I fly every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. And I got to log another flight hour today! I couldn't have asked for a better schedule between flight lessons and classroom instruction. And for those of you who are wondering, I'm taking 16 credits this semester! And in my opinion, there's no better way to spend a portion of my Saturdays than to go flying! I didn't get any pictures from this flight as a personal decision because I am in flight training after all, and I stand by that decision. You know the old saying: There is a time and place for everything. Any pictures I do take during my flight training sessions will be from the ground only.
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| Today's flight was on a Diamond DA-20-C1 Katana (N988CT) "Wolf 18." Photo taken earlier this semester. |
Today's flight was more or less the same as this past Thursday. We flew to the same practice area but I got to do a little more compared to last time. For starters, my instructor walked me through a takeoff; it certainly wasn't my best takeoff but then again, I didn't expect it to be. I can only go up the proverbial ladder of success and improve from here on, right? I got some practice in making some turns again, this time while reading the heading indicator and turning to a certain point at the commands of my instructor. Again, I still got quite a bit of learning to do! Throw some altitude monitoring into the mix and I was truly in for a learning curve in today's flight! Again, I can only make improvements and learn from each flight from here on out. Before returning to the Provo Airport, my instructor took the controls and demonstrated a maneuver designed to lose altitude quickly before reaching pattern altitude (specified altitude to be flying when near airport operations). Known as the steep-descending turn, the aircraft turns in circles while in a descent to reach a desired altitude. And of course there are some G-forces involved.
One thing that made this flight interesting was that a commercial airliner arrived into Provo just as we were making our way back. Ultra low-cost carrier Allegiant Air serves Provo with weekly flights to Phoenix, Los Angeles, Oakland, and starting later this month, San Diego. It just so happens that one of their flights from Phoenix came in and my instructor and I were next in the landing queue after the larger Airbus! It was really cool to be in the same traffic pattern as a commercial airliner and this encounter served as a reminder for what my ultimate goal was and why I came to UVU to learn how to fly in the first place. Of course, following a commercial jet airliner into the airport in a tiny Diamond DA-20 Katana (Airbuses eats DA-20s for breakfast!) did come with a little element of concern to all pilots: wake turbulence. Simply put, it's turbulence that forms behind an aircraft as it passes through the air much like how a boat or a ship leaves a wake trail as it passes through water. Wake turbulence can be hazardous, especially for small aircraft like the ones we fly as the turbulence can easily upset the flight path and handling of an aircraft. The dangers of wake turbulence are exponentially more hazardous in the vicinity of airports because planes are operating at lower altitudes and slower speeds, a pretty narrow margin of error to recover in. The solution to counter the Airbus' wake turbulence: we came in over the runway from a higher altitude above where the wake turbulence was. Like last time, we did one touch-and-go landing and came back around for a full-stop landing before concluding today's flight session. And during both landings, I got to do a majority of it with my instructor walking me through it all.
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| Allegiant Air Airbus A319-112 (N308NV), the same airframe that arrived into Provo while my instructor and I were in the traffic pattern. It was so cool to see this fly in and be in the same airport traffic pattern as a commercial airliner! Photo taken several days prior. |
Flying on Saturdays = Not a bad way to spend a late morning/early afternoon!
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