Aviation BS and Photo Thread

I did aggressor work at the CAOC at Nellis. Fun times. So many shenanigans.

 

share-zies where where you can-zies...I'd like to hear some

 

First flight in the books. My instructor wasted no time in letting me get my hands dirty.

We did banked turns, power-off stalls, power-on stalls in a Cessna 172. I even setup for landing and got to help, but we flew on a day with 15kt crosswinds so I definitely didn’t get to do the final landing, since the runway was basically lined up down my side window. Lol.

At one point he was demonstrating a power-off stall and he was explaining how you have to be smooth on the inputs and then without any warning he says “or this happens!" and I’m staring at a windshield full of swamp. At negative G.

I've watched hours of videos on youtube to try to get ready, and swore I wouldn't make n00b mistakes. I made all of them within the first two minutes! My brain knew the yoke does nothing to steer the plane on the ground, but my dumb hands were all like "turning anyway!" Got the "right rudder" prompt about 100 times. Took my hand off the throttle constantly.

Was smooth as a chainsaw with half the elegance.
Oh well, the first step at being good at something is daring to be bad at it.
Can't wait for my next lesson.

 

Happens to the best of us my man.

 

HA! I remember my first fam flight...was riding the rudder pedals like a bicycle trying to stay on the taxi line lmao

 

But turning the ailerons into a crosswind while taxing is a good thing.

 

Won't happen on your first flight, but that's a great opportunity for an "evil" instructor to make your engine mysteriously "fail".

My instructor's fav thing was to pop the door open on takeoff with a very sarcastic "oh no, what are we gonna do?"

 

My dads instructor would slap his hand whenever he would take his hand off the throttle
The right side door on our 182 was difficult to latch and one day it popped open on takeoff, mom wasn’t thrilled about it and dad had to reach behind her and pull it shut and latch it while she had the controls, fun times.

 

Oh I was doing a textbook taildragger s-curve taxi, just in a 172 looking like a drunk idiot. lol.

Also, the thing that surprised me the most was how much pressure I had to apply to the rudder pedals to get any rudder authority. I thought my instructor had his feet on the pedals, but I just needed to push harder.

 

Sidebar...when you say stalls, are you saying spins and incipient spins as well? I was under the impression that they were not taught in th US anymore. Or is it they aren't tested during the checkride? I haven't looked at a curriculum for private up here in a while, but I heard late 90s the FAA stopped them...we were still doing it all in my private tests.

By the way a little heads up...don't practice spins over and over with a bad cold. You'll get one hell of a upper sinus infection.

Ask me how I know...but they are a lot of fun, the spins that is

 

I got scolded by an older instructor when i took my hand off the throttle on a landing one time. I never did that again.

 

I was taught that basically 1K' AGL and below, your hand is on the throttle. Pretty sure I still have a mark from the whiz wheel smacking the back of my hand so many times.

 

Mine was a fun guy...if I took my hand off, he'd simply tell me to cut the throttle myself and prepare for precautionary/emergency landing and configure. Didn't matter what part of the flight pattern we were in, unless adjusting trim or working radio...every time

 

I'll be honest, it all happened so quickly I'm not sure if I could even explain what he did.
My instructor definitely let me know ahead of time that this flight was going to be a sample of a lot of maneuvers that would be explained in more detail on later lessons, if I continued.

My instructor is a good guy. He's an older gentleman that has taught for decades. Very passionate about what he teaches. I want to make clear that I never felt unsafe and feel he did a great job letting me experience a few things early on.
So this was definitely no checkride. If I even had a logbook (which I don't), this would be entry 1 of 1. lol.

I have another prepaid hour of instruction with him that I'll use, then I'll decide if this path is truly for me. The two hours were a gift from my wife for our 10 year anniversary.

 

It's been 15ish years since my fixed wing training but I don't recall there being a big deal made over having your hand on the throttle.

 

It was most likely intro to spin training aka "Stall Awareness" but functionally, its partially the same thing. Spins get caused when one wing stalls more than the other. Either way, its freaky the first time.

 

Awesome! Sounds like you had a blast.

 

Some CFIs seem to care more than others. Mine cared about that, and also that you were "dressed to egress the aircraft". Doesn't matter the cabin was warm and the sun was making it awfully toasty inside, you were wearing your damn jacket. If you're like me and run hot, that was not necessarily appreciated.

 

A jacket at all times? Yikes. Only part of my wardrobe that I do consistently when flying is wearing closed toed shoes. No flip flops. Just in case I need to kick out a window or climb around bent up aluminum/random debris in the event of an unplanned arrival in someone’s field or Walmart parking lot

 

Yeah, that was his thing. I seriously thought he was joking at first, but he def wasn't and made that pretty clear. Only "Air Winger" I've ever met that wasn't super cool about dang near everything. He was a great CFI otherwise though, so I stuck with him.