Aviator90 Episode 31

Speaker: [0:31] Welcome to another episode of Aviator90 from Angle of
Attack. Today we start our cross country flights, and we’re going
to start with something very simple. We’re going to start at Starks
Twin Oaks, which is a scenery by Bill Womack, and we will be headed
south-east bound along a specific direction.
[0:54] We will be looking for the airport based on some visual
landmarks, so I’ll help you along the way. We will go through this
flight. It should be pretty simple and it’ll be missing some things
that we’ll learn later, like better communication, run up, things
like that, but for now we just need to get started, get in the air,
and kind of see what this cross country flying thing is like.

[1:18] So, here we are in front of the gas pump. We are all filled
up with fuel and ready to go. The first thing we’re going to do is
turn on the alternator and the master switch on the left, and then
we will turn on our beacon and nav lights. This way people know
that movement is imminent, and we are going to start the aircraft
soon.

So, I also turn the magnetos here to both, and now we’re going to
make sure that our mixture is full rich. We’re going to crack the
power just a little bit, not too much: [1:41] there, about a
quarter inch. Then we want to get some primer into the engine, so
we’ll pump this three times.

[2:08] That’s good. Then we will start the aircraft. Good start-up
–seems all OK.

[2:21] So now we just make sure the engine has started up
correctly, then everything is working fine. If you need to lean out
a little more on the ground, you can do that as well, nothing wrong
with that. So now it’s pretty simple.

[2:50] We look around us because we’re about to power up here and
move out. So now that we have cleared the area of anybody, we can
make a tight turn here. We don’t want to run into the gas pump,
obviously, but we will proceed out here to runway number 2.

[3:11] So in the taxi episode, I taught you guys a lot about the
taxiing. Just keep your ground speed low. Keep the taxi under
control, and that should be pretty simple for you.

Remember to always have center-line pride. So as we turn here we
make sure that we’re lined up with the taxiway, not running our
wheels off. As we do this, we’re also making sure that there aren’t
any other aircraft in conflict with us: [3:23] no one is coming out
from another taxiway, not looking.

[3:45] It’s just like driving in that sense where you’ve got to
make sure that other pilots aren’t around, and to do that, you can
make a radio call that says you are on the ground and what your
taxi routing is. That is completely acceptable as well. So we’ll
just continue straight ahead here, and before we pull on the
runway, we’ll do a couple little checks.

[4:08] Then it won’t take long to just get on the runway and line
up and take off. So you can see the windsock on the left there, and
that indicates that the wind is, pretty much, dead right now. But
it is favoring the runway that is behind us now, as you will see,
so we are going to be doing basically a 180 here.

[4:31] So before pulling onto the runway, let’s stop the aircraft
and check the final, make sure that no one’s landing, or even
landing from the other direction just in case. You never know.
Sometimes people learn to make radio calls, so.

[4:46] We’re actually not going to make a lot of them today, but
there’s no one flying in the virtual skies. I can promise you that.
So I’m going to turn on the landing light here. It’s good to have
that on when you pull on to the runway, and then we will pull out
here.

[5:03] Give it some good power. Now, this runway is a bit different
whereas you have to back-taxi a little bit, which means that the
runway of intended use is actually behind you. So you’re taxiing
back on the runway.

[5:25] So now I’m just keeping my wheel close to the edge of the
pavement as I come down here to try to get as much runway as
possible for us to use. Then we will whip it around really quick
here. We need a little more power here, so let’s power up a little
more.

[5:46] Let’s bring this around. Sometimes it gets stuck. All right,
there we go.

[5:58] So we’ll do a little check. Make sure that everything is
good to go. Turn our transponder to altitude — could have done
that before we pulled on the runway.

[6:13] Trim was set. I saw that, and now we can go. So at full
power, we’re off centerline a little bit, so we’ll get back on
track by — just by coming to the right here. Then again, just like
the other episodes, we’re looking for 55 knots as we bump on down
the runway here.

[6:32] 55 knots should come pretty quick. Here it is. I’m pulling
back pressure, and we’re up.

[6:38] So, now I’m just going to continue to get a good climb out
of the aircraft, initially. I’ll use my trim, and make sure that I
set a good climb attitude for the aircraft, so we can get up here.
We’re going to be tracking just a little bit straight here while we
gain some altitude.

[7:05] Now we can level out just a little bit and start our cruise
climb. So we’re going to be turning right to a heading of 133, and
we’re going to be keeping this heading for the entire flight. Along
the way, we’ll make adjustments based on the landmarks we see based
on the little flight plan I have, which I will put on the screen
periodically, but just know that, this is one way of flying is with
visual landmarks.

[7:40] Although your time calculations — whether it’s something
automatic from the Internet, from your flight plan, or whatever it
is, even though that may say it’s going to take a certain amount of
time, it’s often different just based on winds. So it’s important
to have those visual landmarks that track the progress of the
flight. So today we’re going to be heading southbound past a few
airports that we’ll use as landmarks, and we will be landing at a
little grass strip that is in a valley down in the mountains just
on the other side of the valley.

[8:14] So, this is about a 50 nautical mile flight, which is
typical for a cross country flight. I wanted to keep it pretty
short. We could do across the U.S.A. type of flight, but that would
take hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, especially in a slow
152.

So, again, we’re just going to keep around heading 133 as you can
see on the heading indicator, and all the while we have a pretty
climb out of the aircraft. We are climbing to 3, 500 feet. Now,
there’s one thing about altitudes in VFR flying: [8:36] they just
are — you don’t just pick them out of the bag.

[9:03] Basically, from a heading of one degree to 180 degrees, you
go from an odd thousand plus 500 feet so that is an easterly
heading. You’re going to be odd numbers plus 500 feet, so today
because we are on basically an easterly heading — we fall within
that area — we are looking at 3, 500 for our en route cruise
altitude. Now, if we were going the other direction, it would be
even thousands plus 500, and that would be degrees 181 through 360
or 0.

[10:02] So with the 152, down here at sea level, we’ll get up to
that 3, 500 feet pretty quickly. It’s not too bad of a climb, and
then once we get up there, we can pull out the engine power a
little bit; we can level off, and we can begin our cruise portion
where we will then begin looking out for a lot of those landmarks
we talked about. There are several different sources you can use
for your dead reckoning like this.

[10:43] You can use something like Plan G, which is a great flight
planner I have found. It’s been one of my favorites recently. There
is another one called — I forget the name — FS Build.

[11:07] I use FS Build for most of my heavy airline stuff. It’s not
necessarily good for smaller aircraft like this, but it’s possible.
It’s probably better for IFR flight.

[11:18] Then you can just pull out a map if you find a sectional
chart, which you can find on a website like skyvector.com. That
will allow you to track your progress, and it has a lot of aviation
-type landmarks, and information right there on the chart. So it’ll
actually tell you the frequencies of the airports you’re landing
at, the runway lengths, whether there’s pilot-controlled lighting,
etc., but it actually has the airports right there on the map.

[11:53] It has all the airspace. It has everything, and especially
for VFR flight, having something like that on board, or at least at
your disposal through a secondary laptop, or even if you’re just in
Windows mode within flight simulator where you can switch in
between where you are and the map, that’ll help you out a ton in
finding your way points and your visual checkpoints so you are on
track because the wind could technically just be blowing you off in
a direction you don’t want to go.

[12:31] So there may be a correction you didn’t plan for, but
having a map helps that. So here we come up on 3, 500, as we talked
about, and as we come up on that we can pull out our power a little
bit. Then we just level off.

[12:47] Make sure our vertical speed is around zero, and then we
just start to bring out the trim pressure. Make sure that we are at
a nice cruising altitude here, and that the aircraft is all trimmed
up. Now, if you get it all trimmed up, you get it on its heading,
you are managing fuel correctly, all that sort of stuff, then the
aircraft will essentially fly itself even if it doesn’t have the
autopilot. It’ll just — it’ll be stable in the direction that you
put it, and it should stay there.

[13:20] I’m checking engine power. It should be good there. As we
accelerate, we just continue to bring out those trim pressures, and
that should help us quite a bit.

[13:41] All right, so there’s a city down there. I’m looking for an
airport here that kind of tells us we’re on track. It should be off
to our left. All the while, again, checking that we are on a
heading of 133 is very essential. So once we see that airport –
and I actually see it, right over the cowling now.

[14:06] So once we pass that, I will accelerate the video here a
little bit, so we won’t have to watch this entire flight because it
is simple. We’re just on a heading of 133. We’re adjusting for
different altitude kind of differences.

[14:24] You’ll get some bumps of wind here and there, some
thermals, some different changes that will require you to change
your flight attitude and just make adjustments, so still looking
for that airport, coming up on it here — still looking. That
highway down there actually helps us a lot with our flight planning
as well. You’ll see that on many of the charts.

[15:11] Typically, roads like that aren’t good as a checkpoint
because roads can be confused very easily; however, something big
like this that we know we need to cross, and the fact that there’s
an airport this near to it kind of us — it gives us a very good
idea of what our actual position is based on the map and whether
we’re on track or not. So you can see the airport there now, and so
that tells us — like I said, a great position report, a great
personal position report, that we can use to know that we’re on
track, and that just gives us a good idea of what’s going on.

[15:54] So let’s fast forward here a little bit. All right, so
we’re back to normal speed now because we started to hit some
turbulence. I’m actually getting — if you’ll look at the vertical
speed indicator, getting a huge updraft that is throwing off my
altitude.

[16:27] It’s making the whole thing quite hard to control so that
takes a nose-over attitude, and you can also pull out power if
needs be. But you can see that I’m pushed over, and it just doesn’t
seem like it wants to get back there. So what we’re doing is we’re
caught in some sort of thermal or an updraft of air that is pushing
us up.

[16:53] So now that we’re through it, we can add that power again.
It looks like it’s come back stable. It’s kind of interesting
because, we’ve also hit a bit more turbulence here, which isn’t too
hard to deal with. Sometimes, you’ve just got to let the aircraft
kind of work itself out.

[17:10] You give it a good direction and keep a good flight
attitude. Then from there, you just allow it to fly. If you try to
fight it the whole time, it’s going to be very exhausting, and
you’ll probably wear yourself down pretty quick.

[17:26] So do your best. You can’t control every little flight bump
here and there, every little altitude change because sometimes the
air around you just wants to do a certain thing, and that’s OK. But
again, you are the pilot and you can do what you want with the
aircraft.

[17:47] So just keep in mind that fatigue can actually take place
if you just fight it the whole time. Just enjoy the ride. Enjoy the
bumps, and deal with it.

[17:59] So, again, before I speed up again here, we are on a
heading of 133, and we are at our cruising altitude of 3, 500 feet.
So, here we go. Let’s speed it up again.

[19:52] All right, we’re slowed down back to normal speed now. One
of the biggest things about the last portion of this flight is that
there aren’t a lot of great visual landmarks for you to use as
picking out where you are. One of the things that I noticed on the
map was that there was a valley up ahead in the mountains, and the
area that we are passing over wasn’t going to have a big valley. So
I see that valley ahead where the terrain gets a little lighter
over there, but you can see that there’s obviously not as much
mountains in that that area. That is where the airport’s going to
be, in that valley.

[20:35] Now, as we come up here, one of the interesting things is
that as you are approaching terrain in the real world and in flight
simulator, it often looks like it’s a lot higher than it is further
out. So the closer you get in, it just seems like the terrain falls
away. I don’t know exactly why that is, but even now you see this
ridgeline coming up.

[20:58] It looks like for now that we’re going to run straight into
it; however, we’re going to clear it easily. You noticed pretty far
back — you may have noticed pretty far back while everything was
sped up that it looked like we were headed straight for the
mountains and our altitude wasn’t high enough, that it looked –
just looked like we are going to fly right into the mountains; but
again, that’s kind of a visual illusion that you should be aware
of. You should never count on anything like that at nighttime ever,
or if the visibility is pretty low.

[21:38] That’s more of a distance thing than it is anything else,
so keep that in mind. You want to always be cognizant of your
terrain surroundings if you have those issues, and make sure that
you aren’t putting yourself in a dangerous situation. Now, mountain
flying can get even more dangerous to where if there are difficult
winds, then that can really get us in a bad situation.

[22:10] For example, say that right now we had a pretty strong
headwind on this ridge we’re coming up on. Now, the wind is coming
toward us, so the wind would be on the other side of that ridge. It
would travel up the ridge, which would be an updraft, and then on
the other side, on our side, it would be a downdraft.

[22:33] Now, if it was strong enough, it could push us straight
into the mountain. In today’s case, the winds aren’t strong enough
to do that, but just keep in mind that mountain flying can be very
dangerous and unpredictable. So you’ve got to be careful of what
situations you put yourself in, and always have an out, a direction
you can take to get out of the situation.

[22:58] If you’re putting yourself in a place where you don’t have
an alternate method, then that isn’t a good thing. There are a lot
of pilots out there that can do that. They’re experienced enough to
do that, but my guess is that based on your skill level if this is
something you’re really soaking up like a sponge, the Aviator 90
thing, then putting yourself in very dangerous situations like that
may not be the best thing if you plan on not crashing.

[23:33] However, they will assist you in learning, too. So again,
Flight Simulator is a huge learning environment, and you can use it
as such. So even if things are technically dangerous within Flight
Simulator, just recognize that they’re dangerous, especially if you
plan on doing real world training; just recognize that this
wouldn’t be a good idea in the real world.

[23:59] Then try some crazy things. I’ve said several of those
things before. Just keep that in mind.

[24:06] So, now that I’m on the other side of this ridge here, I
powered down. I’m going to descend to 2, 500 feet. I think that’ll
do it for now.

[24:16] Then we will head up the valley a little more here. I think
our track got a little off, and we’re a little to the west of where
we need to be. So we will descend here, and make sure that we’re
good to go.

[24:31] Now, on a day like today when we’re descending — pretty
much still full power — not full power, but pretty much with a lot
of power, especially our cruise power settings, we’re going to pick
up a lot of speed in the descent. When it’s bumpy like this, we
want to make sure that we aren’t in the yellow area on the air
speed indicator because those are some structural limits for the
aircraft that we’ve just got to make sure we keep in check. We want
to make sure that anything that happens to the aircraft, we’re not
going to bend any metal.

[25:08] Obviously, the closer you get to that yellow line, the
worse it is. Now, if you’re in perfectly smooth air, you can go
into the yellow, but — or if you’re in an emergency situation, you
need to get down, that’s a different story, but for every day
flight just to keep the airframe longevity in check, meaning that
the aircraft will have a great lifespan and will stay structurally
sound, we’ve got to make sure that we stay in those limitations. So
now I’m at 2500 feet.

[25:46] We just descended 1, 000 feet, and now we are doing our
scan. We are looking everywhere we can for this airport, and all
the while flying the airplane first. That’s always the most
important thing.

[26:03] I think it’s going to be nestled up here kind of at the end
of the valley before it narrows, based on the map, so we are just
going to keep on looking here. I don’t think it’s over there. I
know — could be, but we’ve got plenty of fuel just in case we need
to come back; it’s only going to be five minutes either way.

[26:28] We’ve got a lot of fuel today. All right, so we are still
scanning, still looking for this strip. It’s a grass strip, so it’s
going to be hard to spot, especially in all this green spring
terrain here.

[26:47] The winds don’t seem too bad, so we aren’t going to plan on
anything too crazy. You just — kind of what I do when I’m further
out like this is I look for hangars. Sometimes the runway is too
hard to spot, but hangars are pretty unique buildings.

[27:11] There aren’t a lot of buildings that are just plain and
boxy like that, at least where I live and where I fly, so typically
I just look for the hangars. I’ll look for a void in the terrain as
well, a big open field, because usually the powers that be will
keep that stuff pretty clean — the government agencies or
whatever. All right, so I see the airstrip now.

[27:47] I see some hangars down there and also the grass strip just
down to our left, over the wing strut. It’s just to the left of
that row, so I am going to get set up here and pull power. We will
check for wind; make sure we are nice and slow.

[28:12] We are going to perform a soft field landing. Airspeed is
looking good. Pull it out even more here.

[28:25] Get all slowed down. All right, so this last sequence is
going to be really, really fast. You’ve got to be on your toes.

[28:34] It’s going to feel a lot different from your typical
traffic pattern because we’ve got terrain right there. We’re not
just going to do a pretty little traffic pattern. It’ll be, pretty
much, a continuous turn.

[28:46] So you heard my first notch of flaps. I put that in getting
set up here. Airspeed is looking good.

[28:52] Then we will turn in and get set up for this landing, and
it’ll be, pretty much, one big continuous turn. Looking out for
terrain, you can see a tower down there. There’s power lines;
you’ve got to be cautious of that.

[29:08] Bringing this around here, looking for the runway, I need a
little more airspeed here. OK. So there’s the runway.

[29:19] Get lined up. Then we dump the rest of our flaps, just one
after the other, and make sure our power is good. Check our
airspeed.

[29:25] Fifty-five knots will be our final, and we are going to
bring this in nice and soft here — need more power, and I’m going
to pull my airspeed a little bit and pull it off. Soft touchdown is
possible. There we go.

[29:40] Then hold the nose roll off as long as possible. As you
remember before, we don’t want to get that nose roll in a rut, and
we will just continue to bleed out that airspeed. I guess it’s
groundspeed now, isn’t it?

[29:55] Then we will taxi back to the parking area. Get some power
in the turn here. You don’t really want to stop, so — on a grass
strip like this, so we’ve got to keep the power up at times.

[30:12] Then we will just come up here and park behind this little
yellow guy. Everything’s looking good. So the purpose of this
flight was to pick out those visual waypoints.

[30:28] Another purpose was to just get in and go and kind of see
what it’s like to take things as they come as a pilot, which is
very important, but we could have used a lot more planning.
Obviously, in the real world you’d use a lot more radio calls, and
talking to other people, getting flight following, things like
that. I didn’t want to give you guys baptism by fire.

I just wanted to get some of the more important things out of the
way initially, which was just the aircraft stuff here: [30:55] the
navigation of the ground thing. So I pulled the mixture. I’m going
to turn off all the lights, turn the magnetos off, turn the battery
and alternator off, and that pretty much does it.

[31:28] So, again — oh, crap. I left the — I didn’t put the flaps
up, so I’ll put those up. Then what I’ll do is I will turn the
battery on here. That will put power to the flaps.

[31:45] We’ll let that go up. All right. So, as I said, this was
for just the get in and go mentality, and the navigation from the
ground stuff.

[31:58] So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Join us next time.
I’m not sure what exactly we’re going to be doing, but it will be
another cross-country flight.

[32:07] We’ll find something interesting to do. Until next time,
throttle on.

Transcription by CastingWords