 |
| Diamond DA-20-C1 (N958CT), "Wolf 14," the aircraft my instructor and I took up today. I snapped this photo earlier this semester down in Spanish Fork at a fly-in event. |
Today's flight introduced me into a broader world of aviation that involves a important skill: navigation. In particular, my instructor introduced and taught me about VORs (Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Radio Range), a type of radio navigation system for aircraft. VORs enable aircraft with a receiving unit to determine their position and stay on course by receiving radio signals transmitted by a network of fixed ground radio beacons, reading off a particular instrument in the cockpit known as the Omni Bearing Indicator (OBI). In addition to VOR training, my instructor also started training me on recovery from unusual attitudes in the airplane. More on that a bit...
After conducting and going through the checklists for pre-flight and start-up, we picked up taxi clearance and taxied out to the run-up area and did the usual routine run-ups. After run-ups were complete, we picked up our takeoff clearance from the tower and we got airborne, setting course for the south practice area. My instructor then took control of the DA-20 and handed me a pair of foggles for a little instrument training. Once we arrived in the practice area, my instructor had me put the airplane into slow flight like in past training flights, except this time I was stripped of all outside visual references and relied solely on the airplane's instruments! Eyeing my instruments, I successfully put the airplane into slow flight; it came to me naturally even though I was not using outside references. And as usual, my instructor called out headings for me to turn to while in slow flight, executing gentle banks in the process.
Satisfied with slow flight, my instructor then had me do stalls with foggles on and relying solely on instruments. We started with power-on stalls; I pulled back the power on the engine, pitched the plane's angle of attack upwards and then gunned the engine back to full power all while keeping an eye just on the instruments. Once I felt the stall, I leveled out and made a recovery from the stall. After building back up the needed airspeed, my instructor had me do the power-off stall while under foggle-vision. I configured the plane as if we were about to land by chopping the power to the engine and extended the flaps. I then pulled back on the stick in the usual attempt to maintain the altitude the plane was at all the while the airspeed plummeted. The stall warning horn went off and the plane stalled, followed by the instant reaction to gun the engine to full power for the recovery procedure. I retracted the DA-20's flaps and we regained altitude.
With the requirements for stalls satisfied, my instructor retook the controls and had me remove the foggles; this turned out to be one of the longest times I was "under the hood." ("Under the hood" is another phrase to denote flying under simulated instrument conditions, where the origins refer to a large baseball cap-like hat that obstruct outside view, much like foggles; the hood refers to whatever device or gear a pilot in training wears to obstruct outside views.)
My instructor then walked me through recovery from unusual attitudes, which simply put is when the airplane is flying in a way that ISN'T straight-and-level flight; so the plane could be climbing, diving, inverted (that last one being a little too extreme!). He had me close my eyes in order to guarantee that I would be spatially disorientated momentarily as he put the DA-20 Katana through a series of wild and random maneuvers which included turns, banks, climbs and descents. When my instructor uttered the command "Recover," that was my cue to open my eyes, take control of the airplane and bring it back to straight-and-level flight from whatever attitude the plane was in; we did this several times. Believe me, I actually had a lot of fun doing this!
In one recovery, my instructor put me into a slightly steep nose-down descent and the corrective action for that was to pull back on the power to the engine and pull the stick back to climb back up to level flight before re-applying power for level flight. The next recovery, my instructor put the plane into a climb; the recovery method for that is to add power (if needed so you don't stall!) and push the nose forward to get back down to level flight. My instructor then added some elements of banking into the recovery from unusual attitudes. In a banking descent, the proper way to recover was to straighten the wings out of the bank, power back the engine, and then pull the stick back until level before re-applying power. In a banking climb, the recovery method is to add power, push the stick forward to descend out of the climb and then straighten the wings to level flight (pretty much the opposite methods compared the banking descents.). I conducted every recovery method flawlessly, gaining praise from my flight instructor. I will be honest; I actually saw some YouTube videos recently where recovery from unusual attitudes were conducted so I actually had a good idea on what it was all about! And no, I don't consider that cheating!
After all the jostling around my instructor put me through for each recovery (trust me, my head was still spinning when we moved on!), it was time to finish out the flight with some VOR navigation practice. Provo Airport has a VOR station emitting radio signals and we tuned the OBI to it and followed it on our course, with my instructor teaching me how to use and read the instrument. We ensured we were at a high enough altitude so we wouldn't breach the airspace borders around the Provo Airport and we set course for Provo via its VOR station that was transmitting its signal. The flying was pretty straight-forward; once the OBI was set to the heading with the needle in the instrument centered, all I had to do was maintain course. The only other thing I had to do was alternate my attention between the instrument and outside the cockpit frequently. We eventually flew right over Provo Airport and its VOR station and then away from it. We were then facing one of the mountains of the Wasatch Range near the entrance to Provo Canyon. But we altered course and made contact with the air traffic control tower at Provo to let them know that we were inbound.
 |
| Face-to-face with Cascade Mountain, just north of BYU's iconic Y Mountain. |
 |
| Looking into the entrance of Provo Canyon. Mount Timpanogos is to the left of the canyon entrance. |
 |
| View of Provo and part of BYU's main campus. |
 |
| Weather was pretty good, but there were some hazy conditions out in the distance. |
It was time to land and call it another flight. There was incoming traffic landing straight in from the north about 20 miles away. Because of that factor, Provo Tower asked if we could "go direct to the numbers," which more or less means to fly direct to the landing runway and land (the numbers referring to the magnetic orientation numbers marking each end of the runway being the aiming point). This is officially known as a short approach and since my instructor was with me, I was allowed to fly as instructed by the tower with him walking me through the whole thing; if I was alone, I probably wouldn't have done this approach since I wasn't familiar with the process. By flying straight to the numbers, a normal pattern was basically thrown out the window. As I went through the usual before-landing checklist, my instructor told me when to extend flaps and to cut power and airspeed as needed. The turn onto final approach wouldn't happen until the very last moment. When we reached the end of the runway, the plane was still at a 45 degree angle from the runway centerline; I made the necessary last minute corrections and this was one of the shortest final approaches I've ever flown! I flared over the runway and touched the DA-20 Katana back down on on terra firma; the "straight to the numbers" approach felt so natural. Better yet, I was able to cut in front of the approach traffic that was still a ways out and saved myself the time of having to fly a normal pattern that would've otherwise forced me to extend the downwind leg for the approach. We taxied back to the UVU ramp, shut down the airplane, filled out the logbook and called it another flight.
I definitely appreciated learning some new things on today's flight!
No comments:
Post a Comment