First time I've flown in the evening. The airport was practically deserted. Crazy weather. The KLOU information sounded benign, but actually we had a crosswind and gusts. We did 4 touch & go's, and it was interesting and fun, but probably because I don't have any sense.
That's actually the big question in my mind--am I going to get to where I use good judgment in an airplane?
I went ahead and started the plane without Mike (who had gone back in to make a phone call), which felt brave but it's time. I had the hardest time understanding the ATIS, and must have listened to it 5 or 6 times before I got it, and by that time Mike was back.
I had my seat up too close, which screwed up my taxiing, which is embarrassing, and then when we did runup, and checked the magnetos, I did the first one, noted the rpm drop, and then did the second one, noted the rpm drop and almost registered that the engine didn't sound right, but was moving on (by habit) when Mike says "Did that sound right??"
"I don't know." I did know--it didn't sound right, but that's what I said.
"What do you mean you don't know? How many times have you done this?" Which is the point.
He says there's carbon on the spark plug--you run the engine real hot to burn it off. He spent some time with throttle on full, moving the mixture in and out, and then had me check it again, but again it was loping when the magneto2 switch was on, so he worked it some more. On the next check it ran normally, so we went back up the list a little and checked the engine running sequence again.
So does adding air to the fuel mixture make it run hotter? I should have asked afterwards, but I had other questions, and I forgot all about it until too late.
Lots of unpredictable wind, beautiful sky
I never asked before, but we should be at 750 feet to clear the trees on landing. That displaced runway marker is for the trees.
We practiced coming in a (partial?) forward slip, where you turn your ailerons into the wind and use rudder to keep on the center line. There wasn't any bouncing this time, just difficulty with aiming.
I know/knew I was supposed to be holding ailerons into the wind, but it's funny how several times (over the course of the evening) I straightened them up without realizing it.
Mike took the controls during the last takeoff, and said afterwards that he was considering setting us back down. I didn't recognize that we were in any kind of trouble like that. He did say it was wind, not something I did, and that we were going to call it a night.
When we came in, it was on a long final because someone else came in in front of us. After we came down, ATC told us that it was interesting that we'd been moving 160 knots on the downwind leg. Fastest that plane's gone, I bet.
I had questions about the Airspace chapter in the Jeppeson book, so we stayed to talk about that. Controlled (blue) or uncontrolled (magenta)? Class G airspace (except at ground+ level) mostly doesn't exist, not in this part of the country. Class E starts at 1200 feet EXCEPT when it's underneath Class B or C airspace, in which case it's usually 700 feet, but can be different. If you are anywhere, it's controlled or it's Class E. An airport that has a magenta fuzzy outer circle and a blue dashed inner circle is one in which the tower closes at night. When the tower is open, inside the 5-mile blue dashed line is Class D. When it's closed, the 10-mile fuzzy line is the boundary for wait a minute, Class E? Then why a boundary line? Outside the line is Class E. Class-E-uncontrolled-but-still-the-communication-between-pilots??? Rats. What is it?.
The big difference in all this is in knowing what your visibility and cloud avoidance minimums are.
I'm realizing that I need to practice all this information verbally with someone. Maybe I'll hire one of the Perma Herdes. Or Natalie. I'm going to have to do an oral exam, and besides that, I think when I need the information, it needs to be available to the oral (procedural) part of my brain. I say this after talking to Mike about charts. I've said it before. Sometimes, he can ask me about things that I know, even things I've known all my life, and I have to grope to verbalize the answer. (For example, I was deciphering the markings on the chart and said that the altitude of the airport was 700 msl. Altitude? Do airports have altitude? Can you believe I could NOT come up with the word "elevation"?)
Is this related to the judgment issue?
There are two possible explanations for this dichotomy. One is the philosophic/procedural gap, and the relationship to the theory of right-brain left-brain functioning in which a person is functioning in their non-dominant "hemisphere" (which would actually be a non-customary cognitive set) the person behaves/reacts differently, has different knowledge available, even behaves/talks immaturely.
The other possibility is that it's related to my crash-and-burn four/five years ago, and I still haven't come all the way back from it. I should probably delete this.
The other possibility is that I'm making mountains out of molehills and every student pilot goes thru this. It seems possible.
When we came out of Air Center One, the air was calm, and except for a big, lone white cumulonimbus thunderhead to the south, it might have been a different evening.
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