Pilot Life: Back on the Saddle for Recurrent Training

After two months of waiting, I'm finally back on the saddle and getting back to flight training, picking up where I left off in January! Without a doubt, this has been one of the most frustrating and a very trying semester of school by far. My patience has been pushed beyond my limit and time and time again, I could only think about what might have been considering that I could've been finished with private pilot training by now. Remind me again: How is now a great time to be in pilot in training because of a pilot shortage??? There's always talk about how there's a pilot shortage happening right now in the airlines and right now is a great time to be in flight training as there are upcoming opportunities to fill in the shoes of pilots who are retiring (Sadly, I have become somewhat of a critic of this talk about how a pilot shortage means now is a great time to be in flight training.). The one thing that this experience has shown me is that even student pilots can be screwed out of their time, money, and opportunities because of this pilot shortage, which isn't just exclusive to the airlines, but also to flight training facilities as regional airlines pluck out flight instructors. It creates a shortage of flight instructors that flight schools have a tough time replacing. In short, it's NOT just a pilot shortage. There's also a flight instructor shortage because there's just not many "career" flight instructors at places like where I'm going to school. My hats off to the flight instructors out there who are building up time and experience to move up in the aviation industry. Needless to say, flight training has not been easy to come by this semester. My personal frustrations aside, I'm getting back on the horse and picking up where I left off in January.

I met my new flight instructor today and the plan was to go out on a local flight to knock the rust off and regain some proficiency in the DA-20 after having not flown in one for two months. Once I got dispatched out, I headed out to the airplane and conducted the pre-flight before my instructor joined me. We hopped in and went through the pre-start and start-up procedures and got the engine started. Once we were ready to taxi, I called up Ground and (eventually) got our clearance to taxi (it was busy, so it took a little time for them to get back to us!). We taxied out to the run-up area and did the run-ups there. After run-ups were complete, we taxied out towards the runway, where I picked up our takeoff clearance from the tower (eventually, as the pattern was busy!). After the tower cleared us for takeoff, I taxied out onto the runway and lined up on centerline, I advanced the throttle and we began takeoff roll. Once at takeoff speed, I pulled back on the stick slightly and got the airplane airborne.

N221NH, "Wolf 04," the Katana I went up in today with my new flight instructor.

Once airborne, I flew us out on runway heading until reaching the departure end of the runway. As we continued to climb out, I turned out to the southwest towards the practice area my instructor selected for us to do this flight. I got into contact the approach controller in Salt Lake City and we made radar contact. We also leveled off at our cruise altitude. Once we got to the practice area, my instructor had me do a clearing turn to ensure we were visually clear of any other traffic in the area. He then immediately had me configure the airplane into slow flight. I pulled back the power on the engine with the throttle and then pitched the airplane's nose up. Once airspeed dropped, I added back power to the engine and trimmed out the pitch attitude to maintain altitude and airspeed and the plane was in slow flight.

From there, my instructor had me lower the flaps all the way down and execute gentle banks to the headings he called out. Afterwards, he instructed me to go straight into a power-off stall from slow flight, since the plane was already configured for a landing. I leveled off from the slow flight attitude we were in and then I pulled back on the stick in the typical attempt to maintain current altitude. It was a warm day so the air around us a little turbulent, so that made it things a little bit more challenging. Eventually, the stall warning horn went off and the airplane started buffeting. I also felt the controls getting mushy and eventually, the nose dropped. I then immediately went full throttle on the engines to recover from the stall. My instructor critiqued me to help me review the stall I just did; it certainly has been a while and the fact that I haven't flown in two months started to show. My instructor then had me do a power-on stall (or a departure stall). I reduced the throttle power, pitched the nose up, and once the airspeed dropped a little bit, I went back to full power. The stall warning horn went off as the airspeed plummeted. There was some buffeting on the airframe and eventually the controls got mushy and the nose dropped. Once the nose leveled with the horizon, I recovered from the stall. Again, my instructor gave me some much needed critiquing. He then took the controls and demonstrated to me as a review a stall or two of his own.

 My instructor then asked me to execute a steep turn; that meant banking the wings at a 45 degree angle and make a circling turn until I came back around to the same compass heading that I entered the turn on. My apprehension got the best of me here as I only managed a circling turn while at a bank angle of  about 30 degrees. My instructor took the controls and gave me a refresher on how a steep turn is done. He even did two circles while keeping the airplane trimmed out in the turn, making minor adjustments to compensate for the winds. I was handed back controls to have another go at steep turns. This time, I mimicked what my instructor did, as I got us into a 45 degree bank and proceeded with the steep turn, which ended up being better.

Satisfied with the steep turns, we moved on. My instructor took the throttles and pulled them back to simulate an engine failure. We went into practice for emergency procedures! I first got the plane to its best glide speed. Then I looked outside and picked a field to practice an emergency approach towards. I then took out the emergency checklist and started going through it. It was determined that we would've made the field I chose had this been a really emergency situation, so my instructor called for a go-around and I throttled forward and we started climbing again. Once again, my instructor gave me advice and critiqued my performance. My only problem was that I took too long with the checklist items. Having not flown in a while with UVU's aircraft, it was only natural that I wasn't efficient and a lot more sluggish with the checklist items; it's just one of things I'll work on to get back into proficiency.

It was getting late in the afternoon so my instructor had me turn the plane back towards Provo. We were hoping to get some pattern work in so I could refine my landings but we didn't have time so we came in full-stop. I established radio contact with the tower and they had us report in when at certain positions before entering the pattern. At the same time, I descended us down to pattern altitude. Once in the pattern, I flew downwind parallel with the runway. The tower controller had us extend our downwind leg of the approach to create spacing for two other UVU aircraft that were also in the pattern. I established visual contact with the second aircraft (that was on a four mile final approach) and waited for them to pass by. Once they were behind us, I began configuring the airplane for landing by reducing engine power, making a descent while turning base to final and lowered the flaps as needed. We made our long final approach and made our way to the runway. As we came in over the threshold, I reduced the power to idle and floated the rest of the way down until we touched down.

The landing was alright, but honestly it could've been better. Again, I have to remind myself that I'm going through recurrent training. We rolled out and we cleared the runway at the next available taxiway, taxied back to the UVU ramp, parked and the shut the airplane down and called it a flight. My new instructor filled out my logbook afterwards. After waiting around (much to my frustration), for two months, it was great to get back into flying here again. Now it's just a matter of getting back up to speed, knocking off that rust, and hope that I can everything I need to get done this month, because the semester ends in early May...