Lesson 7: Ground School and Touch and Go

11/14/2008 : (Last weekend) The weather was bad so I did ground school with Chris. We went over basic flight physics, control surfaces, gauges, and things like that. Uneventfull classroom type stuff, but required for licensure.

11/22/2008 : Saturday was beautiful - no clouds, visibility forever, and no traffic. Just us and the sky. We went to Winder for more touch and goes. The actual landing from an approach I've got down. What I need to work on is control of altitude and attitude. For example, climbing to 2000 ft and not deviating from that altitude. Or turning to NE and hitting NE and staying there. I tend to drift around.

It was cold and the wings had ice on them. The Diamond's composite material makes icing a bit of a problem in that it takes longer to burn off than other surfaces. Icy wings makes a big difference in flight characteristics. Chris said he would not fly a plane with even moderate ice on the wings. It causes air turbulence over the normally smooth, streamlined control surfaces. This results in uneven pitch and roll response, and greatly impedes basic maneuvering. So we did the run up and then waited at the line for sun to melt the ice. We did this by looking at the wings and waiting for the appearance of water beads.

The touch and goes were fine, except one I had to go around on. I made a mistake when I flipped the flaps all the way up (cruise flaps) instead of all the way down (landing flaps). That combined with being too high to begin with dictated a go around. I made some mistakes, but I'm still improving with every lesson, so it just takes time. There is no substitute for experience. I'd rather make evry mistake in the book with Chris than solo.

My sister and her husband Bill come into town tommorow evening. I'm excited to see them. Wednesday we go up in the DA-40 with the glass cockpit Garmin 1000. Even though it doesn't count toward my DA-20 certification, it will give me good comparative flight experience. The plan is to go to Winder for a touch and go, fly over lake Lanier, and then fly over downtown Atlanta. The DA-40 has an autopilot, so that will be another first.

I have almost 20 hours of flight time logged. Based on a 60 hour estimate, I'm about 1/3rd of the way to a private pilot license. Probably about 1/2 way to my first solo.