to get a Saturday morning flight in two weeks ago, got in 10 landings and just over an hour of solo pattern time before the wind started to pick up again.

This past Saturday I met up with Bob for the first time since March, and we went up in the Cessna 152 for some maneuvers practice and IFR Simulation. The wind was at about 12 knots across the runway, but once we were airborne it was really quite smooth. We headed west of the airport where I did some stalls and slow turns, then steep turns and engine-out procedure for emergency landing.

"Under the Hood" to simulate IFR flight, we headed back toward Riverside airport. The latest weather information had updated the wind speeds, still a crosswind for the landings, and a little faster than when we left.

The first landing went fairly well, we taxied off the runway and back to the start. Bob called for a "soft field" takeoff so I dropped in 10 degrees of flaps, we rotated off the runway at 50 knots and leveled out still close to the runway until we got up to out normal climb speed of 67 knots, then climbed out and raised the flaps. Since we did a soft field takeoff, we would be doing a soft field landing, the idea is that if you are landing on a grass or gravel "soft" field, you want to keep the weight off the wheels as much as possible to prevent the tires from sinking in.

We got around the pattern with no incidents, and I started in on Final, we were a little high, so I performed a forward slip to drop some altitude to the proper approach path. To land in a cross-wind, you point the nose of the plane into the wind a little, to crab, so you are approaching the runway looking slightly off to one side instead of straight ahead. This maintains a straight approach over the ground. As you approach the runway, you have to straighten the plane out so the tires are lined up with your actual direction of travel.

Just as we touched down, the wind gusted just enough with our nose-high soft field attitude, to lift us back into the air momentarily, which combined with the steady crosswind started to push us to the side of the runway. The plane settled back to the ground and we were able to get back on the center line of the runway, but it wasn't a very pretty landing at all.

Hopefully the wind will start to die down again as we approach summer, and I can get my cross country solo done. I did take a practice written test after the flying lesson, and got an 80% on it. Good enough to pass, but I would like to brush up on some of the topics I made mistakes on before taking the real one.

It sure is nice to be back in the air every so often though, I really miss flying when I am grounded.

Flying again.

This morning, I continued in my ongoing efforts to get a Private Pilot's Certificate. I had the Cessna 152 booked from 9am until Noon, and arrived at Riverside Airport at about 8:45. I got the pre-flight inspection completed and was going over the checklists for the maneuvers when Bob returned from his earlier lesson.

We talked for a little while, and decided that we would do a complete maneuvers review, so I could get a fresh endorsement and be allowed to solo, as my previous solo endorsement was about to expire, they last 90 days.

The winds were calm, and the temperature just below 60F. It was a bit hazy, but it was the first really nice Saturday in several months, so the airport was starting to get busy as we were given our clearance to head to the south.

I performed a "soft-field" take off, where we pretend to be operating off of grass or unprepared surface, by lowering a notch of flaps, and holding back on the flight controls to keep more of the weight off of the nose gear. After liftoff at 50 knots, I held the plane low to the ground, in the Ground Effect area, while we built up speed to 67 knots, then started our climb to altitude and raised the flaps.

We were given clearance to climb up to 3,500 feet, and we started working down the maneuvers list. Slow flight, then stalls, steep turns and an emergency descent.

We flew to Okmulgee airport and practiced both short and soft field landings, before heading back north for some ground reference maneuvers, turns-about-a-point, and S-Turns across a road.

By the time we decided to head back to Riverside, it seemed everyone was taking advantage of the weather, so it was very busy. We contacted Tulsa Approach Control when we were about 10 miles south of Riverside, and they told us to fly northwest, and that they would get back with us.

Eventually we were advised of another aircraft in our area, and we were to follow it. A few minutes later we were turned toward the north, then east, then asked to follow a different airplane, before finally being transfered to Riverside Air Traffic Control. After a few more turns at their request, we were given clearance to land number 4 in line behind the Cessna 172 that we were following at that point.

After I landed, we cleared the runway and were given the go-ahead to taxi to our parking area. We got the plane shut down and parked and went back inside. Bob signed my logbook, so I can solo again when I get a chance.

I am still planning the Cross Country solo trip, as the snow cancelled the first attempt.

After todays flight, I am feeling more confident, knocking the rust off of my flying skills feels really good, and it was just nice to be in the air again.

Hopefully the weather will continue to stay nice, and I can get the rest of my training completed quickly.

More to Come!
-Gareth

Winter Setbacks

I had scheduled the Cessna 152 for my solo cross country on Saturday the 29th of January, but Tulsa and most of the mid-west United States got record snowfalls dumped on us. Melodie and I couldn't even get to work for several days. The snow finally let off, and we got the driveway shoveled, and then it snowed again.

I figured that a first VFR Cross Country flight, using ground points as reference, would probably not be in my best interest. "Fly 10 minutes to this featureless expanse of white snow, then once you are there, correct your course and fly another 10 minutes to the next featureless expanse of white snow."

I have had a couple of lessons since my last post, but they have been maneuvers practice, nothing new. I am at the point in my training where I can do everything required for the examiners check ride, it's just a matter of getting the altitudes and speeds and headings to within the tolerances of the test.

I have booked the Cessna 152 for this Saturday morning to get some solo traffic pattern practice done, it's been a few weeks since the last time I flew, so I want to get back into the groove before I take off headed for new and strange places, some of them up to 75 miles away!

Lessons 20-23 and the Cross Country Flight

Well, I have let this logbook / diary get away from me again, so this is my attempt to get all caught up at once. The last few lessons have been mainly practicing the maneuvers I had learned throughout my training, with one really fun exception, "Unusual Attitude Recovery".

The idea behind Unusual Attitude Recovery is that if you get disoriented flying through a cloud, and can't really tell which way the aircraft is pointed, you can usually trust the Attitude Indicator to help get you back to straight and level flight. As an added bonus, we did these with the IFR Training glasses on, so all I could see was the instruments, and not out the windows.

We got out to the practice area at 3500 feet, Bob took the controls and handed me the glasses. I had been instructed that in order to further disorient myself I should hold my head down and to the left with my eyes closed. Bob would fly the plane through some turns, climbs and dives, and with the plane in some random "unusual attitude" would return control to me, and I would have to get us back to straight and level flight. If the nose was pointed up, I should apply full throttle, lower the nose, then roll to wings level. If the nose was pointed down, I should pull the throttle to idle, roll wings level, pull up to level flight, and push the throttle back to cruise power.

The first one was pretty gentle, what felt like a shallow dive followed by a climb and a turn to the right, I was given the command to recover. The Attitude Indicator was showing a climb with about 20 degrees right bank, so I pulled the throttle out, quickly realized my mistake and shoved it full in, lowered the nose and rolled to wings level. The next one was a bit more maneuvering, and we ended up nose down in a left banked turn. The 3rd recovery felt like a roller coaster ride (which I really enjoy) and left us in an almost 45 degree dive rolled to the right. I was able to recover quickly and we continued to other maneuvers.

Wednesday the 8th, Bob and I got together and planned out the Cross Country trip, We would leave Tulsa, fly direct to Fayetteville Arkansas, up to Joplin Missouri and back to Tulsa. I learned how to file a flight plan through Lockheed Martin's Flight Following Service, we figured out the waypoints I would be looking for to aid in navigation, and got everything marked down on my sectional chart. When I got home I plugged it all in to the AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) flight planner, which confirmed the math Bob and I had done, as well as figuring for actual wind conditions for the time of the flight. We were set to leave on Saturday the 11th around 1pm. I got a call Thursday night, Bob had a scheduled charter flight had been moved up, and was it OK to go Sunday morning instead? Sure no problem. Sunday morning rolled around, and I had a voicemail from Bob, he had come down sick overnight after getting back from his charter flight, so we would reschedule for the following weekend.

Melodie and I arrived at Riverside Airport just after noon on Saturday the 18th, I had scheduled the flight schools Cessna 170, 724PG for the whole afternoon. Melodie had bundled up warm and brought a blanket as the back seats get pretty chilly in the wintertime. I performed the pre-flight inspections and printed out the navigation logs with the latest weather information. When Bob arrived we got the fuel tanks topped all the way up, 25 gallons per side, which would put us right at maximum takeoff weight, but also give us just over 6 hours of flight time. We filed the flight plans, and at about 1:45 taxied out to runway 1 left.

I pushed in full power, and the plane started rolling down the runway, the 172 needs more right rudder to compensate for the additional power compared to the 152, so I drifted left on the runway before I got it compensated for. We climbed into the early afternoon air, got our flight plan opened and headed east at 5500 feet, under an overcast cloud layer at 7000 feet.

The air was as smooth as glass, the previous week had seen winds gusting to 25 or 30 knots, but on the 18th, it was reporting calm with a 6+ mile visibility, and light haze close to the ground.

I soon spotted my first waypoint, a small river almost perpendicular to our flight path, followed a few minutes later by my second waypoint, a lake. We had planned to tune into a VOR (Very high frequency Omni-directional Radio) and use it to plot out location for our next few waypoints, but it turned out to be too far away, and the signal too weak to be of any use. Fortunately Bob had brought a GPS, and the plane had a course tracking GPS in the instrument panel that we had set up for the flight. I still tracked our location on the map by highways and other landmarks as we flew overhead.

About 50 minutes later we were approaching Drake Field in Fayetteville, it took me a minute to locate the airport, as we had drifted south, I was expecting to see it on my right, but eventually found the runway off to my left. We had started our descent to pattern altitude (1000 feet above the ground) several miles out, and were given clearance to land. The wind was still fairly calm, so we were a bit high on the approach as it hadn't helped slow us down, but squeaked in a fairly decent landing, and taxied to the parking area, and with the engine still running Bob called the Flight Service Station to close our first flight plan, and open our second to Joplin.

We got permission to taxi out to the runway, took off, and headed North. We were flying over some very hilly terrain at 4500 feet on the way up to Joplin, it was really neat to see the patches of evergreens scattered through the forests of other trees that had already shed their leaves for winter. We arrived at Joplin Regional about 40 minutes later, and once again taxied to the parking area. We had decided that we would try to find something to eat, as it was almost 5pm. We were marshalled into a parking spot by a very chilled looking ground crewman, who suggested a local BBQ place called Woodys that was just down the street. We borrowed the FBO's courtesy car, a Scion XB, and got some dinner.

By the time we got back to the airport it was starting to get dark. We filed our flight plan back to Tulsa, figuring it would take about an hour, got the plane ready to go, and checked our course on the GPS. As it was about 100 miles to home, this would count as my night cross country requirement too, awesome! Two lessons checked out of the syllabus on one flight!

Flying cross country at night was really a lot of fun, Bob said that a lot of people will avoid night flying, but I found it easier to find the small towns and highways that were all lit up at night. As a bonus, we got to see a lot of Christmas lights from 4500 feet on the way home.

Soon after we took off out of Joplin, Bob directed our attention off to the left, as there was some light snow or rain off in the distance, which he could see as a haze around the city lights. We were soon up to altitude and headed southwest, our course paralleling Interstate 44.

Bob and I talked about the differences in emergency procedures at night, and what to do if we lost electrical power. If for some reason the alternator on the engine stopped working, we would have a few minutes of battery power for the lights and radios, but it would have been better to shut everything off except 1 radio and the engine, we could follow the highway lights all the way to Tulsa. Fortunately this conversation remained theory only, as the plane purred smoothly on through the night air.

About halfway home, Bob asked me to turn on the landing light out on the wing, we were flying through snow! I turned on the Pitot Heat, just in case, but the snow wasn't heavy, and nothing accumulated on the windshield, so it was just scenic and not worrying.

We soon arrived back in Tulsa, having seen the glow on the horizon almost all the way home. There were several helicopters running Christmas light tours, so we were asked to head out to the south a bit, then turn straight west toward Riverside airport, this worked out really well, as we were able to fly over the Rhema Bible College, and see their impressive annual display of lights.

Once we got back to Riverside airport we were given clearance to land, but were told to extend out to the south as a light tour helicopter was about to take off. The tower controller let us know when we could make the turn back to the airport. As I had to make two landings for the Night Cross Country requirements, we did a short field approach to a full stop on runway 1 Right, followed by a short field takeoff, then once around the pattern to runway 1 Left, where we landed and taxied to the parking area.

Due to the air traffic controllers assigning us courses instead of being able to take a straight route in, were were a little late closing our flight plan, but the Flight Following Service had contacted Riverside tower to see if we were in the area, so they knew we were safe. By the time we got the airplane shut down and parked it was just after 7:30PM, and I had logged 3.8 hours of flying time, with 1.6 of that at night. Bob also let me know that as I had picked up the ideas behind navigation, he felt good about letting me plan a solo cross country, which will take me to Shawnee and Stillwater in Oklahoma.

If I can get the Written Exam behind me, which I am still studying for, I might be able to get my checkride done sometime next month!

Lesson Twenty: More Maneuvering

Wednesday's lesson last week was canceled again due to the weather, but Saturday was beautiful. The wind was almost dead calm when I arrived at the airport just before my 9 AM lesson, but it was pretty chilly, I need to start taking some gloves to wear for the pre-flight inspection. We had plenty of fuel and oil, and everything else checked out, so we got the lesson plan and decided to head northwest for some more maneuvering practice.

We climbed out of Riverside and headed for the practice area. Once we got up to 2500 feet we started with some steep turns, at 45 degrees all the way around to the right, then back around to the left. Then did some stall practice, we did an approach to land stall, with full flaps down, then a departure stall, where you slow down to 50 knots then push in full power and pull back to simulate a too-steep take off.

With stalls successfully completed, we did some slow flight and slow turns, as the wind was so calm I performed by best slow turns to date, nice and smooth and maintained altitude and speed just about perfectly.

After that we started looking for some ground points for ground reference maneuvers, we found a road and did some S-Turns over it, then found an oil pump out in a field to do turns-around-a-point around. The wind was starting to pick up a little, but not really enough to blow us off course very quickly, so the ground reference maneuvers (which are supposed to counteract wind drift) were a little useless, but still good practice for the theory part.

We headed back to Riverside and did a soft field landing, then got the plane tied down and headed inside to talk about the lesson.

Soon we will be planning a cross-country trip, probably to Fayetteville in Arkansas, then up to Joplin in Missouri before coming back to Riverside. Bob tells me that it should take about 4 hours actual flight time for the whole excursion, and as we will be taking the Cessna 172, my wife Melodie can come along for the ride!

More to come!
-Gareth

Lesson Nineteen

I have managed to fall behind in keeping this up to date, so this entry is for November 20th.

I had scheduled a lesson from 8 to 10 am, as the Flight School was hosting an Open House from 10 to whenever, which I had volunteered to help with.  I got to the airport a few minutes before 8, and chatted with some pilots who were also going to volunteer, but they were going to be working with the EAA's (Experimental Aircraft Association) touring B-17 bomber "Aluminum Overcast".

Michael arrived and let me into the flight school office to get the Pilots Handbook for 69212 so I could start the pre-flight inspections.  The previous Wednesdays lesson had been called off due to a weather front coming through the area, which had produced winds gusting past 30 knots.  I got the Cessna checked out as Bob arrived, it had been parked across a slope, with one wing slightly lower that the other, which allowed fuel to run from the uphill tank to the downhill tank, so we had 10 gallons in one and 4 in the other.  As the engine fuel is supplied from the tanks by gravity, it would naturally drain more from the heavier tank at first, so we would be fine.

I got clearance from Riverside tower and taxied past the parked B-17 to the run-up area, then we were cleared for a takeoff to the southeast.

We flew up through the bumpy air, which smoothed a little by the time we reached 2,500 feet.  The wind was still too strong for our planned ground reference maneuvers, so we did some stalls and slow flight.

As I dropped the flaps down for the "dirty" slow-flight I noticed Bob peering down out of the window.  I had the plane pointed 180 degrees South, almost straight into the wind, with the airspeed indicator right at 35 knots.  Bob asked me to adjust course to the right by 20 degrees to 200, then after a minute, asked me to go back left a little to 190 degrees.

He had been trying to gauge our ground speed, he decided that we were definitely hovering, or flying at an indicated 35 knots straight into a 35 knot headwind, he had been hoping we could actually go backward, but the wind just wasn't quite strong enough.

We got the fresh weather information and turned back around to the airport when he pulled the throttle out and told me the engine had stopped.  I ran through the checklist, determined that the engine was windmilling in this simulation, and picked a field to land in.  Down we went.  The wind closer to the ground had picked up so we were really getting bumped around.  I would have successfully landed, so we performed a go-around, full power and flaps retracted as we went back up.  At this point I decided that maybe McDonalds breakfast and orange juice aren't the best combination for rough weather flying.  I wasn't nauseous, but I was more aware of my stomach than usual and was glad to reach the relatively smoother air above.

We returned to Riverside with no further incident, when we landed we had to taxi through a parking area, as the B-17 had started its 4 huge radial engines, and we didn't want to risk taxiing too closely behind it.

We got the plane tied down and I tracked down Michael to see where I would be needed for the fly-in.
The flight school had recently purchased a Diamond DA-20 Katana as a low-wing trainer, so I was fed some pertinent facts and posted next to it to answer any questions that prospective students might have.  Fortunately the DA-20 was parked out in the main fly-in area, so I got to see the B-17 start its engines and take off, as well as a P51 Mustang and F4F Wildcat that were doing some low level formation fly-by's.

After they had landed we walked back to the Flight School building where Michael was grilling some hamburgers and hot-dogs, so I helped out there where I could, got something to eat, and called it a day.

Here are some videos of the B-17 Aluminum Overcast that I shot while at the open house:


Engines Starting, with a cameo by the P51 Miracle Maker.



Take Off with the Wildcat taxiing in the foreground.


Landing and taxiing back to parking.