Crosswinds, Emergencies, and Paperwork

I was checking the forecast and live winds since the previous evening - just hoping for a crosswind scenario. Unfortunately the winds had been light and down the pipe all morning. Perhaps this wasn't the day to complete the crosswind sign off - or was it.

It had been 5 weeks since my last flight and I made the most of any free time I had since then reviewing emergency procedures and plowing through as much ground school material as possible. Many of my friends with FAA licenses were a bit taken aback by the requirement to know the emergency procedures for your aircraft by heart prior to solo. I reviewed my printed copy of the emergency procedures from the Diamond POH but still found myself fumbling through them upon each review. Finally I decided that I needed to create my own checklist, with the hope that writing the information out would help commit it to memory. I spent hours creating a two page checklist on a spreadsheet and meticulously formatting it so that it fit on a single 8.5 x 11 sheet (back to back) that I could laminate. My final review the night before was still somewhat lacking - perhaps the adage about writing it down wasn't true after all.

I5 asked if I wanted to fly today or just do emergency procedures. Obviously my preference was to do both and as luck would have it, he didn't have a booking after me and didn't mind sticking around to do the procedures after we flew. The aircraft was back early so I had all the paperwork filled out - we made a dash for the aircraft considering how busy the circuit had been all day.

With "spring" arriving to southern Alberta - so was the risk of forest fires. This meant the return of the fire fighting aircraft that fly out of the airport, and compared to my tiny Diamond - they looked big.. actually HUGE. I had so much attention focused on one coming down the taxiway behind us that I hardly noticed the windsock at about 8-10 knots 45 degrees from the runway heading - crosswinds could be in the cards for this flight!

It was obvious that the checklist work had paid off when I nailed the takeoff briefing. I will also admit that the in depth review of the procedures coupled with the reading I had done on engine and electrical systems of the aircraft resulted in the normal checklist (engine start, taxi, run up, takeoff) making a whole lot more sense.

It was also obvious that I had not flown in 5 weeks. It was bumpy and gusty with winds blowing us from the side, above, and below - however my mental errors had nothing to do with that. First problem was a poor ground track on departure, followed by poor ground track on downwind. My altitude was consistently dropping close to 100 feet below circuit altitude and resulted in a whole lot of throttle work on my end. This compounded into horrible speed management on the downwind leaving us fast and super high on base. Knowing that I usually want to be 750 feet on the half base, carrying a lot of speed and with the winds behind me increasing our ground speed, I was in a bad situation. Once I finally cut the throttle and got the takeoff flaps out I had to go with major attitude to drop below the white arc. As soon as I got flaps all the way down I went into the slip and transitioned to a slipping turn (or is it a turning slip?).

This is when I5 was not impressed. We were in slip, about half way through the turn, super high, super fast, and I decided with the slip I should be able to put the nose down and turn steeper. Before I knew it we were at about a 35-40 angle of bank and the airspeed had climbed out of the white arc. After pointing his displeasure out to me I corrected the speed and took a breath. I concentrated on getting us back to center line, holding 60 knots, correcting the descent angle while holding the forward slip. I transitioned to a gentler side slip and the landing was miraculously on the center line and smooth. Someone once said that a great landing starts 10 miles out and they weren't kidding. This was a lot of work!

The rest of the spins were uneventful. I managed to improve on ground track, altitude, speeds, and approach planning somewhat, but still was consistently performing steeper turns than I should have. The combination of slips (side and forward) and landings were all well done. On one of the roll outs we actually had a bit of a tail wind and we actually were lifted up off the ground before we hit our rotation speed. Identifying this I simply nudged the nose forward and let us accelerate while in ground effect before climbing out at the proper speeds. Another thing that was in my opinion purely the result of watching, asking, reading, and listening to other people.

After the flight we sat on the couches upstairs and went through the procedures. Rather than having me spew out them out line by line he would present a scenario without making it obvious which of the emergencies we were facing. I found this very interesting, since smoke pouring out of your panel and filling the cockpit doesn't result in a big red hologram yelling "You have an electrical fire - execute section 3.3.8 of the emergency procedures!". Needless to say, our review lasted 45 minutes and went very well.

I5 then asked me to bring in my passport, radio license, and medical as soon as possible. We filled out some paperwork, I signed some stuff in my PTR, and he showed me the front page where emergency procedures and crosswinds had now been signed off.

Once I get this paperwork in the flight school will send it off to Transport Canada who issues a student pilot certificate. Time to process is usually just a few days (I dropped off the paperwork the next morning).

Afterwards we discussed how the how the solo flight would work and what happens after the solo including sign out permissions. Not sure if the paperwork would be completed before my next booking he asked if I wanted to scrub it - of course I said "not a change" as I'd be happy to do another flight with him prior to the solo if I "had to", especially in light of the areas requiring improvement.

At the conclusion of that conversation, I5 pulled out the PTR again to fill in something else in the front section before showing me (it went something like this):



"I [Certified Instructor Name] certify that [Student Pilot Name] meets the minimum requirements for a student pilot license"



20.6 Hours and counting...