Solo Re-Certification

I don't know if it's a Transport Canada rule or a rule at the flying club, but as a student permit holder, if I haven't flown in the past 2 weeks (dual or solo) then I am no longer current to fly solo.

Discussing this with a friend (who has often scratched his head at the amount of "retraining" I seem to always be doing), I was reminded to make sure I did a good job of communicating what was important to me, to my instructor. With this in mind, I made I indicated to I5 right off the bat that my goal for the flight was to demonstrate whatever exercises were required to convince him that I was good to go solo again. This would allow me to pick back up where I left off back in September with the training. He agreed this was a good plan.

The specialty of the day was soft field and it went just fine. I remembered to ask for a rolling start, stay off the brake, and keep the stick all the way back from the hold short line. The Diamond's nose wants to really POP off the runway when it reaches about 30 knots so you have to be prepared to get it back down to "just off" the pavement otherwise face the potential of explaining a tail strike for the rest of your life. It of course did pop off the ground but I recovered nicely even as I5 started to reach for the stick. I really tried to focus on keeping my track aligned with the runway as I climbed out. This is something that I do an OK job of in all phases of flight EXCEPT the departure phase. The only commentary I received from I5 was that I needed to anticipate reaching the target speed for rotation out of ground effect. I didn't rotate until we hit it (come on now - ground effect is so cool!) and as a result we were pretty fast on departure and it took a little while to get everything settled in for a perfect climb out.

Once established in the practice area we did some more steep turns and then stalls. Power off stalls, power on stalls, stalls with flap, stalls while turning, and finally climbing turning stalls with flap. It was a lot of stalls - that's for sure. The thing is that the diamond just doesn't want to stall. You always get the decrease in aileron control and you always get the stall horn. Yet the buffeting, wing drop, and nose drop is not very obvious. I'd like to go and try this in a different trainer one day to see what the real difference is.

We decided to "slip" out the side of the practice area and work on some forced approaches. I5 took the controls and as I was verbalizing some of my thoughts about the forced approach procedures while admiring the mountains I5 started getting aggressive on the controls. We were in a REALLY steep turn, the engine was racing, the airspeed was increasing, we were losing altitude, and the G-Forces were kicking in.

I5 looked over at me and said "What is happening?" My first thought was to say "You've lost your f***ing mind" but my training kicked in and I said "We're in a spiral dive". He quickly replied with "Good, your control - recover".

Before I even had my hand on the stick I had pulled the throttle back and then leveled the wings. As I eased out of the dive I remembered that the aircraft will want to climb. By the time I was pushing forward on the stick I glanced over and noted the airspeed near 160. The airspeed bled off, power was applied and everything was back to normal. It was weird afterwards thinking about how automatic it had become. I suppose that I'm reaching the point in my training where he might try and pull the unexpected on me. I'm happy he did that!

We did a few forced approaches after that during which I5really prompted me to go through EVERYTHING I needed to do. During the first one I did a good job of the flying aspect but was really weak on everything else (cause check, mayday call, passenger briefing, engine shutdown procedures). As we climbed back out he went through it all with me and gave me some pointers regarding the flight test. He did tell me I had done well enough for a 2 or perhaps a 3 out of 4 on the flight test. Ya - that's something else - everything I do, I5 now relates to what I would score on the flight test and adds what I need to do for full marks.

The second went much better as I ran through everything much quicker. It seems like yesterday that it was next to impossible just to trim and stay at glide speed - now I can do it without even paying much attention to it.

Since we had slipped out of the practice area to the east, we had a different checkpoint to get back into the control zone. I incorrectly identified the highway below us (thought it was highway 22) and then was unable to spot Cochrane Lake. Things really look different in the winter! It will certainly take some time to get used to identifying some of these landmarks. I made a mental note that I need to spend some time on google maps looking at the roads in the area to get a good sense of it for my next flight.

On final for runway 34 I remembered to actually focus on a point for the approach. I had realized some time ago that I really depend on the PAPI (Precision Approach Path Indicator) sometimes to get my approach correct. I told myself that it would be useful at some point to make note of "the picture" when things were high, low, and just right so that I could recreate the picture when I fly places where there are no VASI or PAPI to help me out. (Yes, I have considered that I will one day fly "somewhere else"). I decided that the numbers would be a great aiming point. Turned out the approach was pretty stable. I definitely have gotten past that point where I'm constantly adjusting the power. Fairly good job on reducing the sink rate in the flare and keeping the nose off the ground for as long as possible.

After a short debrief I was officially "re-certified" to fly solo again. I had a few hours to kill and was considering getting my solo precautionary landing flight out of the way, but after weighing all factors I realized that I was pretty tired and would be best off to come back another day.