Click to download the Google Earth Tour file (Google Earth Help)
Here’s the video!
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Click to download the Google Earth Tour file (Google Earth Help)
I spent all day working on short and soft field takeoffs and landings with Travis. Let’s say you have a runway that is shorter than you actually need and there’s a 50ft tree at the end of the runway. Like taking off in the country or after you had to make an emergency landing somewhere and now need to get out of there. But there’s this 50ft tree sitting at the end of the runway or road or whatever you landed on…how do you do it? Read more…
Click to download the Google Earth Tour file (Google Earth Help)
I needed more hours of flight time at night as well as more time under the hood. That means you wear this dorky looking huge plastic pseudo-baseball hat looking thing. The idea is that you’re simulating flying by instruments only, so the “hood” restricts your vision to only the instruments in the cockpit and you can’t see outside. Sounds scary but it’s really not that bad. Travis is sitting next to me giving me coordinates to fly. Like “fly a heading of 090 and maintain 4500 feet.” So I’d do that just by looking at the instruments in the plane. And doing it at night is not any worse than doing it during the day. So we flew around for a bit then he had me do an approach to Van Nuys and had me keep the hood on until we were about 1 mile from landing! Then he said take the hood off and land the plane….ok….it wasn’t that bad except I forgot to put the flaps down and Travis had to give me the “full flaps” advice. Then I did this crappy landing…I was doing great until then. The runway lights are awfully pretty though.
While under the hood Travis also had me “recovering from unusual attitudes” It’s not what you’re thinking, “snap out of it man you’ve got a plane to fly!” It’s more like this. Sometimes the plane can be banking or descending and it can feel like nothing is different, as if you’re still flying straight and level. So if you happen to be flying in the clouds or even if you’re looking down at the instruments or charts and are not paying attention to what the gauges are really telling you, you can get into an “unusual attitude” with the plane. The idea is you look at your gauges and correct accordingly. So Travis had me look at my lap while he gradually put the plane into an unusual attitude then had me look up at the gauges and recover. On the first one the plane was banking to the left and diving and it really didn’t feel that “wrong” while I was looking at my lap, so I looked at the gauges and adjusted accordingly. I was a little slow on the first one but got better the second and third time. You have to look up at the gauges and first figure out what the plane is actually doing then decide what to do to fix it, and you do this while under the hood, so you don’t look outside at all.
I was out of town this past weekend at the National Radial Engine Exhibition at Akron Colorado. (http://www.nationalradialengineexhibition.com) I actually went to high school there so it’s kind of ironic that this airshow is there. They also had a WWII re-enactment, complete with half-tracks and explosions and cool stuff like that. My friend from college buys and restores WWII half-tracks. I went with him and participated in the re-enactment. Mounted on top of his half-track is this big ass .50 cal semi-auto gun. Big gun, it shoots blanks but they’re full load blanks so they make a real loud noise. It was awesome. I got to shoot that one, it was sweet. Luckily it was mounted on a turret on top of the half-track otherwise it would’ve kicked me into the back of the truck. I shot a little video so have a look.
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Click to download the Google Earth Tour file (Google Earth Help)
Click to download the Google Earth flight path. (Google Earth Help)
Here’s the video!
Click to download the Google Earth flight path. (Google Earth Help)
Here’s the video!
Click to download the Google Earth flight path. (Google Earth Help)
Here’s the video!
Aircraft: Cessna 172L – N19688
Length of Flight: 1.3 Hrs – Solo
Total Flight Hours to Date: 34.5 Hrs
Altitude: 3500 Feet
Route: Whiteman to Whiteman
Click to download the Google Earth flight path. (Google Earth Help)
This was one of my first solo flights to the Santa Clarita/Simi Valley.
Solo basically means that you’re flying the plane by yourself but not yet qualified to take passengers along with you because you’re still a student.
Aircraft: Cessna 172M – N13818
Length of Flight: 1.8 Hrs – Solo
Total Flight Hours to Date: 32.7 Hrs
Altitude: 3500 Feet
Route: Whiteman to Whiteman
Click to download the Google Earth flight path.(Google Earth Help)
This is the first time logging my flights with my GPS. If you click on the link above for the Google Earth you can fly the route that I flew! It’s really cool. Look in the Google Earth Help for how I set mine up for a cool tour.
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