What I Learned Today

Amelia Earhart planned to write a book about her around-the-world expedition. It was to be called “World Flight.” She wrote some material before departing, and she sent back notes and logs from various stops across the globe. When the flight ended prematurely, her husband assembled the pieces and notes into a book that he published as “Last Flight.”

The first-person narration gives you a real sense of Amelia’s voice and character. She was fearless, in an awe-inspiring way. She was ever ambitious, reaching for the next challenge. She was also very interested in encouraging women in engineering (and aviation in particular). She criticized the way boys and girls were (… are …) shuffled into certain kinds of hobbies. “With rare exceptions,” she wrote, “the delights of finding out what makes a motor go, or batting the bumps out of a bent fender, are joys reserved for masculinity” (p. 47).

To enable her plans to go around the world, she acquired a plane that seems mammoth to me:

“The plane itself is a two-motor, all-metal monoplane, with retractable landing gear. It has a normal cruising speed of about 180 miles an hour and a top speed in excess of 200. With the special gasoline tanks that have been installed in the fuselage, capable of carrying 1150 gallons, it has a cruising radius in excess of 4000 miles. With full load the ship weighs about 15,000 pounds. It is powered with two Wasp ‘H’ engines, developing 110 horsepower” (p. 50).

By comparison, the Cessna 172 that I am learning to fly carries a maximum of 40 gallons of fuel and has a max takeoff weight of 2300 lbs. It has a cruising speed of 120 mph and a radius of about 600 miles. It would take a long time to get around the world that way!

She chronicles her travels from Miami to Brazil, then over to Dakar in Africa, then through India, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, and Lae in Papua New Guinea. Even knowing in advance that her trip will be truncated, it’s hard not to gain enthusiasm and confidence that it will somehow succeed, after she travels through so many different places, weather, and challenges. The book ends, necessarily, abruptly.

… and we still don’t know exactly why.

Did you know that American female pilots flew, and died, for their country in WWII?

For a brief period from 1942 to 1944, the U.S. trained and employed 1,102 female pilots (WASPs) to help with the war effort. They weren’t allowed to fly in combat, but they performed other duties that consequently freed up male pilots to head overseas. Those duties included variously low-prestige and/or high-risk activities such as:

• flying planes from where they were assembled to the port from which they’d be flown to the war fronts
• towing a canvas target for ground troops to shoot anti-aircraft guns at (really!)
• testing newly repaired planes to certify them to be sent back out to the front

They also learned to fly large bombers that, in some cases, no other pilots were willing to fly. These planes (such as the B-29) were often prone to engine fires or other issues. Yet after a few women pilots were trained to fly them, and started providing instruction in the strategies they developed to avoid or deal with those problems, male pilots became willing to take over the controls. The B-29 was later used to drop the bomb on Hiroshima.

Despite their excellent track record in terms of safety and efficiency (e.g., in delivering planes across the country), the WASP program was canceled in late 1944, and women were not allowed to fly military planes again until 1977 (!).

WASPs were, in fact, never an official part of the Army (the Air Force had not yet been created) because Congress had not included “pilot” in its list of wartime duties women were allowed to perform. WASPs therefore did not receive military insurance, and those who died while performing their duties (38 women) received no government recognition. This changed in 1977 when President Carter signed a bill that recognized WASPS retroactively as having served in active duty, and WASP veterans received official honorable discharges.

Other countries employed women as military pilots in battle during WWII. In Russia, female pilots were called night witches (fascinating reading) by the Germans who often tangled with them in the air at night. From what I’ve read, our female pilots would have been willing to do the same.

For more info on WASPs and their accomplishments, see WASP on the Web.

For some fascinating reading, check out Gene’s Top Ten List of Pilot Killers. The list is full of good advice and warnings (all quite sobering, given the fatalities mentioned).

Item 6 (“Failure to maintain proficiency”) in particular gave me food for thought. It’s easy to assume that you’re as proficient now as the day you got your license. When was the last time you practiced a (simulated) emergency while driving your car? (e.g., tire blowout, run out of gas, pedestrian runs in front of your car) Was this even covered in your driver’s ed course? For pilots, how often should one practice such simulations in a plane, after getting a license?

I’ve now had the “opportunity” to practice landing after an engine failure. This sounds terrifying, but actually it was empowering. I got to see how the plane behaves with no engine power, and stay in control and survive it.

We were flying along at 1300 ft when my instructor pulled the throttle to idle and said, “Ok, land the plane.” We’d covered the process, and he coached me through it, so I wasn’t completely on my own. And in this simulation, we don’t actually turn the engine off. “The first rule of emergency simulations,” he said, “is don’t make the simulation into a real emergency.” With the throttle at idle, the propeller keeps spinning, but there’s no thrust powering the plane — instead, the wind is turning the propeller freely.

The first thing you do is get the airplane positioned for its “best glide speed.” I was surprised to learn that airplanes do glide. They can make a good amount of distance even with no propeller power. They aren’t *great* at it, but it’s enough to get you down safely if you stay in control. For this plane, that speed is 80 mph.

Next, you look around for a good landing spot. Since we were flying the airport pattern, our best landing option was… the runway, half a mile off to the right.

Next, you do some standard checks to see if there’s an obvious, correctable problem with the engine. Does it have fuel? Is the mixture rich enough? Is carburetor heat on? Are both magnetos selected? Is the primer locked?

Assuming that none of these fixed the problem, we practiced a forced landing. We were already cleared to land, so we began a gentle curve to bring us around to the runway, keeping an eye (as usual) on airspeed, descent rate, and altitude. We were a little high even with no power, so we put flaps on to increase drag and help us slow down and descend. When we were close enough, I adjusted closer to the regular landing speed (70 mph) by raising the nose and then glided in. I think this was less scary than it might have been because we normally deliberately take the engine to idle just before landing. But the ability of the plane to not fall out of the sky even without engine power was eye-opening to me, in a good way.

This was a great experience, and in conjunction with Gene’s list of Pilot Killers, I now wondering how often one should practice this kind of simulation even after you’re licensed and flying on your own. Pull the throttle to idle on purpose and make sure you remember how to get down safely? Maybe a good idea!

At my most recent flying lesson, we flew to a new airport. I’d read up on what would be involved, but didn’t anticipate the amount of complexity! It was as if we’d been driving around the parking lot (to practice takeoffs and landings) and suddenly we turned on to the freeway to drive to the next town. (The next block is probably a more apt metaphor, but right now the jump feels extreme.)

Here is the route we took. It’s about 13 miles of total flying from El Monte (my home airport) to Brackett (which felt like another planet).

We flew south of the 10 freeway at 2300 ft, then angled northeast towards Brackett. This looks really obvious and clear on a map. It is distinctly harder to navigate in the air, while things are moving, with an L.A.-style hazy soup lying over everything. Thank goodness I live here, so I could recognize the freeways from ground experience.

The distance between the airports is short enough that you have to really be on the ball. As soon as you leave El Monte airspace, you have to switch over to Brackett’s ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information Service) to listen to weather conditions at Brackett. That way, when you call Brackett to request permission to land, you can indicate that you’re up to date on those conditions. So you’re flying along, keeping an eye on your airspeed (~100 knots) and altitude (2300) and heading while listening to the radio while scribbling down the ATIS notes.

All too soon, you’re ready to enter the Brackett pattern, which like El Monte is 1000 ft above the ground, except that the ground is distinctly higher here (1000 ft instead of 300 ft). So you’re aiming for an altitude of 2000 instead of 1300, and all the ground references look wrong/different (because they are). However, we managed to land, and then do our regular pattern work of takeoffs and landings (with totally different visual references than at El Monte, plus it’s a left-turning pattern instead of right-turning. So many new things!).

Brackett’s control tower was quite busy that day, because there was an airshow going on to the north and they had to manage traffic diverting around that. A couple of times, we had to extend our approach (downwind) because the tower was too busy talking to other people to clear us to land. Meanwhile, my instructor called out helpful/distracting things like “watch out for that flock of birds”, and at one point I spied a blimp to the north (part of the airshow?), and Brackett has two parallel runways, so I had to be super careful turning for final approach. My instructor also threw in a surprise touch-and-go (arrrgh!) which led to a rather embarrassing fishtailing takeoff on my part (but he claimed it was “good enough because the centerline never got out from under your wings” (!)) and a soft field takeoff (the terrifying one where you take off a few feet and then try to fly really low along the runway — which, oddly, feels like you’re diving at the ground). However, I managed communications okay (with coaching when new/unexpected things happened).

My brain was definitely full (or over-full) from that lesson! Next time, we’ll be back at El Monte and practicing takeoffs/landings. My instructor says he likes to alternate between pushing students outside their comfort zones and returning to the comfort zone to solidify things. Here’s hoping. :)

In other news, I just crossed the 10-hour mark in terms of my total flight time!

If you really wish to learn then you must mount the machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual trial.
— Wilbur Wright

My last two lessons have consisted of takeoff and landing drills. We follow a set pattern of takeoff, climb (“upwind”), turn right (“crosswind”), parallel the runway (“downwind”), turn right (“base”), and land (“final”), over and over again. This is a bit like circling the block to practice parallel parking, except that it happens at 65 mph and you can die if you do it wrong.

It’s a bit difficult to articulate what is learned, intellectually, from these drills, because although the plane’s manual has recommended speeds for each stage of this pattern, my instructor discourages the obvious tendency to stare at the airspeed indicator and instead urges getting a “feel” for different plane attitudes and speeds, by repetition. In fact, this time he whipped out a round post-it note and used it to completely cover the airspeed indicator so that I couldn’t use it except when he allowed confirmatory peeks. :)

However, here is a summary of things you have to think about while flying this sort of practice pattern:

• Attitude (pitch) of the airplane. Be especially mindful when banking (turning) and when adding/reducing flaps (both affect attitude and therefore airspeed and lift).
• Airspeed. At these low speeds, bring the nose up to slow down and push the nose down to speed up.
• Altitude. Get 500 ft above the ground before turning crosswind, level out at 1000 ft, then descend.
• Glide path for landing. Use yoke (attitude) to manage airspeed (60-65 mph) and throttle to manage altitude (more power to come up, less power to come down). Judge your path visually by whether the runway numbers are sliding forward (you’re too low) or sliding back/under you (too high). There are also some handy approach slope indicator (ASI) lights that change color if you’re too high or too low, but this can be deceptive since it’s an instantaneous measure and the plane is moving. Vital for night landings, though, which I have yet to experience.
• Spotting other planes. Also birds.
• Communications. If the tower is talking to you, you should listen (and may need to reply). At first I didn’t hear our callsign at all when I was flying the plane, because I was too busy flying the plane. Now I hear it about 50% of the time. I guess this is a measure of cognitive load. :)

After several landings, my instructor apparently decided it was time for something new. While I was (am) not yet 100% satisfied with my performance, he started throwing curve balls and changing things, including:

• Soft-field takeoff: Put on 10 degrees of flaps, pull the yoke all the way back, and lift off immediately, then fly low and level until you get enough speed to climb (because of ground effect, you need more speed to climb than to lift off). The start is basically like popping a wheelie in a plane, which feels a bit odd (but is quite like landing, actually). And flying low and level is (for me, right now) even more scary than landing the plane. When I push the nose down the amount my instructor says, it feels like we’re diving back down at the runway. I suppose this is an illusion and I’ll get over it.
• Touch and go: We got all the way in and touched down and I was about to relax and start braking when my instructor said “Full throttle!” and we were taking off again. He retracted the flaps, and I pushed the throttle all the way in, pulled the carb heat off, and climbed back up into the sky, albeit not as smoothly as my regular takeoffs. Nerves.
• Go around: Even worse. We got all the way in and were ABOUT to touch down (like 10 feet off the runway) when my instructor said “Full throttle!” and we were taking off again. So, full throttle and carb heat off. But for this one you have to slowly take the flaps off lest you suddenly lose too much lift and rejoin the ground (going way too fast and no longer set up for a landing). And while you’re slowly retracting the flaps, you have to constantly adjust your attitude and trim, keep an eye on the airspeed, watch where you’re climbing to, and be mindful of that turn coming up at 500 ft.
• Left closed traffic: On our final takeoff, the tower instructed me to go left instead of right (presumably to avoid traffic). Every other takeoff was a right turn, so all of my landmarks were suddenly different, and the runway was on the other side, and it felt distinctly odd, but a good mental exercise. My instructor: “I didn’t even have to ask him to do that!”

On one of my landings, we had a small bounce, so it felt like landing twice. My instructor said it still only counts as one landing for my logbook, though.

On another landing, we ballooned — meaning I pulled up too much as we were coming in, so instead of leveling out, we started going back up. This sounds like no big deal, since you can always go back down (up is harder), but apparently it can be quite dangerous. You have to relax your pull on the yoke (to let the nose settle back down) but then pull even harder to get it back into a nose-up flare position before you touch down. Since more time has elapsed, you’ve lost more speed, so the plane will descend faster. There’s also a chance that the balloon could turn into a stall (if you slow enough and the nose is up) while you’re still a bit high from the runway, also causing a rough landing. If the balloon is too great, you should convert to a go-around. You have to make a split-second decision on this one (like if you’re approaching an intersection and the green light turns yellow and you decide whether to slow and stop or keep going, but rather higher stakes).

For my next lesson, we’re going to go somewhere! We will fly to a different airport, so I can try an entirely new environment, landmarks, etc.