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My fifth lesson brought with it my fifth hour. It was an awesome lesson. I was a little out of it though because I hadn’t flown in about 7 months. However, I pulled it together and ended up doing some awesome things.

I arrived at the airport around 9:50 for my 10:00 lesson. Jim came up and introduced himself to my mother and I. We confirmed some details and took a look at my log book. After my mother left, we ventured downstairs to begin the ground portion of the lesson. On the way down I saw a sign that read “New lower prices: Warrior $99.00/hr Basic Instructor: $40.00/hr”. I very much enjoyed seeing that. Anyway, we walked up to the white board and we talked over the pattern first. He drew out the runway and then had me label all of the parts of a standard traffic pattern; the upwind, crosswind, downwind, base, and final. Key positions were the next topic. He explained that when abeam your landing point on downwind, you are to reduce your rpm to 1700 rpm and lower the flaps 10° (but in that order). You must continue on your downwind leg until you are 45° from the runway. This is when you turn base and add another 15° of flaps. Once lined up with the runway, that is when you turn final and put the plane down smoothly. After discussing all of that, we transitioned into discussing stalls. We went over how to cause one and how to recover one. An interesting technique I learned is when a wing drops step on the rudder opposite the dropping wing (this can be remembered by “step on the sky”). This is a very important fact to remember because if you were to use the ailerons, 1) they wouldn’t be as effective because of the reduced airflow and 2) you could enter a spin. We summed up our discussion by going over the procedure to recover from a spin.

We walked up stairs, rented a headset, checked out the plane, then walked to N43020 to preflight her. Upon checking the fuel tanks, I noticed they were pretty low, so Jim called for a fuel truck and the fuel man topped off the tanks. We finished up the preflight hopped in and started the plane. Going thorough the post-start checklist, Jim showed me a cool acronym for the safety briefing that pilots are required to recite to their passengers.

S - Seatbelts (how and when to use them)

A - Air Vents (where and how to use them)

F - Fire Extinguisher (location)

E - Exits (location and how to use them)

T - Talking (sterile cockpit policy)

Y - You’re the PIC (what you say goes)

After completing the briefing, we taxied to the runway and I took off. We headed north to practice some stalls. The air was a little rough, but after relaxing my grip on the yoke and feeling what the airplane was wanting to do. That made it a lot easier to get the airplane what I wanted to do. When we got to the area we wanted and an appropriate altitude (3500 feet msl), we started stalls. Jim demonstrated one then let me try. We pulled the throttle back to 1500 rpm and pulled the nose up to try and maintain 3500 feet. Up and up the nose went and down and down the airspeed dropped. The stall horn had been going for a good 10 seconds now but we just could not get the plane to stall how we wanted it to. In a typical stall, the plane should shake then nose over. With the Warrior (because its a plane designed to not stall), it just stayed in that nose up attitude and lost altitude. We managed to do a few good stalls. When the nose pitches down, you are supposed to push the throttle forward and return the plane to the normal attitude. After preforming a few normal stalls and a handful of irregular stalls, we decided to head back to the airport. He helped me find the airport because I was having a really hard time finding where it was. After locating the runway, I radioed a call saying we had intentions of landing on runway 26. We slid into the pattern and at the first key location I throttled back and put in a notch of flaps. While turning base I slid in a second notch of flaps. At this point I was doing pretty good with airspeed and altitude. I turned final and Jim helped me put the planed down. It actually was a halfway decent landing. He asked if I wanted to try that again and I resounded an eager “YES!”, so we taxied back to the runway and did it again. This time he only told me when to turn; everything else I did by myself (except during the landing phase. He helped me to gauge when to flare.) We landed fairly well and WE GOT TO DO IT AGAIN!!! This time, he didn’t tell me anything and I flew the whole pattern by myself. On the landing, I flared to early and bounced it a bit. The only bad part is that we ran out of time, so I couldn’t make up for that bad one with a good one. Jim taxied it back to the ramp and put it in a little corner. We secured the aircraft and the lesson was done.

I really enjoyed flying with Jim. Its nice to hear other people’s opinion on certain topics. Over all, I ended up with 1.2 hours of flying time (which brings my grand total up to 5.0 hours!) I also logged another .8 hours of ground instruction. Within the next week I will talk to Johnny and set up another lesson for next month. I’m sure you can tell, I can not wait. Thanks for reading everyone!!!

Evan Krueger

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