A Student Pilot's Blog

Being a student pilot and a medical student both at the same time comes with a major drawback - time, or its lack thereof. Trying to get my priorities straight, I have assigned more importance to the study of learning how to cure human illness (though I sometimes wish it were the other way around). My passion for flying has thus been relegated to the meager free time I get on the weekends, mainly on Sundays. As such, the weekend flight lesson is something I eagerly look forward to - something I find more exciting and intellectually stimulating than reading hundreds and hundreds of pages of scientific and clinical facts (I hope mom and dad don't read this or they might cut my funding: flight school, medical school, or both).

The Saturday evening before the flight, I spend about an hour looking at VFR maps, radar images of any weather fronts in the area, mentally rehearsing procedures and interpreting (or rather, trying to interpret) METARs and TAFs for the area. Of course, none of this is burdensome because student pilots like to do these things! With everything set and ready for the hour-long, early-morning bus ride to the flying club (6:20 a.m. on a Sunday!), I climb into bed and dream about being in the airplane....

This particular Sunday found me awake half an hour before the alarm clock. The wind was howling and rain was pouring just outside my window. I got up with a tinge of trepidation; it felt very strange, considering the pleasant cloudless days of the past few weeks. A check of the current weather conditions gave substance to my fears, immediately followed by a concomitant phone call from my instructor - "We can't go flying today" - which sounded horribly irrevocable.

On a positive note, it's not as bad as it seems. I only have one more week of classwork to do and then the weekend flight lesson... assuming the rain won't pay another visit and leave me on the ground to rot with the rest of my medical textbooks. At least not next week. VFR weather to all! Hasta luego. Out.

P.S. I would try to convince you, but I do like medical school and I enjoy the possibilities for learning and improvement in this field. Truly, I enjoy it just as much as my flying lessons. Not convinced yet? Well, what the hell! This is a student pilot's blog after all.

Arguably, one of the most important and exciting parts of an approach is the landing flare (also called a roundout), a standard procedure in which the pilot raises the nose of the aircraft to produce mainly two things: reduce airspeed and raise the nose to ensure the main landing gear touch the ground before the nose wheel. As such, flaring is as much an important maneuver as the entire approach itself because it determines how the airplane will touchdown. A small miscalculation can have possibly disastrous consequences for both the airplane and its pilot.

This training flight was focused on standard traffic pattern flying. I refueled the club's Cessna 150, checked for fuel contamination, and performed the preflight inspection. The weather today was a good 30° C, few clouds, light crosswinds on Runway 01...typical for this time of the year. Because I hadn't flown in over three months (long vacation in Kenya), my instructor took through a quick review of standard maneuvers in the air. As could be expected, my performance was far from worthy of the term "airmanship". After clumsily wiggling through most of the maneuvers, I entered the traffic pattern in preparation for landing.

On final approach, I established approach airspeed and compensated for the left-side crosswind by slipping the nose a little bit left of the runway heading and adding 30° flaps. Approaching the runway threshold, I reduced power to idle and lowered the nose a little in preparation for the landing flare. I started pulling back on the control column (yoke).... I kept pulling back and back until I couldn't pull anymore... About 10 feet off the ground, I noticed the aircraft felt like it was dropping like a dead fly. I tried to pull back more on the yoke (oops, error!) but it had reached its limit. The ground was looming greater at an alarming speed! Then all of a sudden....WHAM! The main gear slammed into the ground with a crash that was just a little bit too loud for my pilot's pride. To make matters even worse, the stall had caused me to take my mind off the crosswind, which caused the aircraft's nose to be pointed about 15° off of the runway heading.

The post-flight briefing with my instructor revealed that I had started pulling back on the control column too early, which caused the airplane to start to lose airspeed too high above the runway. Also, the solution to a stall during the flare is never to pull back more: it's either add power and attempt to flare again or perform a go-around procedure. Lesson learned!

P.S. Instructors allow their students to make mistakes, hoping that by doing so, they will repent from their fallacious ways and be wise. This one has for sure. Hasta luego!

I am the copilot. I sit on the right.
It's up to me to be quick and bright;
I never talk back for I have regrets,
But I have to remember what the Captain forgets.

I make out the Flight Plan and study the weather,
Pull up the gear, stand by to feather;
Make out the mail forms and do the reporting,
And fly the old crate while the Captain is courting.

I take the readings, adjust the power,
Put on the heaters when we're in a shower;
Tell him where we are on the darkest night,
And do all the bookwork without any light.

I call for my Captain and buy him cokes;
I always laugh at his corny jokes,
And once in awhile when his landings are rusty
I always come through with, "By gosh it's gusty!"

All in all I'm a general stooge,
As I sit on the right of the man I call "Scrooge";
I guess you think that is past understanding,
But maybe some day he will give me a landing.

At Heathrow Airport today, an individual, later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a compass, a protractor, and a graphical calculator.

Authorities believe he is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement.

He is being charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.

from http://dauntless-soft.com/PRODUCTS/Freebies/Humor/

After a long hiatus from flight school, this aspiring pilot is back in business! My time away was spent in the great country of Kenya, East Africa (during the post-election violence) and climbing Mt. Kenya. You can read all about it in my friend Lahja's blog here.

After an eternity of not getting my hands on an airplane, my gut tells me I will be making quite a few errors (some maybe fatal) on the next flight. However, my own experience tells me I will make it through. The worst that can happen is a few minor scratches and some broken bones. All in all, it is good to be back in Argentina: studying medicine (in 3rd year now!), speaking Spanish, learning to fly and blogging about it! So welcome back to me... and to you dear readers! Hasta luego.

This is the Piper J3 Cub I have been telling you about, otherwise called the "Cub". She is a weathered old bird, having taken her first breath of fresh air out of the Piper factory in 1946, more than half a century ago. A friend of mine was brave enough to stand on the side of the grass strip to record this moment - my first landing in the Cub, without my instructor's assistance. Thank you for risking your life, Andrey.

Taildraggers (airplanes that have two wheels forward and one wheel dragging on the tail, hence the name) are generally considered by pilots to be harder to land than tricycle-gear aircraft. Some say, if you can land a Cub you can land anything. Because of the landing gear's design, it is landed differently from tricycle-gear aircraft which are commonly used today. The Cub certainly fits the taildragger mold. It wants to be landed a certain way, just so. And if you don't, it is a serpent that WILL turn around and bite you. I got bitten today.

As I floated over the runway's threshold, engine at idle to get the plane on the ground, I kept back pressure on the stick to keep the nose up. I glided down the runway set up for a great greaser landing! But there is something odd about flight controls in small aircraft. As the airplane bleeds off speed, the flight controls become heavy, due to the fact that less air is now keeping them straight. So heavy in fact that my arm was beginning to ache! Now I knew I had to keep that stick pegged to by chest, but I am not Arnold Schwarzenegger, and thus succumbed to the thought of quiet relief to my arm. I allowed the stick go forward just a few inches...WHAM! The plane's nose dropped and the front wheels hit the ground with a horribe thud. I stood on the brakes and willed the airplane to a standstill on the runway as soon as I could, careful not to look in my instructor's eye. So much for the silky smooth greaser landing I was expecting.

A quick check of the airplane post-flight showed no damage, to my utmost relief. The Cub will bite if you don't do things right. But it is also a forgiving airplane. It bites you just hard enough so that you will remember never to make the same mistake again. I made a total of three landings today. The last two weren't bad at all.

When Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" statement but followed it by several remarks, usually com traffic between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control. Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark: "Good luck Mr. Gorsky."
Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good luck Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled.
But, (on July 5, 1995 in Tampa Bay FL) while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.
When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball which landed in the front of his neighbor's bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. & Mrs. Gorsky. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, "Oral sex! You want oral sex?! You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"
Apparently a true story.

1) Takeoffs are optional. Landings are mandatory.
2) If you push the stick forward, the houses get bigger. If you pull the stick back, they get smaller.
3) Flying isn't dangerous. Crashing is dangerous.
4) It's always better to be down here wishing you were up there, than up there wishing you were down here.
5) The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.
6) The propeller is just a big fan in front of the plane used to keep the pilot cool. When it stops, you can actually watch the pilot start sweating.
7) When in doubt, hold on to your altitude. No one has ever collided with the sky.
8) A "good" landing is one from which you can walk away. A "great" landing is one after which they can use the plane again.
9) Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make all of them yourself.
10) You know you've landed with the wheels up if it takes full power to taxi to the ramp.
11) The probability of survival is directly proportional to the angle of arrival.
12) Stay out of clouds. The silver lining everyone keeps talking about might be another airplane going in the opposite direction.
13) Reliable sources also report that mountains have been known to hide out in clouds.
14) There are three simple rules for making a smooth landing. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
15) You start with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience.The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck.
16) In the ongoing battle between objects made of aluminum going hundreds of miles per hour and the ground going zero miles per hour, the ground has yet to lose
17) Good judgment comes from experience. Unfortunately, experience usually comes from bad judgment.
18) It's always a good idea to keep the pointy end going forward as much as possible.
19) Remember, gravity is not just a good idea. It's the law. And it's not subject to repeal
20) Always try to keep the number of landings you make equal to the number of takeoffs you've made.
21) The three most useless things to a pilot ?
a) altitude above you
b) runway behind you
c) 1/10 of a second ago.
22) Helicopters can't fly; they're just so ugly the earth repels them.

Imagine a friend of yours just said to you, "Hey, let's go rent a plane and do some sightseeing." Now that friend of yours has never ever touched an airplane his entire life. Would you agree to go with him? Personally, and out of common sense, I wouldn't.

It is logical that before any person be allowed to fly any aircraft, he or she must possess sufficient knowledge to operate it safely and properly. This knowledge is gained in the form of ground school and flight lessons with a flight instructor.

Just as one needs a driving license in order to drive an automobile, so one needs a pilot's license in order to fly an airplane. For most people, this takes the form of the Private Pilot License, otherwise known as a PPL. Generally speaking, a PPL allows a person to fly specific types of single-engine aircraft for non-commercial purposes, i.e. you can't make money out of it.

The specific requirements in order to obtain a PPL vary from country to country, although one will find they are quite similar. Here in Argentina, I am required by law, as a student pilot, to complete the following:

• Class III Medical Certificate issued by the Argentine Air Force
• 30 hrs of dual command flight (with flight instructor)
• 10 hrs of solo flight
• Airman Knowledge Written Test
• Checkride or Flight Test with an Air Force inspector
• Variable hrs of Ground School

Once I have completed all of the above, I will be issued a PPL - and I shall be on my way to new horizons! Dear readers, these are my goals and I am determined to complete them - as long as it brings me closer to the skies. As one anonymous person wrote, "To most people, the sky is the limit. To those who love aviation, the sky is home." Stay tuned for next post, in which we shall have an introduction to one of the training aircraft: the Piper J3 Cub.