Seth Flies
On Saturday, October 21st, I took my first flight lesson in over 2 years.
Man, did it feel nice.
As a little bit of background, I’m currently pursuing my Sport Pilot certificate. In the past, I took lessons at Eagle East Aviation in Lawrence, MA. Tim and the rest of the crew at Eagle East were great, but they went and sold their CTLS Light Sport, so I had to look elsewhere.
Over the summer, CHI Aerospace opened at Portsmouth International Airport at Pease (PSM), in Portsmouth, NH. CHI features 4 light sport aircraft: 2 RV-12s, a CTLS, and an Ercoupe (!). Even though I have experience in the CTLS, I’ve chosen to continue my training in the RV-12.
On Saturday morning I met John, CHI’s chief flight instructor, and he gave me a thorough introduction to the RV-12. We did a full pre-flight while the plane was still in CHI’s HUGE hangar, and then pulled the plane out onto the ramp.
After getting John’s permission to record the flight, I mounted my GoPro Hero 3+ on the rear of the RV’s bubble canopy, and connected the camera to the aircraft’s intercom using an interface cable.
I also debrief all of my flights with CloudAhoy (full disclaimer: I’m a software engineer at CloudAhoy), so I also mounted my BadElf GPS to the rear canopy with a suction cup mount… but I forgot to turn the damn thing on. So, my CloudAhoy track was recorded using the internal GPS on my Android. I didn’t practice good GPS hygiene (my phone was under my seat during the flight), so the track is fairly low resolution and has a bunch of jankiness.
After John and I got in the plane and buckled in, he guided me through the pre-start checklist and then I fired up the engine. He gave me a briefing of what we’d cover during the lesson, clued me in that differential braking would be needed to steer the plane while we taxied, and then he called PSM ground to get our taxi clearance. John ran the radio for the entire flight; I very much appreciated the ability to focus on flying the plane.
After taxi and run up, we entered RWY 34 and took off. PSM is the home of the 157th Air Refueling Wing, and it has an 11,000+ foot runway. It is LOOOOOOONG. We climbed to 1100ft while we were still over the runway!
It was such a gorgeous day with great visibility and very little turbulence. There was also a bit of traffic, so we had to keep our eyes peeled.
We made a left turn to the south, and flew down towards the Seabrook, NH area. John had me do slow flight, power-off and -on stalls, and left and right steep turns. For not having flown in such a long time, I think I did pretty well.
After working on the maneuvers, we flew back north to PSM and did some pattern work. I found that the long runway is very forgiving to poor approaches; I don’t think I was paying as close attention to my approach to landing as I should have because there was so much damn space to land. I’m looking forward to practicing on shorter runways, and focusing on getting my approach nice and stable.
I made 5 landings, the last of which was pretty damn good, if I may say so myself. The castering nosewheel on the RV-12 was a challenge, and it will take some getting used to. Practice makes perfect (or at least better!).
Can’t wait for next weekend’s lesson!
24 Oct 2017 #lesson