My Month as a Student

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Week1
Monday	Rain
Tuesday	Rain
Wednesday	No rain; no visibility either.
Thursday	Take instructor to lunch. Discover I don't know enough to take instructor to lunch.
Friday	FLY! Do first stall and second stall during same maneuver, cover instructor with lunch.
Week 2
Monday	Learned not to scrape frost off Plexiglas with ice-scraper. Used big scratches on windshield as marker to set pitch.
Tuesday	Instructor wants me to stop calling throttle, "THAT BIG KNOB THING." Also, hates it when I call instruments 'GADGETS'.
Wednesday	Radios won't pick up radio stations, so I turn them off. Instructor seems to think I missed something during the introductory flight.
Thursday	Learned 10-degree bank is not a steep turn. Did stall again today. Lost 2000 feet. Instructor said that was some kind of record. -My first compliment.
Friday	Did steep turn. Instructor said I was not ready for inverted flight, yet.
Week 3
Monday	Instructor called in sick. New instructor told me to stop calling her "BABE". Did steep turns. She said I have to have permission for inverted flight.
Tuesday	Instructor back. He told me to stop calling him "BABE", too. He got mad when I pulled power back on takeoff because the engine was too loud.
Wednesday	Instructor said after the first 20 hours, most students have established a learning curve. He said it seemed there was only a slight bend in mine. Ah-ha!...progress!
Thursday	Did stalls. Clean recovery. Instructor said I did good job. Also did turns around a point. Instructor warned me never to pick ex-fiancée's house as point again.
Friday	Did pattern work. Instructor said that if downwind, base, and final formed a triangle, I would be perfect. More praise!
Week 4
Monday	First landing at controlled field. Did fine until I told the captain in the 747 ahead of us on taxiway to move his bird. Instructor says we'll have ground school all this week on radio procedures.
Tuesday	Asked instructor if everyone in his family had turned gray at such an early age. He smiled. We did takeoff stalls. He says I did just fine but to wait until we reach altitude next time. C-150 will be out of shop in three days when the new nose-strut and tire arrive. Instructor says his back bothers him only a little.
Wednesday	Flew through clouds. I thought those radio towers were a lot lower. I'm sure my instructor is going gray.
Thursday	Left flaps down for entire flight. Instructor asked why. I told him I wanted the extra lift as a safety margin. More ground school.
Friday	Asked instructor when I could solo. He laughed till he cried. What was so funny?

"You are brave. Not brave because you are going to be facing any physical dangers; you are not really going to. I mean brave in another, deeper sense. By being on this flight you have shown that you are willing to explore your own identity to discover what might lie within you. Your human clay has not hardened, and you are also willing to explore your own perceptions of the universe, knowing that you may be forced to set aside many comfortable and cherished assumptions. The idea that you must approach honestly and directly is that flying very dramatically makes the pilot solely responsible for his own life."

— Harry Bauer, 'The Flying Mystique: Exploring Reality and Self in the Sky,' 1980

Today was better.

Used Coulter Field because all the planes at Easterwood were tied up. Take off on runway 14 with slight crosswind from the south. I still am not to good at cross-wind taxi and take-off, in particular managing wind across the wings, but am working on it. I think an hour of FlightSim would help.

Did 4 approaches today, including 1 touch and go and a full landing. One of the problems that is clear to me now is that the landing (or touch) has always been in my hands and I didn't know it! I kept thinking we're doing approaches with no touch and I think Andy wants it all the way down, so I keep waiting for the "go around" and he keep waiting for me to finish the job. Consequently, the last ten feet have always been too tense for me and I think aggravating for him.

The touch-and-go today was OK, but I lost it down the runway and he had to take it. Shit. Runway taxiing on two wheels is still a little shaky, and three wheels at 30 mph gave me big-time shimmy in the front wheel (we were in a little 150, something...QD, not the usual 49785). But, I'll get better.

Stabilized approaches are getting more routine. One key has been taking "hands off" late in the downwind leg to show that the trim is right. 65 KIAS, 1700 RPM (carb heat on), nose high (2 1/2 turns in the 152, a little less in the 150) and 10 degree flaps. At that point, I can handle power to control descent rate.

John R did a simulated power off landing straight from late downwind successfully today. He's really kicking some badass when it comes to doing these maneuvers. We've pretty much switched attitudes lately. He looks to be soloing any time now, and I feel like I've got tons left to practice. The good news is that it's only Sept 8 and I may have another 10 hours of flying (double my current total) this month to get it right.

What I like about Coulter: informal, club atmosphere except the club "owns" the airfield. Nice plane. Narrow runway makes me concentrate more.
What I don't like: I need to practice radio and there is virtually none used there. Narrow runway makes me miss more.

We may have more times there in the future, and I need the practice, and planes are available.

Today: 0.8 hours. Total: 10.7