Just a walk in the clouds

Wednesday was a very nice day to fly, just enough wind for a challenge, about 20 kts, but it was almost straight down runway 17L. No crosswind takeoff/landing practice today. Hopefully soon...I'm really looking forward to learning those.

After I got to the office, I talked to Tom Kilpatrick about skydiving. He's done about 165 jumps and had a few cool stories to tell. I met up with Andy and he sent me right out to preflight the plane.

The first thing I noticed was the airplane was being refueled. I said hello to the guy doing the job and hopped in the plane for a few checks while he finished gassing up and cleaning the windshield. It's nice to be able to have a clear view.

Andy came out while I was still doing my checklist and he was in a really good mood. It always helps me out, I tend to get really quiet and not talkative while going through the numerous items in the pre-flight checklist. After I got done, we went inside for a little briefing on the maneuvers for the day. The main being steep banks, defined as a 45 degree bank angle and 360 degree rotation. Sounds like fun. Up to this point, I felt nervous about going past 30 degrees of bank, it felt like I was going to fall out of the plane, but Andy assured me that the plane could handle up 60 with no problem, and even more. Okay.

We got out to take off with no problem and I handled all the radio duties with ease, surprising myself. We climbed up to 4,000 msl where we would remain for the next 35 minutes or so. We flew around a bit, needing to escape some traffic that kept flying through the area, and set up for the maneuvers.

We did some slow flight, and he covered up my instruments so I couldn't see any of them. I discovered that I like to look at the instruments because I think that they are what is keeping me in the air. If I'm not looking at them, we're going to run into the ground at any second! Surprisingly, that was not the case. After left turns and right turns, Andy would let me see the instruments again only to show that we didn't lose any altitude at all, we remained right at 4,000 feet. "Sweet!" I exclaimed, "who would have that the plane can stay in the air without my head in the cockpit!"

We soon made our way to the north and Andy started the first steep bank to show me how it worked. A forty-five degree angle may not seem like much, but in that plane, it seems as if your are sitting on a wall. We went around a full circle in only 10-15 seconds and leveled out. It wasn't too bad, it made me slightly dizzy though. Okay. my turn. 45 degrees of bank to the left....add a little power...a little back pressure to avoid losing altitude because of the increased drag...hold it...hold it...hold it...come back to our starting direction and level out. Fantastic. "Kinda makes you feel like your a fighter pilot for a minute," Andy said.

We did more of those in different directions and some variations with the controls. All of them turned out great. I was very stern with maintaining altitude throughout the turns also, not letting us waver more than 50-100 feet higher or lower than 4,000. I was getting better.

We headed back to KPWA and did some forward slips down to the runway, those were cool. We were way high over the runway when we would begin them and come down really fast, but always in control. It's hard to describe how forward slips feel. The plane is pointing one direction while you actually fly another and drop altitude at 1500 feet per minute. Very strange, but practical if you need to land just past some 200 ft tall pine trees at a strip in Aspen.

Ahh, pilot training, gotta love it.