First Flight to First Solo (Part 1)

2/4/99 -- First Flight

I meet Dave Montoya at the Oakland airport North Field Old T's gate at 14.00. Dave's going to be my instructor; this is the first time we've met. We've talked on the phone and via email for almost two months, but due to the weather, his new kid, etc., we've never actually got around to meeting until today. He's just what I expected: voluble, roughly my height (180cm) and age (he's a few years younger), a little heavier and rounder than me, wearing jean overalls, hip glasses, friendly face, tats on his left arm (at least). Nice guy. Easy to be with, good with explanations; not the sort of crusty old ex-military type I was afraid I might end up with... (and who'd probably be unhappy ending up with me).

His plan is to fly N739UL (the slightly more powerful of the club's two Cessna 172s) to Palo Alto (PAO) to visit the airport shop there so I can buy things like headsets, books, etc., then return slowly doing a few standard things like climbs and introductory turns. This sounds good to me, especially since a) it's a nice roundtrip flight on a beautiful day (25 mile visibility, a steady 10 knot wind from 280); b) I need his help in selecting and buying stuff like headsets, books, and all the rest; and, c) it's a flight through congested airspace to a busy small airport, and I'm curious what that's like....

After doing the paperwork and learning how to book the aircraft on the club's PC, we go out to the plane. I've flown in 9UL once before with Gary [Wren], just a short 45 minutes flight around the Bay. I'd prefer the club's other 172, N4312R (which I've flown in a bit more, and is cheaper to rent), but it's not available. Dave walks me through the pre-flight, with me trying to remember it all. Nothing illogical or difficult -- just the first stage of information overload....

I get into the left seat for the first time in my life. It feels good, gratifying, appropriate, but it makes me a little apprehensive -- what am I expected to be able to do? Am I going to taxi the plane? Will I be allowed to fly it once we're in the air? I really haven't a clue what's expected -- the only thing Dave has said was that he wouldn't make me do anything I didn't enjoy or that was unsafe. OK, but....

I get out the checklist Dave gave me earlier, start the engine, do all the items on the list under Dave's supervision -- again for the first time in my life. It's all relatively easy and smooth-sailing so far. We get ATIS, which is something I've done before -- but since I don't have a headset yet, we use the main cabin speaker, and I can't make head or tail of the slurred computerized voice. It feels humbling, and I let Dave get it all down. The voice is worse than the strange synthesized marine VHF weather station on the Chesapeake I heard when sailing last year; there's something about the way it intonates and slurs, the odd stresses and cadences, that makes it sound like a weird cross between a German and Indian accent to my ears (Dave says it sounds like a "genial psychopath"). Dave then explains what ATC is likely to say to us, and the likely route (right downwind, cross runway 29 above the numbers (above 1,000', less than 1,500'), head for mid-span San Mateo bridge, then direct to the (right) pattern at Palo Alto. We need to keep below 1,500' to keep out of the SFO class B airspace. All this actually makes sense to me -- I've read the books, done the homework -- but I don't have a feel for what it'll mean when I'm actually up in the air.

Now the part I didn't really expect: I guess I'd got the impression (from Gary?) that this would be a leisurely introduction, something along the lines of Dave taking me up and letting me play with the controls for a while -- the sort of thing I've done before with Gary, or that you'd get from one of those "discovery" flights advertised for $45 in the GA rags. So when he makes me taxi to the run-up area -- weaving all over the place, trying not to get the rudder directions reversed, and with the wrong throttle sense (I can't help pulling it out for more power and vice versa...) -- then do the run-up as well, I'm a bit surprised, but again, not worried. After all, Dave's handling the radio.... Then the real surprise -- after taxiing to runway 33 and holding short for a while, we're cleared for takeoff, and taxiing onto the runway, he tells me to take off.... I can't believe it, but I'm doing it as I've read and been told: power, rudder, ailerons... total information overload. Dave's saying something, I just can't process it at all. I keep reversing the sense of the rudder pedals, keep trying to use the ailerons to turn on the ground, and in the back of my mind I also try to cope with the steady crosswind by using down left aileron. We lurch and swerve down 33 gaining speed, with me barely in control, everything's happening too quickly for me, until Dave says: "pull it back"... up we go at about 60 knots, and it's suddenly much easier to control the plane. I'm in much more familiar territory here....

We climb a few hundred feet, then make a right downwind turn, then head for the numbers while climbing to about 1,000'. Or rather, with Dave doing the radio, I do the climbing and turning -- it's my plane.... I've never really used the rudder seriously before, so I try to work on the coordination; I'm also very bad at keeping the nose up in the turns. We cross the numbers then head for San Mateo mid-span. I feel nervous but very surprised that I'd been allowed to do all that, let alone that I'd actually done it at all without killing us (the takeoff was really confusing at the time it was happening, and very unexpected). Sink or swim....

About a mile north of the sunken ship we contact Palo Alto tower. It takes us several attempts -- the controllers are busy all over the Bay by the sound of things (there are large jets approaching both Oakland and San Francisco easily visible close above and to both sides of us). We're finally acknowledged, then told to expect a two minute delay. We're told to hold over KGO. I fly us towards the KGO towers, then circle them at about 1,300 feet, again trying to use the rudder properly and trying to keep the nose up. I ponder just how many damn times I've driven slowly past those towers during some crawling sea-level commute.... On one of the southbound legs of the hold a Cherokee passes less than 500 feet below us making a beeline for San Carlos (SQL); this disturbs me, as we didn't see it at all until it was right under us (and since it was talking to SQL rather than PAO we had no easy way of knowing it even existed).

We do about five full (large) circuits before we're told to join the PAO pattern (right traffic for runway 30). I head for the airport and successfully join the pattern, pretty much as I'd read (45 degree angle, etc.). Just as we're abeam the numbers on the downwind (and I'm wondering whether Dave really intends letting me do the approach or even the landing...), PAO tower asks us if we can do a short approach due to traffic (the radio traffic has been non-stop since we contacted PAO tower). Dave takes over, and we do a sharp expedited fast approach. I hadn't realized how small PAO's runway is until we're on final: it's 2500', shorter than Shelter Cove (but without the tree or the cliffs). Dave lands it, then immediately hands over to me. I brake and steer (more successfully this time) and get us off on to the taxiway. We get ground to let us taxi to the transient parking; this is harder than it looks, as there are literally row after row of tightly-packed aircraft with very small taxiways between them in what turns out to be a tiny airport (I've occasionally worked across the street on Embarcadero and not known where the airport actually was...). This is Stanford and upper Silicon Valley territory; the number of parked Mercedes, BMW's, and Porsches on the apron and between the planes is a dead giveaway....

We park in one of the few visitor spaces left, and walk to the airport store (the "Airport Shoppe" -- there's got to be some sort of variant of Algren's rule covering names like this...). I rack up about $450's worth of headsets (Dave Clark 10-30's), books, and just stuff (E6B, kneeboard, etc.). Dave keeps up a steady banter with the woman behind the counter (tall, young, strong, blonde, laconic); he says he sends all his students here (well, it's a lot nicer place than the Sierra Academy's miserable North Field bookstore). I'm particularly taken by the fetchingly-bad aviation ties, stickers, mugs, and badges for sale here....

We get a drink then head back to the plane. I start it up, taxi to the runway / runup area, and do the runup (Dave does all radio work; as usual I can at least follow along). We finally get cleared onto the runway, then almost immediately cleared for takeoff. This time I'm a little more prepared for it, and we only swerve a little, with me almost in control this time. Again, once we're in the air, things make more sense, the consequences of pushing the pedals the wrong way are smaller, everything's less restricted and less immediate.... We climb to about 500 feet, and head for Dumbarton, with Dave showing me a few things (again) like pitch / power / trim, etc.

I fly across the Bay to just west of Lake Chabot through Hayward's Class D airspace, we call up Oakland, get a straight in on 27R (with a large Kingair coming in just behind us on 27L), and I fly the approach (with Dave's help). It's much easier than the Flight Simulator 98 (FS98) version (on which I've never been able to get onto 27R without missing the runway completely). I'm mostly on top of things like flaps, altitude, attitude, power, etc., with a lot of help and illustrations from Dave, and we get cleared for the usual 33 landing via 27R. There's a steady wind about 280, we cross the numbers about 200', then crab onto 33. I make Dave take the controls at the last moment, then we land fairly smoothly on 33. We taxi back, then stop. Then the paperwork....

* * *

The whole experience was so unexpected -- I just didn't expect to be in control for virtually everything but the final landings -- I'm still unsure what to make of it. Is this normal? Did he overestimate my abilities and experience (I've mentioned flying with Gary, but that wasn't really "flying"...)? In any case, I survived, I enjoyed it a lot....

3/4

What are my expectations? I expect to be a reasonable pilot, not a prodigy, not flashy, nothing special (I don't think I'm a "natural"); I expect to take at least 70 hours to get the license; I expect at least a few hard existential crises when I just don't get something for a long time; I expect to take until the end of this year (at the earliest) to get the license. We shall see....

And what are my main worries? Mostly, at this stage, the general and obvious: being unable to coordinate rudder, ailerons, elevator; getting overloaded at crucial moments and forgetting something obvious; never being able to line up properly on final; losing it with ATC....

4/4

I spend the entire evening reading and studying the Jeppesen text, taking notes and memorizing / thinking in ways I haven't done in literally 15 years. This part of the material is relatively easy -- basic mechanics, aeronautics, electrics, common sense -- but it's a tiny part of what I need to learn. I feel overwhelmed and apprehensive again....

(I'm also heartened and amused by the whole E6B flight computer phenomenon -- it's gratifying to see what amounts to an old circular slide rule with endless tiny annotations and tables for things like wind corrections, etc.; a real triumph of ingenuity and practical experience. At least I'm old enough to remember not just what a slide rule is, but how to use it; and I just had to buy the real one rather than the newer computer / calculator-style ones...). [This infatuation with the E6B didn't last -- it's just so much easier using the electronic version, not to mention so much more convenient...].

8/4

My first weather cancellation (my would-be second flight...). Disappointing, but the right decision: the weather's wild, untypical, windy, stormy, with intermittent hail, snow down to 1,000', rain showers sweeping across the Bay, tall thunder clouds and sunshine. Not quite the average Bay Area spring day. Yesterday I told Dave that even if the weather was IMC I'd like to pay for a "lesson" in IMC, i.e. basically just an IFR joyride with him in the left seat. I'm curious what IFR's like in a small plane, but I'm apprehensive about my abilities to cope with zero visibility in bright clouds -- will I get motion sickness or badly disoriented? In any case, the weather's too much for any light plane, IFR or not.

I make a half-hearted attempt to study the Jepp PP (private pilot) text again. I'm beginning Chapter 3; it feels depressingly like I've barely touched the book, even after ten pages of notes. There's too much stuff in here... (it's not that I don't know much of it, it's that I have to wade through it all in detail to see what I do and don't know). I don't begrudge the work, it just looks overwhelming from this early stage. I'm still too impatient -- I just want the study stage to be over.

12/4

Second flight: I meet Dave at the gate at 15.00, then we spend about 45 minutes in the clubhouse going over procedures and charts. We're interrupted by Pierre and the other old guy [Doug], and by Cindy G., who has a few choice things to say about the frustrations of learning (she's a pre-solo student at the moment). Dave makes me explain the chart and associated symbols and airspaces; I think I do pretty well, with only a few shaky or wrong answers (class E always seems way too complicated -- the motivation for some of the rules is beyond me). But then charts are easy to read, and I've been reading VFR sectionals and terminals for a long while now....

I do the preflight on 12R, then start up. Our plan is to head north to San Pablo Bay and practice pre-solo maneuvers over the bay and shoreline. Startup's normal, and we taxi to 33. Dave will do all the radio work this trip, but I will tell him what to say for initial callups (this works fairly well the entire time). I still don't have ground steering right, but it -- and the weird throttle sense problem -- is definitely (but slowly) getting better.

We (I) take off and head North along the shoreline, with a much steadier takeoff than last time -- we're actually on the centerline for at least half the time.... The day is cool, a bit hazy but otherwise clear of fog or cloud. Over Richmond Dave runs through the basic climb and descent procedures; I do these several times fairly successfully as we head towards Mare Island. I'm a bit raggedy, but given the occasional turbulence and the fact that I think the turn coordination ball is misaligned (it isn't, of course), Dave seems pleased. Over Mare Island (with the empty shipyards and two decommissioned carriers about 3,000 feet below) Dave puts me through the left and right 45 degree turns. It feels too steep at first (this is only 45 degrees?!), and the strong feeling that you're climbing while turning -- the G forces -- disturbs me a bit. But there's nothing like the disorientation or motion sickness I feared -- that never seems to be a factor at all. Then I take over, and the first few turns in either direction are predictable -- I lose a little altitude (but never more than 200 feet over 360 degrees), I don't bank enough, and I come out of the turns far too early. But at least the turns are fairly well coordinated. The next few times are fine (for a student...), and I keep doing them in both directions because it feels so good (the G forces!).

Then we practice MCA and slow speed maneuvers. Again, I do OK for a total beginner, but it'll take a lot more practice before I'm really confident in all this. The views of the Bay and Contra Costa are beautiful; we never see another GA plane the whole time....

Dave asks me whether I want to try stalls now. Of course I bloody do! I ask him to demonstrate one for me, and he does a conventional low-power stall, explaining and showing as he does it. It's nowhere near as dramatic as I'd expected -- just a small dip and then we're back on line.... So it's my turn: I pull back on the throttle, pitch up and ... nothing happens. I have to force the plane to stall, pulling back on the controls as hard as I can. Then it stalls, and I get the recovery right first time, losing only about 200 feet and keeping the heading. The second time is a lot rougher -- I lose maybe 350 feet and 25 degrees of heading -- but the third and fourth times are fine, both about 100 feet each and little heading change. I feel great! Now for the climbing or power-on stalls. These are a lot scarier -- the plane yaws sharply at the stall point if you don't anticipate it -- and I'm worried about causing a spin by messing up the rudder response (you have to switch from right rudder to slight left rudder immediately the stall happens, then put it back right again, while getting pitch correct at the same time). Dave does a couple, then makes me co-control my way through several more. I tell him I'd like to try this on my own next time, but my brain's already too full today to try this as well right now. He seems pretty pleased by things, and I take us for a little stall and turn joyride for a while, just going over it all again. One thing that worries me a bit is that the stall warning seems almost inaudible -- my hearing's fair (not brilliant), but I don't hear it at all when I'm concentrating on doing the stall maneuvers. I'm not sure what to do about this -- I'd hate to miss a stall warning while concentrating on landing.... [I always thought that the stall warning would be a loud siren or klaxon or something really dramatic, but on the 172 it's usually nothing more than a slight high-pitched whine or whistle that's easily lost in the background if you're concentrating on other things].

It's getting fairly late so we head back towards Oakland at 2,500 feet, with Dave handling Approach and Oakland tower. I fly along the west side of the hills towards the temple, then descend towards the pattern for 27R. Just as I've got us on downwind abeam the numbers, tower asks us if we can do a short approach (again!). Dave says yes, and co-controls with me into a steep turn towards 27R. Tower says we've got a Hawker jet on 3 mile final, could we speed it up? As we're on the (very short) base leg, Dave can see the jet barreling in towards us only a mile or so out. Just as we're about to ask for 27L, tower calls and amends the clearance for 27L. The Hawker lands a few seconds after we do....

I taxi to the Chevron pumps, refuel, and taxi back to the club (getting special taxi instructions to avoid the DC8 taxiing towards us down taxiway Delta). In the clubhouse I just feel exhausted, very tired, my mind full of things.... Overall, I think, a success -- the turns and stalls all seemed easier to do than I'd expected (nothing like as difficult as on FS98...), and so far it's all been pretty enjoyable. Most of the things I was worried about before I actually flew don't seem to be a problem yet -- coordination, motion discomfort or sickness, ATC, etc. -- and while my ground steering is still poor, the throttle thing seems to be almost cured. Still a huge amount to learn, though, and the real problems will come with landings....

13/4/99

I've always wanted to fly. My grandfather was a WWI Royal Flying Corps pilot and a WWII RAF instructor (my mother was always being dragged from one RAF base to another during the war), and my uncle was some sort of test pilot in Britain (I still don't know the details, since he drowned when I was young, and my mother never really wanted to talk about him much after that). As a kid I wanted to be a pilot and an aeronautical engineer. I loved flying and airplanes. I was taken to Sydney airport for my sixth birthday just to watch the planes taking off and landing, and I'd been in commercial airplanes pretty much since I was born (I have memories of landing in a airline DC3; this must have been when I was 4 or 5, in New Guinea?). I've always been the sort of nerd who knew the phonetic alphabet by heart or who could identify planes by sight, and for much of my life I've known things like how jet engines work, what a high-bypass turbo fan was, why variable-pitch props were useful, what flaps did, etc. The sort of knowledge you don't expose in polite society....

The first time I flew in a small plane -- a Cherokee -- was when I was about ten, in Australia. We (Peter Brooks and I) flew with a friend of my father's, Dr Simpson. We started at Aeropelican, south of Newcastle (Swansea?), flew down over our house in Woy Woy, then back up to Cessnock, then Muswellbrook (or Maitland?), then back to Swansea (the order may be wrong here). We landed at both airports. I was allowed to "fly" the plane (ailerons and elevators only -- I couldn't reach the pedals) for several hours of this flight. I got a good feel for how the controls felt, and since I was too small to easily see over the front to the ground, I learnt how important the artificial horizon and other basic instruments were.

After this there were a few other GA flights in Australia, including a beautiful glider flight just in front of one of the most threatening cold fronts I've ever seen (roiling green clouds with winds aloft audible from the ground...). Once we were towed aloft, I was dumb enough to ask the pilot whether one could loop a glider; he simply pushed the stick forward, picked up speed, pulled back, and looped. I loved it (there was a moment at the top of the loop when I was looking up through the canopy at the ground, everything quiet and still, and I just thought this was one of the most enjoyable things I'd done in years...). When I was in high school I somehow wangled a several years' subscription to Flying magazine; this gave me a broad but patchy understanding of GA (American-style), and things like the differences between VFR and IFR, and what a VOR was, for example.

It wasn't until about two years ago (now living in Berkeley, California) that I picked the thread up again, this time with Gary Wren, a friend who's a sociology lecturer at UC Berkeley. He's also the president of the Alameda Aero Club (AAC), so we ended up flying several times with the AAC planes. Mostly just small Bay tour type flights, but we did two cross-countrys: Shelter Cove (overnight) and Castle AFB (a day trip to the associated air museum). On all these flights I got to control the plane during some of the easy parts.

I still wanted to fly, but I didn't have the time. But by mid-1998 I decided I could do it -- and after a bit of dithering, joined the AAC (Feb. 1999, with Gary's help to expedite the process). I contacted Dave Montoya and two months later I started it all seriously....

15/4

At 9am -- seen from a dentist's chair in Albany -- the wind's dry and gusty, a Northern Californian version of the Santa Ana winds, but not as warm (or as rough). It looks about 20-25 knots, with much stronger gusts, coming out of the north. I sit there getting a minor filling thinking the lesson's canceled, no one would be dumb enough to let me up in a wind like that, with the trees swaying, and dust, leaves, and papers blowing around the street and up in the air....

By midday, as seen from my 26th floor office in downtown Oakland, the weather's much calmer, the sky clear with light high cirrus, and it looks perfect for flying....

I meet Dave at the gate at 15.00 and we do a short pre-lesson, then get 12R going. Dave makes a joke about me being a natural over-achiever, which really raises a red flag with me -- there's nothing more likely to make me self-conscious and screwup repeatedly than high expectations -- and the implications of the phrase "over-achiever" are worrisome for something like flying....

Winds 330 at 10, temperature 20, everything perfect. I do radio on the ground, Dave will do it in the air. I'm still very self-conscious on the radio, with my funny accent and strange intonations, but I know what to say in most cases, and following along -- and picking our callsign out of the noise and babble -- is relatively easy now. Runway 33 is the natural one for today, no crosswind at all -- very unusual for OAK. My ground steering seems to be much better -- I think I'm learning not to inadvertently use the brakes instead of the rudder pedals, which makes things a lot smoother and more controlled, and it's no longer hard to keep everything including crosswind correction during takeoff in mind at the same time. After runup I take off. The takeoff is much smoother and more controlled this time, and we depart for Marin with me basically in control and trying to remember all the various pitch, trim, power, etc., lessons, and keeping out of SFO's class B airspace. The air's pretty rough, and will remain so until we (later) move from Marin to the western edge of San Pablo Bay.

Over Marin we practice the steep turns and low-power stall recovery stuff from last lesson; it goes fairly well, but I'm still pretty rough (in fact, in several attempts it was impossible to get the plane to really stall -- it takes real effort in the 172 in these conditions). Then we try MCA and slow speed maneuvering. I just don't get this stuff nearly as well, and it'll be a long while before I'm really comfortable with my skills here. Ironically, this all feels a lot more like the FS98 C182 in normal flight according to FS -- mushy and difficult to control; too much to control all at once....

We move northwest towards the old (closed) Hamilton AFB to escape the turbulence, and then we run through power-on stalls again. This time I'm game, and the first recovery is OK, but really pretty rough. The second and third times are very poor, with excess yawing, rolling, and pitch problems. At one stage I get us into a slow-speed very nose-down attitude, and I think: spin! But of course I keep my head and nothing happens (or, rather, the plane ignores me and flies itself back into stability...). After a few more attempts I "get" it, but I'm still very rough. Unlike last lesson, I have no fear or anxiety about the stalls at all, just apprehensiveness about my ever getting the coordination right. Well, yes, of course -- I'm in a training plane designed to make stalls easy and to right itself under even the most adverse conditions. And I'm at 2,500 feet AGL. What's it like in a 737 at 1,000 feet?

After this I ask Dave to show me a spin. I know it's not required for a US PPL, but I want to at least be able to recognize one from experience, if not learn how to recover from it. We do a low-power turning stall which rapidly leads to a spin, with the nose way down and the ground spinning slowly around... a bit less dramatic than I'd expected, but still pretty worrisome. Not quite the sort of thing you want to do with your grandmother in the right seat. Once again, though, this is a plane designed for easy spin and stall recovery, and it's intentionally much less dramatic or scary than if it'd been, say, a Stearman or a Pitts. I'm not sure I'd have the stomach for real spins. We do a few more short spins, with Dave showing me the elements of recovery. I don't actually attempt recovery myself, but I co-control the entire time, and suspect I'll try the full quid sometime before I get my license.... Dave's "secret", he tells me, is to just tell students to let go of the controls if they can't get anything else to work. This plane knows how to fly.... This works -- we try it twice -- but leaves the plane a bit above Vno when recovering. Or at least that's how things felt....

We do a bit of introductory engine failure procedure stuff, which in itself is pretty easy. The hard part around here is picking a place to land -- on the way back above Richmond, El Cerrito, Berkeley, and Oakland, we keep up a running commentary on places to land, with suggestions like the land around Berkeley Marina, 24, the mudflats off E'ville, etc. The depressing truth is there just aren't that many even vaguely safe places to land in an emergency around here, and there are even fewer if you've got scruples about injuring or killing innocent people on the ground (or causing massive rush hour traffic jams...).

We head back to Oakland, with me doing everything except the radio until we're on final. Dave slips in (the wind's now a more typical 260 at 10) and we refuel. The only excitement during this part of the flight is when my headset keeps falling off in the pattern. It's really difficult trying to fly the plane, follow ATC, listen to and talk to your instructor, and readjust your headset at the same time.... The sort of detail that can really screw things up if you forget to attend to it early.

Refueling on the Kaiser apron, we get a quick look at how the other half lives -- an immaculate C340 being loaded with a dog and well-dressed girlfriend, a bunch of well-groomed Citations, a small Learjet next to a clump of businessmen in suits shaking each others' hands, a line of expensive Mooneys, large Cessna singles, well-fed Bonanzas, etc. Back at the tiedown (at "the old T's"), the Alameda County Sheriff Department's brand new C172 passes us, heading out for some sort of surveillance (or whatever) work. The right side passenger compartment fuselage skin has been replaced by a large transparent sheet of Perspex, with a sheriff's deputy sitting in the seat next to it looking out. They wave cheerily at us -- as well they might with such a lovely plane.... They apparently share the hangars immediately next to the clubhouse with the DEA and FBI, but I'm not certain of this.

On the way out Pierre -- the club's mechanic, an old guy, laconic, French-Canadian, one of the guys who flew to Castle AFB with us last year, ex Canadian Air Force mechanic -- sits at a small picnic table in the sun next to the Fields hangar, stroking and talking to one of the airport cats.

* * *

What's getting better? Radio / ATC, for sure, and ground steering; I feel confident enough of ATC to handle it all from now on (but I probably won't [I didn't]). Low-power stalls and steep turns -- I'm a bit rough on these, but apparently within PTS limits. Normal climbs and descents are fairly accurate and controlled. Most turns are now reasonably coordinated. What's worrying? I'm still making heavy work of MCA maneuvers, and I don't keep anywhere near good enough rudder and aileron control during power-on stalls. My slow flying skills in general are still poor -- the switched use of pitch and throttle doesn't come easily, and the sloppy controls are about matched by my sloppy (lack of) coordination....

I guess I've learnt that I'm less fearful of things than I thought I'd be -- I really thought spins and stalls would scare me, but they just intrigued and stimulated me. In fact, virtually nothing so far has really scared me, although I've been worried or nervous more than a few times (I'm bloody certain that landings are going to provide a bunch of real scares soon...). The problem here isn't fear, it's impatience, frustration, and overly-high expectations -- why should I be able to recover perfectly from a power-on stall after one lesson? Will I do something stupid or really scary because I'm impatient?

I'm also much less affected by motion (turns, turbulence, G forces, etc.) than I expected -- I remember being very uncomfortable on circus rides in Australia when I was younger, but either I've grown out of that (unlikely), or it's just so much easier to cope when you're at the controls and your brain can integrate your intentions with the clear visual signals its getting (I've also never been really seasick, despite having crossed Bass Strait several times in terrible weather, which may have something to do with it). I'm also learning that when things involve other people (like being in the pattern, or in a crowded airspace, or if I had real passengers), I'm really rather conservative, but on my own, or when it's just me and Dave, I'm more inclined to just push things and see what happens.

20/4

Why do I fly? What do I like about flying? People ask me whether I like "the sense of freedom", but I'm not always sure what they mean.... What I like is being able to look around and down at the view, the geology, the geography, the logic of settlement, transport, weather, coastlines, cloud formations, etc.; I love the views from above: the clouds rolling in over the Peninsula, the Bay, the Sierras in the distance, the tankers in the Straights, the Berkeley Hills, the bridges...; and nothing beats seeing a 747 or DC10 close up in the air: they're so much more graceful than on the ground. Even when they're less than a mile away and only 500 feet lower than you on final into Oakland....

And I guess there's a rush you get from just being able to do all this: the skills, the feeling that you're actually in control (or not, as the case may be with me...), the accomplishment (but then most people could probably fly with sufficient training and money). Then there's the thrill of the sheer speed and maneuverability you get in a small plane like this; it's so much more immediate than in a large commercial airliner.

22/4

Another atypical day: winds 340 at 15, gusting 22, sky clear, visibility pretty much unlimited. Takeoff on 33 with 9UL is routine, and we head up towards Richmond for the pre-solo maneuvers again. Over Richmond it's so bumpy I can barely keep us within a couple of hundred feet of cruise altitude, so we head over to San Pablo Bay, where it's marginally smoother. I run through the steep turns again, getting better at keeping the head up; we do stalls again; this time all types of stall -- including slow turning stalls -- feel more natural, and in each case I have little trouble keeping within PTS limits. Slow flight feels better, too, which cheers me up a lot. Plus this time (maybe it's just one of those differences between 12R and 9UL) I can actually clearly hear the stall warnings, loud and clear.

Dave then pulls back the throttle and we simulate an engine out. I've done my reading and I'm in control and get most of the relevant parts of the 5F's right. I trim for Vg, best glide, and am able to hold it fairly well all the way down. We glide towards and then around a likely-looking field next to the eastern shoreline of Mare Island, and after circling a bit and looking at the ground a lot, I've got the plane at about 500 feet over the edge of the field, into the wind, ready for flaps. I feel pretty pleased with myself -- and, hey, at least the plane didn't sink like a bloody rock! -- and apply power to go around. A whole lot more survivable than a real failure over (say) Berkeley.... I'm wondering what the folks at Mare Island think as we sink quietly towards one of their empty bayside fields....

We head back and land in a stiff right cross-wind on 27R, with a final slip co-controlled by me. Feels pretty good (but then again, slips are one of that large category of things that are bloody obvious theoretically but I'll probably find impossible to do in reality...). Dave seems pretty pleased by my progress. I'm off for ten days (the Paris / JESS99 trip), but he wants to start touch and goes and landings next lesson. I'm game.... The thing that most depressed me was my radio work. I missed a few cues, got our number wrong once, and got obviously -- and very audibly -- flustered a couple of times. Oh well....

3/5

Ever since reading Flying as a kid I've always been turned off by the image of the GA community -- or what I see of it, anyway -- and I'm dead scared of becoming one of them. One of who? One of the old geezer-hatted vets or wannabe vets? One of the shirt-and-tie doctor / lawyer / car salesman set? One of the aging bearded long-hair loners brooding over broken aircraft behind the hangars at the old T's? One of the bush pilot wannabes? One of the arrogant young things just busting to go? I hate to admit it, but I'm reluctant to tell people I don't know too well about my flying, mainly because of the image problem.

4/5

Killing two birds...: yesterday, back from Paris, I drive to the airport to get my official North Field security ID and gate pass. Gary and Dave had both said something about just filling in the forms and "watching a video", so I figured on maybe 30 minutes or so. When I get there (the 2nd floor of South Field Terminal 1 just beneath the tower) at about 9.45, I'm asked whether I'm there "for the class". I say I'm there for the video, which prompts a smiling "you're here for the class, join the line...". This sounds a bit more ... heavy... than I'd expected. After getting my photo taken and other details sorted out (all done with great efficiency and friendliness -- no complaints here...), I wait with six others for the instructor. She (Mary McKinley, a smartly-dressed friendly-but-efficient 30's to 40's-ish woman) turns up, and leads us past a closed restaurant to the conference room. We're told the class will take a bit more than two hours. Humph. I'm still jetlagged, I've had no real coffee, and I want to be back at work by 11.00. It's already 10.20.

What follows is a series of three irritating FAA videos introduced and interspersed by the instructor's own comments and PowerPoint slides (decked out with the usual canned Microsoft icons and figurines). It's all deadly serious, and clearly aimed mostly at the airline and cargo workers on the South Field. It's a lot less relevant for us outcasts in North Field's Siberia, the Old T's, most of whom never seem to display any sort of ID at all; I can't imagine challenging Doug or Dave for not wearing a badge (and I've never seen either of them with one). Most of the lessons are pretty obvious, and the main message is crystal clear and not to be taken lightly; it's hard to object to any of this, given Oakland's traffic and size. The videos are really hokey, continually crossing the line between seriousness and earnestness, employing bad mid-80's daytime TV actors with all the skills and charisma that implies, and occasionally displaying the sort of crude racial and ethnic stereotyping that just feels so dumb and obvious in a place like Oakland. There are even visual references to both Pan Am and Eastern, which brings back memories....

Outside, on the other side of the half-closed blinds, behind the instructor, we can see the planes taking off and landing on 29, and the 757's, 737's and MD-80's on the apron directly in front of us. Around 12.20, after a bunch of other stuff, we pick up our badges, mine being the only North Field one among them, as far as I can see. Well, at least I now know what each badge color means, how to challenge someone, what to look for, what my responsibilities are, what numbers to call under what circumstances, etc. Useful, I guess, but I've really never seen anyone -- Kaiser ramp attendants included -- properly wearing ID badges on North Field.

Today: the next hurdle. I have an appointment with a local AME (Airmen's Medical Examiner), Dr. X [not, surprisingly, his real name], to get my 3rd class medical certificate / student license. I've been warned that this guy's a character. True enough: between the giant 777, Concorde, etc., cockpit photo blowups on the waiting room wall, there's a bunch of enlarged handwritten notes on how to fill in the FAA form, with all sorts of cranky or folksy and cynical tips, and a couple of slightly eccentric articles by the good doctor himself. After a pretty perfunctory series of tests, he signs (asking me with a smile whether I'm deaf or colorblind), and I've got it. Far too easy; but basically I'd been told you have to be dead not to be able to get a 3rd class medical. I have to admit I had a bunch of worries going in: my eyesight's quite a bit worse than it used to be, and I worry a lot about blood pressure and heart rate (I'm as unfit as I've ever been, and my heart rate's always been high). But I still got it....

This afternoon's flight's canceled by Dave due to computer problems. Humph again -- it's a beautiful day. But after ten days away traveling (Paris, etc.), I'm finding it hard to remember the written stuff. It seems a long way away, barely relevant. Not a good sign.

5/5

Once I'd decided that I'd probably do the whole license thing (sometime early 1998), I started preparing informally by doing things like closely reading the various rec.aviation newsgroups, buying a few introductory books, and buying sectionals and terminal charts. I wanted to be prepared.... I bought and read the ASA FAR/AIM book; I started learning the lingo and terms, what the various airspaces and associated rules were, etc. I began telling people I was going to get my license -- always a good way to force the issue.

The Usenet rec.aviation groups were very useful: over the years I've been reading them, I think they've given me a good feeling for the sort of issues and things that pilots and the GA community think are important. They also gave me a really good informal grounding in procedures, in jargon, in things like airspace classifications, how controllers think, the different types of planes, etc., and I got a good feeling for what was likely to be involved in getting my license.

With the exception of the FAR / AIM, the books were less useful: I didn't know about the various airport stores, although I knew they must exist, so the books were not really specialist enough. The charts, though, were great; I've always been a map junkie, and just looking at the charts over and over taught me a lot about airspaces, navigation, etc. I learned how to read nautical charts at a very early age; ever since then I've been fascinated by charts and maps, and the different methods of pilotage and navigation. No one had to tell me what an isogonic line was... or the difference between heading and track (such a nerd!).

I bought Microsoft's Flight Simulator 98 for my PC, along with pedals and a joystick. This combination never worked very well -- there was always one axis going wrong, or the pitch sensitivity was always way too high, or the pedals would cut out intermittently -- and it started to worry me that no matter how often I practiced, I simply couldn't get the C182 in FS98 back down on the ground safely on OAK 27R. I couldn't even get it aligned with the runway within a couple of miles. I knew from personal experience with the 172 that it just wasn't that hard keeping a light Cessna on course and at a particular altitude, but it still depressed me that I simply couldn't line the bloody plane up properly on final. I started to wonder whether I had the coordination or not....

7/5

Winds 240 at 10... a slightly-hazy but basically cool and clear day, a steady wind, good flying. We take off on 33, me handling the radio on the ground but not yet in the air for this part. I apparently cause some mirth by replying to Ground that we'd "squeak 0123" instead of squawk -- or so Dave says. Me, I was in my usual brain overload mode and didn't really hear what I said. I plead accent problems; or I would, if OAK weren't already a great babble of accents much stronger than mine (heard today at least: another Australian, a Pom, a Scot, several Cantonese-sounding voices, a Latino accent of some sort, and something thickly Russian or Slavic. All on North Field's tower frequency. Dave says it's the Sierra Academy, which attracts tons of us durn foreigners to Oakland to learn to fly).

We head for Marin and San Pablo Bay, where we practice the pre-solo airwork. I'm worried that after two weeks' layoff I won't remember a thing, but with the exception of power-on (departure) stalls, everything goes smoothly and within PTS tolerances. Even the slow flight and MCA stuff is getting easier -- the coordination and the pitch / throttle stuff gets more and more natural each time, and I'm learning how to trade pitch and airspeed fairly smoothly and accurately. The power-on stalls, though, seem to have got worse. I let the plane yaw and pitch far too much, and it's clearly going to take more work to get these right. I still feel really uncomfortable just before and during the power-on stalls: the nose-high attitude before the stall is disorienting (you can't see the horizon, so it's difficult to keep level), the loss of control on the verge of the stall is distressing, and I over-correct the yaw each time when the kick occurs on the stall itself. Still, I didn't once lose more than the allowed altitude, and I never lost my head and / or caused an incipient (or real...) spin. I just lost heading and roll stability. Oh well.

We then do a basic engine-out exercise, once again heading for the large fields on the Bay side of Mare Island. This time it's me in control right down to about 200' AGL, when we go around and climb out for Oakland. The exercise isn't entirely successful -- I end up with too much altitude to land in the chosen field, and too little to try another 360, and I can't (yet) slip. Too bad. But at least in this case there was another field a little further on which we could have landed reasonably well. No such luxury over most of the East Bay, though.

Next on the menu is... touch and goes. Back to Oakland via the hills and the Temple, then into a right pattern for 27R with the switch to 27L on base. I get the approach basically right, and for the next eight landings, I do everything on my own except for the flare (which I continually misjudge). I learn the basics of touch and goes: the pattern, altitudes, flaps, airspeeds, lining up in a crosswind, ATC, go-arounds, etc. It's mentally-exhausting work at first, because it's a species of slow flight within tightly-controlled parameters, and with a bunch of other planes and ATC to worry about (not to mention trying not to stall in on final). I end up doing pretty much all the ATC, though, which increases my confidence a lot (except for, once again, getting the plane's number wrong -- just once, predictably calling us "9UL". The controller pretended not to hear the wrong number, and just correctly called us "12R" and cleared me to touch and go again...).

The pattern for OAK 27L is very constricted and tight: it sits between 27R (only a few hundred metres away) and the main South Field runway 29, which has a constant stream of in-bound and out-bound 737's, DC10's, DC8's, 757's, etc., and is only about a mile away from 27L There's even a few UAL 747's going to United's Oakland maintenance base via 29, and the occasional UPS 747 going to the mid-field freight terminal. Pattern altitude for 27L is a low 600' AGL (c.f. 27R's more normal 1,000' AGL), and due to TCAS problems with the commercial jets on 29, you have to remember to squawk standby instead of ALT. There are always fast-moving business jets and smaller cargo carriers coming straight in from the south on 27L or 27R as well as the T&G crowd. When turning left base for 27L it's often possible to see another plane heading straight towards you at your altitude and well under a mile away as it turns right base for 27R. This happened several times during our T&G time, and partly as a result I nearly always turned too early to final on 27L -- I'm just paranoid about crossing into the path of someone landing on 27R. We get one go-around requested by ATC due to some aggressive scheduling, and several extended or curtailed downwinds and upwinds for what appears to be much the same reason. There's only one other plane in the pattern doing T&G's -- a Cherokee of some sort -- so despite the ATC changes, there's no real sense of crowding or worry on my part. In fact, I really enjoyed the whole experience -- all nine touch and goes -- and started to feel pleased by my unexpected ability to line up correctly each time on final, to cross the numbers at a fairly consistent altitude, and to be able to keep airspeed to within a few knots of the 70 MPH we were using in 12R. My real problem is the flare: I keep misjudging the altitude, and try to flare way too early. Dave says I'll get the hang of this soon (but he would say that, wouldn't he?). Additionally, of course, there wasn't a gusty crosswind today, and I didn't need to slip for crosswind or speed problems (I just crabbed where it was needed). Next time it won't be so easy....

Dave's plan for next time, in fact, is to go to Livermore (LVK) to do T&G's in a less tight but more populated pattern. And practice a few power-on stalls on the way there....

* * *

Earlier, in the clubhouse (or what passes for it...), Doug, and Dave and I had been joking about the medicals, and discussing how much time you really need to get proficient. I told him that my Grandfather had gone to war in France with less than 20 hours training in WW I, and taught fighters in WW II who'd had almost as little real experience. It turns out that Doug flew B17's in WW II out of Framlingham in England, and we spent a bunch of time talking about that, and about V1's, London, etc. I guess I never suspected... (Doug looks like one of those polite old retired almost-rich upper-middle-class geezers you see traveling around the desert in retirement).

When I complain about not always being able to follow ATC, Doug does a Deep South version of the "y'all hear the speed at which I'm talking? That's the speed I'm listening" joke. Apparently Doug's also somewhat famous for once having replied to a lightspeed clearance readout from clearance control (Ground, actually -- the two are combined here) in Oakland with an obscene variant of the "Very impressive. Now how about giving it to me at the speed at which I can write rather than the speed at which you can read?" line and survived. Or so I'm told....

(Boys will be boys, for sure).

8/5

I spend several excruciatingly boring hours reading, taking notes, and hopefully learning FAR Part 91 for the pre-solo test and, ultimately, the main written test. This is just unbearable. And I'm only about half-way through the lot; I haven't even started Part 61....

11/5

My mother -- in her last months -- was adamant that I learn to fly. She loved the idea, and said she only regretted she wouldn't be around to go flying with me. She said flying was probably genetic with us, and go for it! (Dave's riposte to the whole idea of flying being in the family, etc.: "well, my old man was a poor Latino farm worker...").

12/5

More bookwork. I think I'm going to fall down catatonic the next time I open the FARs (I keep thinking of Homer Simpson's falling down in a floppy-legged mess as his brain deserts him at the Apple Cider museum when Flanders starts talking to him about how to tell cider from apple juice). I can now regularly get 98% on the software tests for FAR parts 1, 61, 91, and the airspace tests (using the test software package I got from the web), but does that mean I know it in any real sense? I feel like a rat pushing levers....