Aviator90 Episode 39

Man: [0:31] Welcome to another episode of “Aviator 90″ from Angle of
Attack. Today we are going to be flying in Alaska, just like last
episode. However, this time you’re going to do a few different
things.
[0:45] First of all, we are going to be flying in a float plane
today, and I’ll teach you some basics about float plane operations.
We will also be using the auto-pilot and we will be doing a bit of
instrument work, just as it turns out.

[1:01] Today we’re going to be flying from an airport, Kilo Charlie
Charlie, which is a seaplane base, to another seaplane base, in
Alpha Two Niner. Along the way we are going to track a VOR, which
basically gets us right outside Alpha Two Niner, and that VOR is
Bravo Kilo Alpha.

[1:22] We will dial that in right after take-off and follow that
most of the way. I’ll show you how the auto-pilot can guide us
there just by setting the VOR.

[1:34] So it should be a very good episode for you guys, and you’ll
learn a lot. So without delay let’s jump in, and I’ll teach you a
bit about float planes.

[1:45] Most of the float plane operations are exactly the same as a
regular aircraft; however, we just take off and taxi a bit
different, and there are some different things to consider. We are
in the 206, which we have flown in other episodes, but this one is
equipped with floats, and it will allow us to be a float plane.

[2:08] This one also has landing gear, say you want to go from a
float plane base to a regular airport. So we’re going to starting
off turning the battery and alternator on the Navan Beacon Airport.
We check the power, make sure forwardge, forward through crackage
as always, prompt is all the way forward. Go back to the switches.
Turn on the magnetos. Then, I’m going to put some fuel into the
cylinders here.

[2:36] Now, I have to make sure that we have good light up there.
Then, I’m going to press shift P on the keyboard, and that does
what’s call the push back. Now if we were in real life, we
basically push off from shore and will be OK that way.

[2:52] But I’m going to need a push back a little bit here. Using
the flight simulator method of doing it, and this way we have
enough room to turn around, because it can be quite difficult to
turn around in a float plane. But I’ll show you something along
those lines that you may not have not known that will makes things
a whole lot easier.

[3:13] So, let just continue back here. And, keep on going. Keep on
pushing back . . . got some water splashing up . . . there’s
something . . . it’s more like smoke, kind of scary? All right, so
that will do it for know. And let’s start the engine. And there we
go, we have a good start.

[3:47] So, I would just . . Let’s see . . . I bring that thralow
back and then turn the avionics on, stroll light and land lights
on. We’re not going to waste any time get out here for the taxi
changing into the local traffic, got that set. And for some reason,
we are pushing back again. I don’t know why. . . shouldn’t be.

[4:18] All right. So, let’s turn on the transponder and then we’ll
taxi out. I’m going to taxi to the right, here. And when you taxi,
you have to taxi with the elevator all the way back. And you have
to turn on the water rudder. You do that with control-W. The water
rudder will allow you turn much better.

[4:59] And the best way I found to taxi is not only to hold the
control column back like I am, but in addition, a really quick,
high power setting to whip around the aircraft pretty fast is the
best way to go. And I’ve found that’s the easiest way to get the
aircraft to turn otherwise it just doesn’t want to turn, even with
the water rudder.

Pilot: [5:26] So what we’re going to do, we’re going to get out just
around this buoy. So, we’re almost there. I’m going to turn on the
transponder. In additional, I didn’t mention this when I did it
before, but I put in a nasha flaps and that’s probably best for
most of the water takeoffs you’re going to be doing.
[5:45] Just to give you that extra of bit of lift. This is
essentially like a soft-fill takeoff where you get your nose up
although, you kind of get your floats out of the water and then you
nose over a little bit once they start to lift off. So here we go.
We’re almost to the buoy. Almost there.

Air traffic [6:07] Cop-co traffic Sesna 366-Delta Lima takeoff westbound on the
control: waterway.

Pilot: [6:13] Alright. So that should just about do it. Everything is set
in the aircraft. We’ve done a thorough pre-flight here. So let’s do
this. Full power. Smoothly advance. And Again, you’re pulling the
elevator all the way back waiting for the lift off. You’re waiting
for it, waiting for it, and there it is, nice and smooth.
[6:35] Then you nose over just like it was a soft-field takeoff
almost and you start to climb. So it’s that easy. As you accelerate
you’re welcome to pull out that notch of flaps or just clean up the
aircraft – get that notch of flaps, pull it back in, and then you
can climb forward.

[6:55] Now, we are going to go on basically a heading of, well,
we’re just going to intercept the VOR radial of Sitka. The actual
identifier is Bravo, Kilo, Alfa. What that’ll do is it can guide us
all the way in to our destination. This VOR is just to the south of
where we’re actually landing, but once we get to the VOR we’ll turn
northbound and then we will make a water landing.

[7:29] So, we are going to head out here and get that all taken
care of. I can now set the engine power and everything, so I’ll get
everything in the green. So do your throttle first, then your prop
pitch, and then you can lean out the mixture to what you need as
well. That’ll give us exactly what we need.

[7:52] Then we’ll just make a stable climb on this heading and we
will dial in that VOR. So let’s dial it in now. It is 113.8. I’m
going the long way here, oh well. 113.8, all right, switch it over.
If you remember, we learned this the hard way last time, this is
going to be a NAV-1, which is on the HSI. So it’s not the other
VOR. Lesson learned there.

[8:31] Then, if you look on the map we’re following the 099Ëš
radial, or at least that’s the outbound radial that we are going to
be tracking inbound. So it’ll be the reciprocal of that, which is
two-seven-niner, and you can see that with just the tail end at 099
there. Now we have a bit of a deflection, and we are basically just
going to intersect that, nice and straight. And then we will head
up there. It’s as simple as that.

[9:12] So, for now we’re just climbing forward, and then we will
track the VOR. It’s really nothing too complicated about it. I’m
sure you guys are getting pretty used to it by now. You just dial
that in. It’s not very accurate out here where we are. The distance
measuring equipment is down on the bottom right on radio panel, if
you can see that. I forgot the landing lights. Let’s turn that off,
and nothing else. All right. That’s pretty much the last takeoff
item we have.

[9:50] Then, let’s dial in, incoming traffic 1228 and we’ll get
back to what I was talking about. There we go, switch it over. All
right. So, I was saying the distance measuring equipment is bottom
right. We’re quite a ways out, and basically I’ll use that to
determine our distance and how far we are from the station.

[10:35] In the last episode the DME was in the place of where the
gear is now, right below the basic six. So because Alaska is so
rural, we’re not going to worry about a radio call. I’m just going
to monitor this frequency and scan for traffic.

[11:12] And now, we’re on a nice intercept course for that VOR,
just continuing to climb up here. And we are on a westerly heading,
so we’ll level off at 4500 today. And that should be good for now.

[11:32] We have nice, let’s see, power settings all good. And it is
still looking good, in the green on all the gauges. And also, you
can, if you commit it to memory, you can keep track of the trend of
the engine instruments as well. Say you’re worried about oil
temperature on a hot day, things like that, you can monitor that.
And that’s very important, as well.

[12:04] Pretty blue sky and open wide spaces here in Tongass
Fjords. Then again, I mentioned that last episode, it’s great
scenery from Bill Wamick, nice little airport, not airport, but
scenery. Let’s level off here at 4500, start to bring that down and
trim it out and pull back the power a little bit.

[12:30] Easy goes it.

[12:39] This machine just wants to climb all the time. It’s what
it’s good at. So we will correct that by our trim. And puts your.

[13:06] I’m stable now. Oh, all right. All right, so we’ve got some
IFR coming up, it looks like this is kind of unrealistic because
clouds don’t just appear out of nowhere like that. You know what?
We’re not going to call up center or anything. I’m just going to
show you guys some instruments techniques here, and we can learn
from it.

[13:36] We’re not going to do the communications. That would just
be a little overwhelming. So in instrument conditions basically
you’re looking at the basic six. Your primary focus is on the
attitude indicator most of the time, and then you move from there
to, say, the altimeter and vertical speed and the air speed.

[13:54] So, you bounce back and forth from the attitude indicator,
just checking your other instruments and developing what is called
a scan.

[14:03] You are scanning the instruments, looking for the exact
situation you want, so we still want to be in the climb. I’m also
going to turn on the pitot heat. It’s raining outside, and the
temperature is kind of low. We don’t want the air speed indicator
information to drop off, nice and pretty clouds here.

[14:25] So just get that scan going. Keep the attitude indicator
nice and stable. That’s your main instrument. Say you start to turn
to the right, you can see that on the attitude indicator, and then
it should show up on the heading indicator immediately once you
start doing that turn.

[14:42] Right now, you see that we have a nose up indication on the
attitude indicator, and that correlates with the fact that the
aircraft is climbing in the other two instruments. Now, I didn’t
mention that I’m purposely climbing to 6, 500 because that will
give us some rain clearance in this area.

[15:02] So, I am purposely climbing. If I wasn’t planning on
climbing, I would obviously want to stay level, but right now our
air speed is looking good.

[15:10] Then, we go back to the attitude indicator. Look at that.
That’s looking good. We go down to the turn slit, no turn, nice and
level. Back to the attitude. Look over at the altimeter. We’re
still climbing. Back to the attitude. Down to the vertical speed.

[15:25] We’re still climbing there. It’s pretty simple, if you get
that scan going. So you guys can certainly practice that. That is
not an advanced technique. That is instrument flying at its most
basic. So you just keep the aircraft in the flying condition you
want it to be in and that’s the way it is. And everything else just
comes in time and experience and learning what the instrument
system is like.

[15:58] Obviously once you start doing approaches it gets much more
complicated. But we are going to be doing that today, that is
something that you would see in Aviator Pro, which you can sign up
for as well. Aviator Pro is the above and beyond version of Aviator
90, but there is really no end in sight.

[16:19] We do a lot of content with Aviator Pro and if you guys are
interested in that, there is plenty of places on the blog to sign
up for it and we will get you enrolled and started.

[16:34] So we are at level 6500 now. Engine, instruments are all
still in green. Since we are higher now, I can pull the mixture out
a little more and then we are just going to plug along here as
little bit and in a couple of seconds, I will show you the
autopilot.

[16:54] The autopilot is a little different in that, it only does
lateral navigation, therefore, what that means is, it doesn’t keep
our altitude. It only steers us in the direction you want to go. So
if select heading, if we say we want to follow this VOR, it will do
those things, but it won’t keep our altitude.

[17:14] So basically the only input we need to do is with the
control for elevator. The nice thing about that is that, you can
basically trim the aircraft, like we’ve been learning this whole
time to where its very stable, almost the whole flight reaching,
literally just let it go and it will oscillate a little bit.

[17:36] It will go up and down maybe 10 or 20 feet a little bit,
but for the most part if you find the perfect trim, then you can
just ride that and it’s a very simple flying situation where you
basically use the autopilot as a copilot and it allows you to have
a better situational awareness.

[17:54] So let’s look at the autopilot now. Looks like the on-
button is bottom left but I’m looking for the NAV Intercept and
we’ll follow that or set on NAV1. That’s good; I’ll turn the
autopilot on. I’m going to hit the NOW which is the second button
from the left, and that does it.

[18:13] With NAV1 the autopilot’s on and we’re doing the NAV
intercept. You can see that the aircraft is now turning to
intercept that VRO radio. It will continue to adjust with small
adjustments until it basically gets that perfect and right on.

[18:32] Generally speaking, the autopilot does a better job of
flying the aircraft than the pilot does. That’s for many reasons,
but especially once when you get up into the flight levels where
the airlines fly, it’s very difficult to fly up there hand flown.

[18:51] Not saying that it can’t be done, but it’s just very
difficult. The autopilot can make those small and minor corrections
much easier just with what it does. Much easier than a pilot can
do.

[19:06] This helps with pilot workload; it helps with fatigue.
Because, if you were to hand fly an aircraft an entire flight,
especially if it’s over three hours, then you start to get really
exhausted.

[19:19] It just burns you out and it’s a little too much.
Especially, if there’s turbulence in the area. If you’re winding
around thunderstorms. If you’re having to deal with winds.

[19:29] All of those things can just add up and really start to
test your psyche as a pilot, as an aviator. Just keep those things
in mind. Also, when wanting to do a flight, that there are other
circumstances.

[19:48] That does it for now. We’re going to cruise along here
going IFR, it’s really simple. We’re tracking that radio that we’ve
dialed in with the autopilot. All we have to do is our instrument
or our altitude hold, basically.

[20:04] You’re going to see some adjustments here as we go through
the rest of this flight. Not the rest of it, but I’ll pull up
basically to normal speed when we are close to the Bravo Kilo Alpha
VOR.

[20:20] And then I will take you guys in the rest of the way. So
until then enjoy the scenery. This is a really awesome place to
fly. You’re going to see a lot of cool areas, lots of mountainous
terrain right on the ocean which is very cool.

[20:33] And then we will meet here in a few minutes in Sitka. So
until then, throttle on, be safe, and have fun with this bit of
instrument flying.

[24:51] All right. So we are, man, about 40 to 50 minutes later
than when I last talked to you guys, and we’re just coming up on
that VOR now. It’s out here on this island–kind of cool, kind of
different. So I am going to see if I can look for it and spot it.

[25:11] If we can, then what I’ll do is I’ll just turn towards
Sitka. It’s looks like a hanger down to the left. There’s another
clearing up on the right, and it looks like there’s a VOR there, so
cool.

[25:29] What I’ll do is I’ll disconnect the autopilot, and then
we’ll just turn right into Sitka. It’s a northbound turn here, so a
right turn since we’re headed westerly. We’ll just bring this
around. All right. Scanning for the town, a nice big settlement
right on the edge of the ocean.

[26:00] It looks like it’s straight ahead. It may be hard to see on
the video, but it’s out there. We’ll get even a better look as we
get closer in here. We’ll zoom in and see if we can’t spot the
airport.

[26:13] There’s a regular large airport that is here and a couple
water airports. So we’ll land in the main proper one that’s within
the confines of town that’s on the other side of the airport. So
yeah, that’s definitely it out there. You don’t see settlements
that big, and this is the biggest settlement in a large area.

[26:41] So let’s tune to their traffic. Let’s see. Nearest airport
list two, and now we are looking for Sitka Rocky General or
Gutierrez. So that was three, and then I’m going to tune to the Ada
Center and just listen in here.

[27:31] So, wind is calm, and we basically get our choice of the
runway. I’m going to tune to, let’s see, five is our airport,
Sitka, Alpha 29 and then I’m going to go to 123.6 and turn off the
window. I’d say we’re 15 to 20 to the south, so let me call in with
20 here. We’re at 1500 feet.

[28:03] Sitka Traffic, 366 Delta Lima, 1500, 20 to the south,
inbound landing Alpha 29.

[28:18] So, that’s it. Simple little radio call. I’ll make a couple
more as we come in, but that’s about it. So, nothing too difficult.
We’re just coming down the home stretch here, looking forward to a
break. There’s not exactly room to move about the cabin, so it’s
nice to get ot and stretch your legs and do whatever else you need
to do.

[28:59] And honestly, that goes for flight simulator, too. You can
sit down at your desk forever and just get worn out and ready to
get up and actually do something. So that’s what we’re doing here,
we’re just soldiering on. It’s always the last part of the flight
that feels like its the longest.

[29:24] It’s the last 10-20 minutes that drags on, and then all of
a sudden, it’s over. All right, so I think I can see the airport,
it’s just off to the left. The closest bit of civilization that you
see there looks like hangars, so it’s probably the airport.

[29:47] And it looks like that sea plane inlet is just right beyond
that so it should work out perfect. We’ll do another spot here and
we get in a little closer. All right, so the runway just kind of
showed up, and you can see that now that we are perpendicular to
it.

[30:20] Still coming in, just waiting and waiting and waiting.
We’re still good on fuel, everything is checked and good to go. No
worries there. I’ll make another radio call here. Sicka traffic
366, Delta Lima 10 to the south, inbound landing Alpha 29.

[30:47] We’re going to make a left base for westerly waterway.
Alright, so actually they turned the yoke off and the landing light
on since we’re getting closer here. And turn that on, good. And
let’s make our little let base here.

[31:07] You can see the area where we’ll land there and it will
make more sense as we get closer. It looks a little tight, but
that’s kind of how it is. My ten miles is probably a little too
close. Yeah, I’m much closer than ten.

[31:29] Sick of Traffic 366 Delta Lima, I’m at about a three mile
left base for westerly waterway, Alpha 29.

[31:37] I’m slowing the aircraft down as you heard, and I’m going
to continue to put in my flaps. Just get nice and slow here so we
can drop in. We’ll come on down. Just continue to approach here.
All right. So there are some buoys you’ll see in the middle of the
water here. I need to land beyond the red one, I believe. I will do
that. Just keep it coming on down, nice and slow.

[32:27] Now, these landings are a lot different because you don’t
land with idle power. You kind of want to have power because you
want to settle in very smoothly into the landing, and you have the
luxury of floating a bit, I guess, literally.

[32:46] There is no pun intended there, but you just want to settle
in very nicely. So I’m going to keep a little bit of power to come
in here on the final. So let’s bring this on down, waiting for it,
waiting for it, and there we go. We’re down. Good stuff.

[33:11] We’ll try to get it slowed up here a little bit before we
start to turn, so we’re not flipping the aircraft as I almost do it
there. I’m going to turn back here.

[33:29] Sick of traffic Cessna 366 Double Lima, we’re back taxi on
the westerly runway and will be taxi to the docks.And here we go, a
little bit of power, bit of power. Coming up here. Kind of cool,
it’s a lot different. I really like it. I would love to get my
float plane rating, I don’t yet have it, but I plan to here soon.

[34:02] So we’ll just mosey on over here to the little airplane
dock. And that should do it nicely. All right, so there it is over
there. I’m going a little fast, should probably pull up on the
power a little bit. And this is what I still need to get used to,
the difference of the taxi and everything, it’s just so much
different.

[34:34] The aircraft slows down so easily. You think you’re going
fast, and then all of a sudden you can stop, so we’ll be careful
coming in here to the docks since I’m not very experienced. We’ll
just power up here, maybe need a little more, a little more, just
ease it on in. All right….let’s hope it’s good, let’s hope it’s
good, I don’t want to hit the dock.

[35:04] All right, cool. We slowed down in time. Good enough. So I
just pulled the power, well the power in the mixture, now we’re
going to turn off the landing light, the strobe light, beacon, nav.
And then we can do the avionics can come off. No need for those any
more.

[35:28] Magnetos, actually let me put up the flaps. I keep
forgetting to do that part. So let those come up trim. Let’s reset
that for takeoff as the flaps continue to come up. All right,
they’re up. Turn the transponder to off. Should have done that
before I turned off the avionics.

[35:50] Let’s see, magnetos off. Battery and alternator off. And
that does it, guys, cool little episode, much different. I hope you
guys enjoyed it so until next time, throttle on.

Transcription by CastingWords