I’m now back in Arkansas for a 10 day periods and I was itching badly for a a plane ride. Today, I have an opportunity to do just that. I have scheduled a 2 hour session to get back in the game or at least to get an assessment and see how effective and persistent the 6 week training from July has been! Unfortunately, the weather is not very collaborative today. Ceiling is low: 1,700 feet AGL (Above Ground Level). This should be enough to do pattern work but not enough to go do maneuvers and might become dangerous for a ride to another airport. I’m still going to the airport. If anything I should be able to get a few pictures at the airport…

Weather? Bad!

As I’m arriving at the airport, Michael is ready or me and I’m asking him what we are going to do. We started by thinking about staying at the airport and do some pattern work but then he decided to take a different route. That route would allow us to get wherever we want. The trick was simple. The problem is being able to get through the clouds. Only instrument rated pilot can do it and, as student private pilot, I do not have this privilege! But Michael does. So he filed an instrument flight plan. Under his supervision, we will be able to get through the clouds! How exciting! All the documentation for  my level kept saying to stay away from the clouds by at least a nautical mile and that, should I inadvertently end up in one, I should do a 180 and go the other way as soon as possible. So having the chance to approach the clouds and go fly through was an interesting prospect I was looking forward to.

Little surprise in the left tank

We are ready to go. The plane is in the hangar waiting for me. After getting the binder for the plane, I’m doing a quick review of the last entry and realize that the plane has not been flown for a few days. This comes as no surprise since the weather was not really good… Marginal VFR all the time. But it should not matter much but I’m planning to be a little more careful because I want to make sure that I’m not missing something while preflying. It’s been 2 months and I’m not sure what I remember and I definitely do not want to be over confident.

I’m starting the preflight and immediately the reflexes are coming back. The repetition of the flights is finally paying off, preflight is starting pretty good. Following the routine, I’m starting from the cabin and check the fuel levels. Tanks are 2/3rd full (I like full tanks!). Not ideal but largely enough for the 90 minutes ahead of us. I’m continuing with the other elements of the preflight. I went over the left wing and draw some gas out of the left tank and I realize immediately that something is not right! What I see is not just gas but also water!!! So it does happen! This is definitely not a myth! Now that I’m thinking about this should have come as no surprise:

• Lots of humidity in the air lately
• Tank is not full
• Temperature is still fairly high (60+F)
• Plane has not been flown in a few days

That points directly at tank condensation! The humidity in the air of the tank condensed, formed water droplets that get mixed with the fuel! Thankfully, water is heavier than fuel and get at the bottom of the tank which then comes first when you get sample of the fuel from the drain. Since half was water and the other half was fuel (in my sample, not the tank!), I most likely removed all the water that was in the tank but to make sure I’m stopping my preflight and go check with Michael the procedure to follow and to indeed check that it is water!

Michael confirmed the water and ask me to continue draining until all the water is gone. I’m returning back to the plane and restart my preflight. Surprisingly, the right tank had no water contamination and the third drain under the plane did not reveal any water also! So I’m all good.

Time to get the plane out of the hangar and get ready for the flight.

Let’s go cloud surfing!

The plane is out and I’m getting a little anxious. I’m hoping that my old nemesis, bad landing, is not back in town for me!

But for the moment, I should be worried about the taxiing and take off. Here, no surprise. Everything went very smooth. I did allow myself to not stop at the end of the back taxiing and do like a soft landing. I had also another plane, the other 172 from the school, that was ready to land and was turning final.

The video below is accelerated for the take off and some of the climb because nothing really interesting was happening but once we were in the thick of the flight, it became very interesting.

Getting in the clouds

I was wondering how the bad weather would impact us. In fact it was not very bumpy. There was a little bit of wind but nothing too bad. On the video, you can see how dark it was that day and it was only 3:00pm! As mentioned earlier, Michael had filed an IFR flight plan for us so we are allowed to get into the clouds. Under VFR, I would have NEVER been allowed to do something like that. We climbed steadily up to 3,000 ft and I had the clouds literally over my head. Just a few feet away and then we climbed up. There in the middle of the clouds, with a visibility of 0. The video is representing perfectly the visibility. As Michael said: “It is solid!”. We are not sure how thick are the clouds but we are expecting 1,000 to 1,500 ft of clouds.

Out of the clouds

As we are continuing to climb, I’m realizing that the luminosity is getting higher. When we entered the clouds it was dark but as we are climbing, it is getting lighter and lighter. Until suddenly we came out of the clouds! Almost no transition, it was like bursting out of the clouds. The top was in fact at 4,000 ft. We just went through a thousand feet of clouds!!!

Razorback approach gave us our instructions to climb to 5,000 and we asked them to do a VFR on top. This means that we are not govern by the flight plan anymore and all the VFR rules are applying again. We maintained a flight following to make sure that we get some updates in case another plane would be around. We got approved by ATC.

Look at the video below, noticed the ceiling of clouds, the density of the clouds as we are getting in and the gradual luminosity change as we are climbing, finally as we are coming out of the clouds, look at the sky! Very different then what was a few minute before. The video does not really show this properly but the entire sky was filled with white clouds reflecting the sun! It was a gorgeous view. The kind that makes you forget how crappy the weather was a few minutes before.

There are also something else that I would like you to think about: Try to get any visual reference on the position of the plane. Am I straight and level? Is the nose up  or down? Is the plane moving (other than climbing)?

So did you find out what was the position of the plane? Most likely not. I was watching the outside and let the plane actually bank slightly on the left. I had to bring it back to level several times during the climb.

The ONLY way you can fly properly through clouds is with the instruments. It is impossible to maintain an attitude without using the instruments.

Practicing advanced maneuvers

After a few setup and some clearing turns to make sure that we have no one around, we started the sequence of maneuvers. First, the traditional slow turn, airplane dirty (all flaps out), speed at 45.

After 3 slow turns executed properly, time to get to the next exercise: stalls! Stalls are not exactly my favorite maneuvers and I particularly dislike power on stalls. But we went through the exercise, we did 2 power off stalls and it went well, then 2 power on stalls and it went also well so on to the next exercises: steep turn!

I couldn’t recall if I was supposed to use the rudder to execute the steep turn or not and of course, my use of the rudders was totally wrong! So the first steep turn was not good. The next couple ones started to get better and then everything went downhill from there until I finally was able to recover and start doing good steep turns. Definitely not something that I was expecting. We will have to work on that more…

I’ve put a video of one of the steep turn, you can see the maneuver of course, but it is also interesting because we have a very good view of the clouds. We are only at a 1,000 feet above the clouds and you can see how dense they are. The other thing is how bright the sun is! At each steep turn, I was getting blinded by the sun. Not fun but I can not complain considering how dark it is under the clouds… I have to say that this sight of the clouds and the blue sky was really nice!

Time to go back home

Now that the exercises are over, it is time to go back home and practice a couple of landings. The interesting part is that before getting back down, we will have to cross the clouds again but the other way. The weather has evolved a little and went from Overcast to Broken. This means that you get some holes in the clouds where you can see the ground. I will try to use one of them to get under the clouds while maintaining visual contact with the ground.

Michael decided to get an approach that is normally reserved for IFR flight. The approach is a GPS approach. This would bring us directly inline with the runway at the airport.

The video below shows going down through the clouds and then move on to the landing. If you want a little challenge, the airport is visible from 2:09 in the video. You might have to pause the video but try to spot it … That's about the timeI spotted it!

Yes I know the landing was not that good. I came down too fast for many reasons: not enough flap, a descent that was too quick and the more cruel reality, I was not checking the speed during the descent. And the excitement in the cockpit after the landing was a confusion from my part. We had decided to do a touch and go and I’ve pushed to a full throttle position. But Michael thought, legitimately, that we had used too much runway for the landing and we might come short of runway for the take off so instead he wanted us to do a full stop and restart quietly…

Another cycle and we call it quit…

Of course, I do not like to stay on a failure and a frustration so we decided to go for another round. This time, I know I should be careful about my speed. Each time I have watched it carefully, I ended landing properly. So let’s see if this time I can do another one properly.

Yes! I have to say I’m very happy about this landing. My fiancée is most likely going to hear about it for days!  It was near text book perfect. Approach was at the right speed, I controlled my speed all the way down to the ground, did not float… As you have most likely heard, Michael was quick to acknowledge the effort and the result!

Conclusion for the first day back

We have closed the flight and did all the paperwork, it is time to think about what happen and see where I’m standing after this 2 months break.

• Preflight preparation: Everything is ok and I should be ok for now.
• Taxiing : Everything is ok. I need to check the pattern a little better. I was not paying enough attention when taxiing.
• Take off: All normal, have not lost anything.
• Landing: Still prone to bad landings but every pilot would have the same issue so I’m not done with the topic but I have all the basis to land properly. It is just a matter of executing now. Watching my speed during final will be the big thing to make sure I’m landing properly.
• Advanced maneuvers: Well, the stalls are ok. I still don’t like power on stalls but I’m doing them properly. On the other hands, my fear of not being able to perform the steep turn properly was not unreasonable. I’m starting to loose on that topic and I will need to practice.
• Navigation: This has always been a fairly strong point of mine so I do not expect any problem in the future with that.
• Soft/Short Field techniques: Not practiced today! We shall see another day.

So overall, I can say that this day was fairly successful. The bad weather was not too much of a deterrent and gave us an opportunity to go play with the clouds. I think I can say another successful flight!

Let’s see if we will be able to renew that in the coming days!