After the successful flight this past Thursday, it was time for an encore performance from the most recent flight I had. Today's flight was basically the same as last time, as I had additional opportunities to fly simulated instrument maneuvers, recover from unusual attitudes, and do some more VOR navigation practice. It was time to recall upon the things I've learned just recently.
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| Diamond DA-20-C1 (N885CT), "Wolf 11," the aircraft we took up into the air today. |
As per the usual business, I took care of the pre-flight checks before my flight instructor joined me in the airplane. We got started up, picked up our taxi clearance from ground, did our run-ups, got cleared for takeoff from tower, and away we went... to a practice area that is! While en route to the practice area, my instructor once again handed me a pair of foggles as the first part of today's flight was to once again do slow flight and stalls in simulated instrument conditions. Once we got to the practice area, my instructor had me do slow flight while under the hood so I could perform the maneuver strictly relying on my instruments. Like last time, things went smoothly as my instructor called out headings for me to turn to.
Once we were done with slow flight, it was time to do some stalls. First my instructor had me do a power-on stall; as usual, I pulled power from the engine, pitched the nose upwards, and went full throttle. Once the stall warning horn started going off and the airplane started dropping, I recovered and returned to level flight. Satisfied with the results, my instructor had me do a power-off stall. Once again, it was the usual first by pulling the power back on the engine as if we were about to land. I then brought the flaps and configured the airplane as if I was about to land. As the airspeed slowed, I slowly pulled back on the stick in an attempt to maintain level altitude. Again, the stall warning horn went off and the airplane started dropping when the airspeed fell below stall speed. I immediately recovered the airplane and began climb out and raised the flaps back so we were configured for cruise.
Satisfied with the results from performing the stalls, my instructor then moved us on to the next part of today's flight lesson: recovery from unusual attitudes. Like last time, my instructor had me close my eyes after taking control of the airplane. He then proceeded to fly around in some maneuvers to disorient my senses before calling on me to make the recovery. Like last time, we did several recoveries ranging from the nose-high position to nose-down position and threw in some banking elements in the process. Again, this part of the flight lesson came natural to me and I was able to execute recovery from each of the unusual attitudes my instructor put me in.
Once we were done with the recoveries, it was time to head back to Provo via the Provo VOR. My instructor walked me through in tuning the OBI to the Provo VOR and flew the course it indicated while alternating attention between my instruments for navigation and eyes outside the cockpit for any traffic. Like last time, we fly high above Provo Airport's controlled airspace until we passed over the VOR station before altering course. At this point, we made contact with the Provo air traffic control tower to let them know we were in the area and we wanted to do practice some landings. My instructor wanted me to practice more with short-field and soft-field landings and we got three rounds of pattern work in for today's flight, conducting a combination of touch-and-goes and stop-and-goes, depending on what kind of landing and take-off was called out. Unlike last time, I didn't have to do any "straight to the numbers" approaches!
After I got in my third landing which was full-stop, we vacated the runway and taxied back to the UVU ramp, shut the airplane down, filled out the logbook and called it another flight. Today was another good day and a good flight!
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