Lesson 1: Ground Briefing

I arrived at the club promptly at 0755 ready for my lesson at 0800. I'll admit I was a bit sluggish. and my caffeine wasn't kicking in yet. When I arrived home after work and got the kids to bed and ate supper, there were a lot of domestic duties waiting for me. By the time everything was completed and I sat down to review the required materials for the lesson, I was already tired and it was already 1030pm.

The material in the Transport Canada Flight Training Manual (FTM) was interesting, complicated, and somewhat dry. The Basics of flight, Newton's Laws, Bernoulli's principles, Angle of attack, adverse yaw, types of drag - wow this was going to require several readings to fully grasp the concepts.

The instructor (I'll call her "I1") told me we would head up to a briefing room and that there would be lots of talking (by her) today. She wasn't kidding. We reviewed all of the documentation that Patch had provided me with earlier in the week. It took nearly 30 minutes to review it all. Then we headed back downstairs to review the process "before" we go flying. First there was the journey log. I can't recall the specific details of this log (but I will soon) but each aircraft had one of these logs where a pilot indicated details about their flight such as departure and arrival (each leg), time in the air, and any defects noted. Then we grabbed a jerry can and headed out ot the apron.

My first impression of CFIFA (A DA20 C1) was that it looked like a spaceship. I mentioned to I1 that it looked "freaky" and she didn't seem very impressed. We popped the alien like cockpit bubble window open and I got my first peak of the interior. It was small! REAL SMALL! Two tiny seats with a control stick for each pilot. A raised section behind the seats for "cargo". We started the inspection in earnest - aircraft documents, fire extinguisher, ELT, and "make sure the cockpit is actually here" was another mentioned. I had no idea if that was a joke or a lame blow off. We checked the wheels and brake cables for any noticeable problems. Up and down the leading edges making sure the lights were all there, the control surfaces on the trailing edge and their hinges, etc. I can't honestly say that I got the feeling this was a thorough inspection and this will be brought up during my next lesson. I need to be sure that I fully understand WHAT I'm looking for during this inspection.

We checked the fuel - it reminded me of these blue liqueur drinks I used to order by the pitcher while spending summers at Lake of the Woods in Kenora, Ontario. There were three extremely interesting things that I noted during this walk around:

1) The engine actually has what appeared to be a "block heater" that allowed it to be plugged in when it was really cold here in Calgary.

2) The wings were very different than the 172's. They had little stall strips on the leading edges and the wing tips had some sort of curve to them. My brain flashed me a diagram of drag types and something about vortices. I'll have to look that one up and ask about it next time.

3) There didn't appear to be a Pitot Tube on this aircraft. There was a funky little hole about the diameter of my pinky finger (no I didn't stick my finger in it). When asked if I knew what it was I said that I'd have to guess. "Pitot Tube?" Nope. "Deicing boot?" Nope. "RS232 communications port?" No (the joke was lost on I1). To be honest I didn't really get what I'd consider to be a great answer. I1 said something about it being an instrument that supplied air pressure information for the Altimeter, VSI, and Airspeed indicator. Hmmm... more questions for the next instructor and some reading required by myself.

After the inspection we did a mock weigh and balance. Thank goodness I read the section on Center of Gravity twice the previous night. It all seemed to make some sense to me. Calculate all of your weights and multiply by something else and you get another thing. As you can see - I don't grasp it all. What I do know is the end result is knowing what your gross weight is which allows you to determine if you are within the boundaries allowed by the aircraft for flight (or types of flight). Second - you can determine the center of gravity which is defined as inches behind or in front of the "Reference Datum" which is a point usually at the firewall or the spinner. Seems like we had something like 9 inches behind the firewall. I realize now that I should step on a scale so I can properly calculate the weigh and balance next time I fly.

We headed back to a briefing room and reviewed 3 topics: Ancillary controls, attitudes, and taxiing. Ancillary controls consist of Carb Heat, Mixture, and Environmental controls. The Carb heat was a bit confusing at times for me but a diagram of the exhaust manifold made things somewhat clearer. My understanding is that when you divert the exhaust heat to the carb you will get a decrease in RPM as the engine says "hey it's hot in here!". If you have ice the result should be followed by an increase in RPM as the ice gets turned into water and now the engine has to deal with getting rid of it. From my X-Plane icing tests a few months back I recall that the engine also runs rough with the carb heat on - can't remember if it is rough period, or only rough when it has lots of water to deal with.

Mixture was next. The standard Air to Fuel ratio is 14:1. Perhaps it was optimal not standard. It sounded like for the most part that is where we want things to be. If the ratio is decreased or increased it has effects on the engine. We reviewed how to lean the mixture and find the "elbow" on the performance curve. My understanding is that normally you go full rich when taking off or other critical phases of flight - now it appears that we actually lean our mixture for takeoff at the airport here - seeing how we are nearly at 4000 MSL.

Two questions came out of the ancillary review:

1) CFIFA is fuel injected so thus there is no carb and thus no carb heat. The engine has to get air from somewhere - so I assume there is an air intake somewhere. Is there a possibility of ice forming in that intake and if so - how do we identify and clear it?

2) Do we actually lean the engine here on the ground prior to takeoff and other critical flight phases? If so - what phases require us to lean our engine?

Attitudes was next. The only issue I had with this was understanding the actual axis' that was involved with each of the attitude changes. Elevator controls pitch on the lateral. Rudder controls yaw on the vertical or normal. Ailerons control roll on the longitudinal.

The final section had us reviewing taxiing. How the brakes/rudders are activated. Differential braking, et al. Made a lot of sense to me and I doubt I'll have issues with it once I get a feel for the aircraft on the ground thanks to my CH Pro Pedals. The one thing that had me shaking my head a bit was cross wind taxiing. A quarter headwind requires you to taxi with ailerons turned IN to the wind, while a quarter tailwind requires you to taxi with ailerons turned AWAY from the wind. There has to be an easy way to remember this so if anyone reading this has one - please let me know. I asked about elevators during taxi and was told it wasn't required - contrary to what the FTM says.

With that - I booked a number of lessons in the next 3-4 weeks and headed for the office. Tomorrow I am scheduled to hit the skies with the club's Chief Flight Instructor who apparently loves the DA20. My plan is to review the materials from Lesson 1 again and read ahead about Lesson 2. I'll also come armed with questions.