Solo Phase Check

Well, this would appear to be my 13th lesson. In fact, I had three lessons that I have not written about in my blog. One was a very short one where we did 4 short field landings and take-offs and the other two were normal pattern practice. One was at San Carlos airport and the other was at Palo Alto. My flying through the winter has tapered off for several reasons. The most obvious is that the weather does not cooperate as well in the winter and VFR pilots have a difficult time finding good days to fly. The other is that my son started daycare so he was getting sick a lot and, consequently, my wife and I were getting sick a lot also. The third reason was I was having some problems getting my medical certificate from the FAA so there wasn’t too much more we could do besides the night flight without my medical certificate. However, I am happy to say that I have my medical certificate and spring is in the air which means beautiful weather for flying.

The next milestone for me will be the solo flight. The club that I belong to requires I pass a take home exam and then do a phase check with a different flight instructor before I am allowed to solo. The phase check is set up like the private pilot check ride. It consists of a ground quiz portion where the instructor asks me some questions about the airplane, rules and regulations, pre-flighting, using navigational maps, etc. After that we fly and I perform the basic flight maneuvers, emergency procedures and pattern work. The phase check is not set up as a pass/fail scenario like the private pilot check ride. Instead, it is designed more as an informative experience where someone else can take a look at you and make notes on your performance and recommend things that you should work on a little more.

I was a little nervous when we started the phase check. I had not flown all that much lately, combined with the fact that I was flying with someone totally new who would be rating my performance. I guess it showed because after asking me a couple questions, he asked me if I was nervous and I told him that I was a little bit nervous. The questions for the most part were not too difficult. He spent a lot of time asking questions about the engine and fuel systems in the plane which I did pretty well on. He then asked about the pattern at Palo Alto and how we were going to get out to the practice area. I then pulled out my terminal chart and he asked me a few things about airspace on the terminal chart. The last item was to talk about my preflight procedures and start up procedures.

The ground quiz portion lasted almost an hour. Then I went out and pre-flighted the airplane and started her up. After taxiing to the run up area and doing the final checks, I switched to the tower frequency and noticed that it was really busy in the pattern. Our initial plan was to go out to the coast first to work on practice maneuvers but the instructor changed that and requested that we do the pattern work first. The wind was shifty, blowing at a consistent 12 knots but from anywhere between 360 degrees and 330 degrees. This meant that runway 31 had a nice crosswind on it. I was a little bit worried as I have not practiced too many crosswind landings because I have not had many lessons where there was a crosswind on the runway. However, my instructor had asked me to practice some crosswind landings on my flight simulator and I think that really helped me today.

We held short for about 5-10 minutes as we waited for a bunch of planes to land and then we were cleared to take off. My first approach was good but I was so fixated on maintaining my position on the centerline in the crosswind that I did not round out properly and we bounced on the landing. I applied full throttle and went around. The next attempt was much better. I was lined up on the centerline again but this time I had a smooth round out and a very smooth landing. On the next approach, the instructor asked me to come in high and do a slip down to the runway. I did this for a little bit and when I reached the proper glide path, I straightened the plane out and touched down pretty smoothly again.

We then departed the pattern and went out to the coast to practice our maneuvers. Enroute he mentioned that I should slow down my leaning procedures for cruise flight. Basically, I was leaning the mixture until the engine rpm started to drop and then I richened the mixture two clicks. He told me that you want to be around 50 degrees lean of peak exhaust gas temperature. There is a digital exhaust gas temperature gauge in the airplane so I leaned it very slowly until I got to the point where the rpm dropped and I added one click of rich. We then sat there and watched the temperature gauge for about 3 minutes until it stopped going up. I then gave it another click of rich and we watched it for another 3 minutes until it stopped going down at which point I gave it another click of rich. Once that stabilized, we were around 55 degrees lean of the peak. So, ironically, we were at the same spot I normally am on the exhaust gas temperature, only with this method it took me 10 minutes to get to that point instead of 10 seconds. But, he is right as depending on the altitude you are flying, the power setting, and the engine you have, 50 degrees lean of peak EGT, may not always be two clicks.

Once we reached the practice area, I did my clearing turns and then we began steep turns. I did one to the right and then one to the left. I started at 3,600 feet of altitude and finished a hair under 3,700. You need to be within 100 feet for the final check ride so I would have passed. The second one started at 3,700 and ended at 3,800. Oddly, after the flight was over he mentioned that I should work on my steep turns as I gained 200 feet of altitude which would not have passed in a check ride. I think he forgot to look at the altimeter before we started and assumed we started at 3,500 since that is where I leveled off for the cruise portion of the flight prior to reaching the practice area. That is the only problem with getting a check ride in a tandem seating aircraft as there are no gauges in the back. The instructor has to look over your shoulder and around your head to see them.

We transitioned immediately into slow flight after completing the steep turns. This went smoothly and we did a 90 degree slow flight turn to the right and one to the left. After this, we did a power off stall and then three power on stalls; one flying straight ahead and two while turning to the left. My only mistake is that on one of the power on stalls to the left, I recovered a hair too early and did not let the plane fully stall before I lowered the nose.

The last item we did before heading back to Palo Alto was the engine out emergency procedure. I went through the engine start checklist, and trimmed the plane to 65 miles per hour which is the speed that gives you the longest range in a glide. I picked a large field on the coast as my landing zone and made my way over to the touchdown point that I picked out. I then started to circle to lose altitude. There was a strong wind which I estimated to be between 15-20 knots. I wanted to land with a headwind but the instructor told me to land the other way with a tailwind. He said the field had a slight downhill slope and he would rather land with a tailwind uphill than a headwind downhill. I am not sure I agree with that logic. Especially since once I turned on final and that tailwind hit the airplane, we floated for a mile. I initiated a large forward slip to lose altitude but the tailwind was too strong. We went down to about 50 feet off the ground and I am glad there were no humans around as they probably would have freaked out seeing an airplane 50 feet over their heads.

We were at my touchdown point when he told me to apply power. If we had actually landed, we would have been a ways past my touchdown point and there were a few bushes there so we would have run into those. Would we have gotten hurt? Probably not, but it wouldn’t have been that smooth. What lesson did I learn here? Well I learned that you really need to compensate a lot more than you think when you have a tailwind. Had I really had an engine failure at this point and needed to land in this field, I would have chose to land with the headwind. There was not that much slope to this field at all and with the thick grass and a 15 knot headwind as well as brakes on the airplane, we could have landed smoothly and stopped well before the cliff.

We climbed back to 3,500 feet and headed back to Palo Alto. He showed me a few things on the GPS on the way back and asked me a few more regulation questions. He then asked me if I had ever done slips before. I said that you had me do one on our second landing of the day and I did one on the approach to that grassy field during our engine out drill. He didn’t say anything after but asked if I would do one on the final landing. So, I did another slip on the final landing and came in nicely over the centerline and had a decent landing. He also added in my logbook that we did 6 landings but we actually only did 4 today. Maybe he counted the emergency procedure a landing but that would only be 5 then.

Anyway, it was a beautiful day for flying and I felt really good afterwards. My nerves calmed down as soon as we entered the airplane and started taxiing. Once in the air, flying is very relaxing and it is nice to enjoy the sun and the view. It was also nice to have someone else take a look at my flying and offer different pointers on things.

My next flight is in a week and it is with my normal instructor. I am not sure if this will be my solo flight or not. I hope so because I feel more than ready to solo and this will open the door for me to fly more often because I won’t be dependant on scheduling both a plane and a busy instructor.