Lesson Six: Ground reference maneuvers

When I arrived at the airport today, my instructor Kam hadn't arrived yet. The guy running the office told me to go ahead at pre-flight the plane, and that Kam would be right along. This was my first time pre-flighting the plane without Kam watching over me, and it was kind of nice not having that pressure. Once I was finished with the pre-flight, I went back into the office and Kam was there waiting. Kam gave me a quick lesson on the white board, showing me what the ground reference maneuvers we were doing today would look like, and when he was finished we headed out to the plane.

I worked the radio, taxied, and took off into the sky. We headed to the practice area, and found a long road, and intersection that we would use for the ground reference maneuvers lesson. Kam demonstrated the rectangular course maneuver first. Its as easy as looking out of the planes windows, and keeping a set distance away from your target...in this case, a series of roads. You do this around a rectangular path, and its not as easy as it sounds, especially when you have windy conditions like we had today. Next came the turn around a point maneuver, this consisted of making circles around an intersection while keeping a consistent distance from it. Around  this time in the lesson, I was starting to feel a little nauseous from all the turbulence. I tried not to panic, and took a deep breath and continued on. The final  maneuver we practiced was the s-turn. This is similar to the turn around the point maneuver, but you switch direction halfway through the turn, making an "S' shape instead of a full circle.

The reason these maneuvers are tricky, is because of the wind. When you are heading down wind, your speed is faster than if you were heading into the wind. How much you need to turn is directly related to how fast you are going, so you are constantly making adjustments to maintain a consistent distance from your target. These maneuvers are also practiced, because you are forced to look outside the plane, and not stare at your instruments, but quickly reference them.

Kam said that our lesson today is usually split into two lessons, but he felt that I was doing really, and decided we could get it all done in one lesson. He informed me that we will start practicing takeoffs and landings on the next lesson, and that I am progressing really well. He told me most people don't start practicing takeoffs and landing until around 10 hours, and I am starting them at 7.7 hours. I was very glad to hear I was doing well, but I am extremely nervous about practicing takeoffs and landings, these have been the parts of our lessons where my palms are the sweatiest, and my knuckles the whitest...and I'm not even the one landing the plane!

Today we put 1.5 hours on the planes hobbs ($135), and Kam charged for 1.7 hours of instruction ($76.50), totaling $211.50 for today's lesson.

s-turns, from www.sportpilot.org