Wow it's been 2.5 months since my last update on my blog. I know I'm being lazy on writing, but I have lots of good reasons for that. One of them will be the weather is getting so much better as we are getting into summer so I can't resist the temptation of flying. I've logged almost 40 hours in the airplane and 10 hours in the Red Bird simulator since May. Another excuse would be I got distracted in May because I was buying a share in a flying club! Now I'm an "owner" of 3 beautiful Cessnas, owning them with other club members. With my own airplanes, the flying expense drop dramatically and I can afford to fly more often than before. Everything happened so fast in the last few months and I was just busy flying. Now I finally have some time to sit down and write about them. Here are some of the flights/events that are worth mentioning.
Light Sport Fun
At the beginning of May, I just got checked out in the Evektor SportStar
at Harvey and I thought I'm going to fly this plane for the next couple
month to build my cross country hours since it's only slightly more
expensive than the Cessna 152 but has a MUCH BETTER view. The view in a
SportStar cockpit is so great that I even have non-pilot friends asking me if
I was flying a helicopter. I've flown to Orcas Island once to build 2 hours of cross country time and done another local flight with a Taiwanese student who's training at Harvey.
SportStar Over San Juan Islands
SportStar at Orcas Island
San Juan Islands again
Somewhere between Arlington and Snohomish
Over Lake Sammamish
Glider Solo
It's a beautiful day on May 12th at Bergseth field, and my instructor Gary finally signed me off for my solo. I was almost ready last October (even before I soloed the C152), but the weather get into the way and the glider club doesn't operate in winter. This spring I believe we had canceled 8 out of the first 10 operation, and 1 of the operations that we had was with that crazy 30 knot wind blowing down the mountain. When the weather becomes better, my instructor was out for vacation and other instructors who don't know me well obviously couldn't let me solo.
This is a perfect day for solo, the wind is almost calm and we have unlimited visibility. After a pattern tow, Gary stepped out of the glider and asked the tow pilot to give me a 3000 ft tow and allow me have some time to experience the handling of glider by myself. I was quite nervous to be honest. I kept a very close look with the altimeter because I don't want to have an off field landing on my first solo. I landed safely 20 minutes later. I was a little high on final but I managed to use full spoiler and forward slip to bring it down normally. I had another pattern tow right after that and called it a day.
However, that day was far from over. Our tow plane has a nose over upon landing and the propeller is damaged. Though there's no visual damage on the engine, it's grounded indefinitely until it's cleared from the maintenance shop(according to the latest update, it should be back at the end of July). Just when I thought I could finally get my glider rating.......
With my glider instructor Gary after my first glider solo
Buying a Plane?
It never occurs to me that I'll become an aircraft owner this year. I always thought it's going to take me a few years to save enough money (it's really mission impossible with the way I used up all my income every month on flight training). The chances came when someone working in the same company is selling his share in a flying club. I wasn't planning to join any flying club originally because I can rent C152 at RNT for less than $90/hr at that time. The funny thing is, the FBO decided to replace the C152 with C162 the same time I saw the ads of the flying club share, which gave me perfect reason to join the club to in order to keep my flying expense low. I contacted the guy a week later and luckily it hasn't been sold yet. So I bought the share as soon as possible.
The club has two Cessna 172M and one Cessna 182P. All the planes are equipped with G430W with terrain and traffic display. The Skylane even has Aspen PFD with synthetic vision and two-axis autopilot. I finished my checkout in each of the Cessna 172M (insurance policy requires separate checkout in each plane) and also completed the night checkout as soon as possible. I did it with three different instructors in the club, including one FAA examiner. This club is definitely not in shortage of instructors lol.
First Adventure in MY Airplane
Shortly after I joined the club, I happened to find another coworker who's interested in glider training. We knew each other because I replied to his question on an email thread about gliders. Since the tow plane is down, our glider club is temperately operating at Ephrata now and we started planning to carpool to Ephrata on the weekend. However, we soon realized that we are actually in the same flying club that I just joined. So carpool became planepool, haha. We took our glider instructor Gary with us on the trip. Jon flew us to EPH on IFR in the morning, and I took us back VFR at night. Jon has his first taste of glider flight and I also get my first experience in the PW-6. We both enjoy the experience a lot, and Jon like it enough to decide to come back to our club to train for a glider rating.
Above the cloud along V2
mountain top covered with snow
It's all sunny on the east side of the Cascade
Wind mills
Ephrata
Hooking up the tow rope
Cross Country Time Building
The hourly cost for flying is much lower for me now because of the flying club. In addition, the club is billing us on Tach time instead of Hobbs time. So I have been taking full advantage of that, building lots of cross country time. I'm building it smartly that I didn't take unnecessary long cross country trips in terms of long distance. Instead, I'm trying to land as frequently as possible once I meet that 50nm straight line distance requirement between two airports, so that I can save Tach time while building up the flight hours. I easily added about 20 hours in less than a month!
Friday Harbor on final for runway 16
Friday Harbor
Our plane parking at FHR
China Southern Airline - The airline from my home town! Spotted this when I was about to start the engine at RNT
Sea-Tac Crossing
With two Taiwanese students who are currently training at Harvey, photo taken at Kelso, in front of my club's plane
IFR Training
Instrument training is probably the most "boring" thing to describe. It's been shooting approaches either in the simulator or in the plane under the hood. I got a little real IMC experience in June, but the weather has been generally pretty nice when I'm practicing IFR (or simply thunderstorm that prevent me from flying at all). I'm almost finished with the approach practices and can't wait to get into the IFR cross country stage! A little footage of one of my IFR training in VFR day can be viewed here:
Next Steps...
In the next few weeks, I'm hoping to finish my IFR training stage 2 (the approaches) reviews and stage check and also complete those 2 or 3 IFR cross country flights for the training. I need to get ready for the written exam and aiming to get the rating by the end of August.
Taking passengers up to introduce them to general aviation is another thing that I've started doing recently. However, this really depends on the weather and airplane availability. I've just cancelled tomorrow's flight because the airplane was damaged earlier this week and it's still under maintenance. Another scenic flight that I had scheduled in next week might be affected by the VIP TFR and might need to be cancelled too...
Last but not least, I'd like to complete my mountain flying checkout - flying into Stehekin State Airport with a former Alaska bush pilot. This is gonna be a super exciting and fun trip. We've already cancelled the flight once due to the bad weather in Puget Sound, and I really want to get this done ASAP now.
Because both my primary glider instructor and instrument instructor are out of town this weekend, I decided to have some fun this weekend. I tried two airplanes that I have never flown before: Super Cub on floats and Evektor Sport Star. Both are slow two seaters and controlled by a stick, but the feelings are completely different.
I went to Kenmore Air Harbor for a discovery flight on Saturday using the Super Cub on floats. It's heavier than normal ASEL because of the extra floats adding some weight and lots of drag. When taxiing in the water it require lots of to the rudder to steer the plane. While airborne, the influence of the added surface of the float kits is pretty strong, requiring more control input to maneuver the plane. The control input it requires is kinda similar to controlling a glider being towed by the tow plane(interestingly, my glider club is actually using a Super Cub for towing). Other than it requires a little stronger control input, the plane feels very natural and easy to control. Taking off and landings on water is not that much different from doing it on land, but doing it on water requires observation on the wind - there's no ATIS or windsock available on the lake! The only thing that I don't like about seaplane is that it's impossible to rent a seaplane to solo, but I think I'm still going to get the seaplane rating later this year anyway because it's so much fun!
The SportStar is completely opposite to the Super Cub on floats. It's light and super sensitive to tiny control inputs. Even when taxi on the ground I can feel that it reacts instantly with very small rudder changes. In my very first take off, I pulled back the stick gently(by gentle I mean the gentle input I would use when flying a 152/172) and almost stall the plane! To make things worse, it's a electric stall horn that I've never used before. So when the stall horn is buzzing, I didn't realize I'm about to stall until my instructor yelled at me about that. By the way, another mistake I made is that I didn't know SportStar will be that much different from Cessna airplanes so I scheduled the initial checkout at night hoping to get more night practices, which definitely made the process more challenging. After some steep turns, stalls and slow flight, we headed back to Harvey and my first landing in this plane is pretty decent - flared a little late but touching down is still quite smooth. My second landing was over correcting and flared too earlier and ended up bouncing on the runway a couple times before finally settling down. I called it a day after getting three landings to extend my night currency. I had another flight on Sunday just for some additional T/O and landing practice in the pattern. This time I'm doing it during the day and I completed the checkout without any problem. Well, the plane did have some problems though. The altimeter reading is jumping up and down a little bit(50-100ft), and the battery couldn't be fully charged and we eventually lost the electric attitude indicator and even the tachometer and at the end could not transmit to the CTAF. It's a VFR only plane, so it did not have too much effect on flying it at all. But it does show that electric equipments are not as reliable as we might thought. I keep seeing those ads about electric attitude indicator is safer than the vacuum driven ones, who knows...When the gauge want to fail, it just failed...
How to fly perfectly straight and level? Get a battery problem in a plane with electric attitude indicator!
The weather last weekend is perfect for GA flying. Though there's not too many lift for my glider training, the calm wind does make a ride in small Cessna pretty comfortable. I went up to Skagit again to check out the tulip festival after seeing people posting Saturdays picture from the field. (I flew to Skagit two weeks ago and saw nothing but grass and dust)
I departed Renton in late afternoon and landed at Harvey to pick up my friend A.J, who is going to help me to some photos so I can just focus on flying. We were cruising at 4,500 until we get close to KBVS and spotted the tulip fields. Because some tulip fields are really close to the Class C airspace, so I checked Whidbey ATIS to adjust the altimeter and then started decending towards the southeast to stay away from the Class C airspace. Then we came back just staying below the class C airspace at about 1,100 to 1,200 MSL and did a couple circles around the field - my first ground reference maneuver practice in three months! Looks like what we learn in private pilot training is quite useful for this kind flying :) After taking enough photos, we headed north and landed at Bellingham International, refueled, and headed back to Harvey and Renton. Logged 3 hours of X-C time. Great progress towards that 50 hours requirement for the Instrument rating. Next weekend, S43-KKLS-S43 with A.J, we are planning each flying one leg under the hood so that we can both log all the time.
