When I first soloed back in September, I called Mom and she was so happy for me! Quickly followed by a sentiment to the effect of "You don't have to do it again, do you?" So in an effort to keep her blood pressure up I'm now flying off to places by myself... 50 miles away, 30 minutes, to little uncontrolled airports in unknown parts of America.

My flight school does have a check you have to go on before the cross country solo flights, which I took last week and it went so much better than my first checkout, the pre-solo one, remember? I've been feeling so good about flying lately. I feel like that song in Chicago, where Roxy is suddenly in a world full of YES. A lot of the stuff I was quizzed on is book-smart rules stuff, and since I just studied for my written I was good at it. I could rattle off a hundred obscure chart symbols.

And in the air, I finally get some credit/benefit from my years of avionics experience. I know how a VOR works and what the different autopilot modes do. I know all the weird random G1000 screens. Hell, in the airplane I got in yesterday, the time was set to local daylight savings even though daylight savings ended a week ago. People have just been flying it all week just going with it. I did the next pilot a good deed by setting us right.

Not to say I'm a total rockstar yet... on my checkout, I forgot the pre-landing "GUMPS" checklist twice which I feel really stupid about. It's such a beginner thing. You do it before starting any descent below pattern altitude, I've done it a million times, so... arg. It basically consists of making sure the fuel is coming from both fuel tanks, fuel mixture is fully rich, everybody has seat belts on, landing and taxi lights are on... THEN LAND. And when we get to the "U" in GUMPS which stands for "undercarriage" we say "gear fixed" just to show that we can think about a landing gear... someday I might be in an airplane where I really don't want to land gear up. Right now I'm in an airplane where it doesn't go up, but they want the thought in your head early.

Anyhow back to yesterday... the weather was incredible. Barely 8 knots of wind lined up almost perfectly with the runway, no clouds for 25,000 feet. In Kansas this has to be a sign of the apocalypse. But since "apocalypse" isn't a factor in determining VFR weather minimums, I was off. I flew 30 minutes out to Pratt, landed, taxied off the runway and sent my instructor a text message to say I'd made it. Then I came home.

On the way home I was supposed to open my flight plan... I did "flight following" on the way out there, which is where you talk to someone in Kansas City who watches out for you. If you file a flight plan they don't really watch out for you per se, but they will go out looking for you if you don't show up at your destination when you're supposed to.

Which happened to me. Little mixup there. I was running about 30 minutes behind schedule, and when I took off from Pratt and opened the flight plan I figured they'd notice I was behind and change the times for me. That's not how it works, I learned. When I got home and called them up to close the flight plan they said it was already closed because "search and rescue called Wichita tower to make sure you were back." I paused for a minute.

"Am I in trouble?"

No, he said just make sure I extend the flight plan (or be very clear about what time I was off my departure point, which I knew I was supposed to do, just didn't get it out). ughhh. Next time.

The other bad thing was right after takeoff, flight service told me to "contact flight watch" on a frequency, so I did. Told them who I was and that I was enroute to Wichita. They were like, "Okay, what did you want from us?" Oh hell I don't know... I barely know what flight watch is, I just thought I was supposed to contact them. I took a stab and said, "Traffic advisories?" They don't do that. Well crap. So now I have something to research this week.

But seriously, if the worst thing I do on a flight is make an ass of myself over some radios I call it a good flight. I made two safe landings, accurately calculated my fuel requirements, and always knew where I was. I got to watch the sun start to set behind me on the way home, the sky was big and pink and the angle of the light made all the little creeks shimmer. From up there, nothing was wrong with the world. I'll take it.

I went on a night cross country last weekend. It was weeeeird. My instructor was basically trying to get me lost, he took away the GPS moving map to force me to use checkpoints and interpret the chart to figure out where we were. I failed miserably. I mean, not failed as in FAIL DO OVER, just failed like I was supposed to, the point of the lesson is to prove that orientation at night is tricky.

From talking to several instructors, I get the impression that they're not all that comfortable turning a plain ol' private pilot loose in the night sky. A license will let you fly at night, yes, but it's not necessarily the best idea... it's tougher to see clouds, tougher to find your way out of things. And as I learned, much easier to get lost.

You can't see rivers, railroad tracks, small roads or landmarks. You can't see a stadium unless it's lit, and airport beacons are just one of a million things flashing at you out in the world. It was lovely and serene at times, but it was also happening really fast. The only reason I ever realized we were at our destination airport was because I realized we'd been flying for a half hour... we've got to be someplace. I keyed the radio five times to turn on the pilot-controlled lights and they turned on, so that's got to be the place. Right? We hope?

What I didn't expect was the visibility. You may not be able to see railroads, but you can easily identify four separate towns along a highway. And when we were fifty miles from Wichita, we could still see the lights of Wichita, glowing plainly in the distance with distinct features. Flying at night makes the world seem much bigger. The daytime world is all green, gray, brown... towns blend into the countryside and boundaries aren't all that real. The nighttime world is black with obvious clusters of yellow lights where life exists.

So that's really why my flight plan checkpoints failed me. I planned to look for a town every few minutes but they're all the same, what I should have looked for was patterns of towns.

Tomorrow I'm taking my written exam. I'm not terribly worried about it but I will say that failing would be really embarrassing, you can pass with a 70%, it's not that difficult a test and they give you the questions. I've been taking practice tests on http://exams4pilots.org and always pass there. I made flashcards for things I really cannot remember for the life of me... light gun signals, types of fog, incident report requirements for various things that happen to you. I'm spending this evening reviewing. It is not a fun way to spend a night at home, but once it's done with it's done with.

***edit*** I passed! 90%, go me!

Yesterday I actually went somewhere in an airplane. An instructor and I covered 50 nautical miles, landed at a distant exotic airport, got out and stretched, then came back home. It was perfectly wonderful.

The distant exotic airport was at Pratt, Kansas, population 6500. There's an FAA airport facilities directory that we always check for new airports and this one had a note saying "Caution do not mistake lighted cattle pens for lighted runway." That brings an unfortunate image to mind, doesn't it? Anyway if you think FAA documents are boring just think about gems like that.

On the way out we turned off the huge G1000 map and just used the headings and checkpoints I'd calculated. You basically make yourself a sheet of what to do and what course to fly and what time you'll be at different points, so when you're in the air you can tell yourself "I've been flying east for ten minutes I should be able to see Kingman pretty soon". You check winds before you go and figure up wind correction angle. You read magnetic variation off maps and consider that too. Magnetic variation refers to the idea that your compass doesn't point straight up to the north pole, it points to magnetic north, which is a point someplace up near Canada that moves around from time to time. Every five years, scientists and navigators check to see where it's ended up these days and we go around re-painting compass roses on the ground and updating maps. So if a town you're going to is straight east, you don't fly straight east on your compass, you correct for it.

Learning to tell where you are with a map and what you see is an art. I learned quickly that observing grain elevators is no help at all, because there are a thousand of them. It's also really hard to recognize little towns. If there's a big highway or big river that helps, but we were north of highway 54, and so much of Kansas just looks exactly the same.

On the radio we talked to Kansas City Center. There are 20-something centers in the United States, and they've divided up the country so that when an airplane flies from one coast the the other, he's always got somebody to talk to. Pratt, Kansas doesn't have a control tower, nevermind a departure or approach frequency to get you started into it when you're 20 miles out. And that'd be a pain anyway, to fly across ten states and have to switch frequencies every time you're over a little town to get traffic advisories.

So here are all the radio frequencies I talked to during the trip:

1. Wichita clearance, before I even started the airplane engine, so they'd know to expect me. They told me an altitude to stay under and a transponder code (four-digit number) to put in so radar would know what was up.
   
2. Wichita ground, to use the taxiways and not get in the way of some United flight getting out. They told me which route to take to the beginning of a runway.
   
3. Wichita tower, to tell them I was at the runway intersection ready to take off.
   
4. Wichita departure, who gave me headings and altitudes through their airspace
   
5. Kansas city center, who could have given me traffic advisories but in truth there was nobody out there so that wasn't too exciting.
   
6. Pratt traffic. There's no one in particular monitoring this, it's just a frequency assigned to that airport that you're supposed to announce your intentions on and hope that others are doing the same. They're not always though.
   

We basically did the reverse of these on the way back, the only difference being that "departure" became "approach". And we'd periodically switch to a weather frequency to listen for updates there.

Dang it just talking about that makes me feel bored and tired! So what was cool about the flight? It was a lovely evening after work. I flew over some small town having a football game, I could see the stadium lights and little tiny football players running around and cars everywhere. We got out far enough that there weren't all solid farms, there were acres of land that were just there being land, with hills and trees and creeks.

Earlier this week I went on my first night flight, so sometime in the next few days I'll be combining things and going on a night cross country. Then there's a test with an instructor, and a solo cross country. Then we do a handful of review flights for my final checkride! It sounds crazy fast when I talk about it, and think that in a month or two I could be a pilot. Time to go, huh?

I was talking to my mom about why my cross country flight Sunday got canceled. It was supposed to be my first big adventure on the Kansas prairie, where I'd actually get to go someplace! But alas, not for me. The sky was clear, the clouds were few, but we suffered from "excessive crosswinds at destination airport".

Why does this cancel a flight? Well first know that if the world is perfect, you'll come into land on a runway and the wind will be blowing straight against you. This means it's moving fast over your wings providing lift, even if the airplane isn't moving very fast along the ground. You've got time to think and control things and hit the ground at the angle you want.

Unfortunately runways are huge slabs of pavement on the ground that don't rotate, so when the wind changes, it complicates things. It doesn't take much wind at all to blow a little airplane off course. You can line up on the runway all you want but you will get pushed over and drift off.

So to account for this you tilt the wings into the wind. This means the air moving over them will pull you one direction, the wind is pushing you the other direction, and you fly straight. Remember... since the plane is moving forward, there's always more air moving over the wings than against them, so this effect of the air over the wings is a powerful thing that fixes most every problem. If you can get that air to pull the wings the right direction (mainly up, with a little bit of "over") you're golden.

You also kick the rudder the opposite way to keep the nose pointed forward. You can't land the airplane at a crab angle on the runway because it'll mess up the wheels and tires, plus you'll be rolling on the ground in a direction that would take you off the runway. Bad.

Getting these two things to happen at the same time, perfectly balanced and always changing second-to-second as the wind gusts change is why it took me so damn long to solo.

But I digress... picture an airplane with its wings tilted, you eventually see that it can only tilt so much, then you risk hitting a wingtip on the ground! Bad idea! So you fly into your little airport, try your landing, realize the wind is pushing you so far to one side that you can't keep the wingtip out of the way, and climb up again. Or maybe you can't add enough opposite rudder to keep the nose pointed straight. Either way, try another runway. Or another airport. Or you can do what we did... look at the weather as it is, realize the winds are already in the wrong direction, and call the whole thing off.

Even big airplanes have issues with crosswinds. It takes more to mess with them, sure, but they also have to account for the drift and direction control.

Check out my neat new usericon! I decided that I DESERVED a picture of me outside an airplane, as proof that I was allowed near them if nothing else. Plus I keep seeing all these pictures of pilots smiling outside after their first solo. Just today at the flight school a student came back having just soloed for the first time, and his beaming instructor had videotaped it for him! Mine is too busy convincing me that nothing is a big deal. So I drove my man to the airport, showed him the airplanes, let him sit in one, told him about the buttons, and we took some pictures. My favorites are on my flickr.

Here's me pretending to fly. Points to anyone who can tell me what's wrong with this picture, or why I'm obviously NOT really flying. The hangar out the window doesn't count.


After my exciting solo experience nine days ago we returned to absolute crap weather. I went up again with my instructor last Thursday and we moved on to exciting new lessons... short field takeoffs, tracking a VOR. Yes, I get to learn to navigate now! I can fly the airplane, and now it's time to take it somewhere. I'm very excited.

My instructor skipped town, but left me with my solo endorsement, which on the surface is pretty boring. Solo means SOLO. It's the FAA's way of saying, "You're probably not in danger of damaging anyone's house by flying over it. But we're still not letting any passenger fly with you." I also have to check in with another instructor before going, and there's a laundry list of weather restrictions. The wind has to be just about lined up perfect with the runway unless it's non-existent, and waiting for the wind in Kansas to calm down and do what you want is like going to a nightclub waiting for sweatpants to be in style.

Today things went my way though. I was a little nervous, but found another instructor who'd be around with another student. He basically just made sure my normal instructor had filled things out right in my logbook, and that I had indeed read the weather correctly. Then he let me go. Yeah... first solo was "warm up with an instructor, don't leave the airport, three landings and I'm gonna stand here and watch!" Second solo was a pat on the back and a "Well have fun, you've got our cell phone numbers."

It was airplane washing day, so there were lots of people around, and I talked for a while about hanging out because they were getting pizza in a little bit. But they were all like, "We'll save you pizza, GO! Seriously! Go!" Okay, fine. Then after my preflight I see a friend of mine running up to the airplane. "You don't have to go," he said, "we didn't mean to talk you into it! If you're not ready, or need to eat, you should eat, you're pilot in command, we shouldn't pressure you..."

I was like "Dude I'm fine."

And I was fine. I had a boring agenda for the flight... takeoff, fly out to the practice area, do some turns. We do "ground reference maneuvers"... you fly about 1000 feet above the ground and use roads and try to hit points to make sure your can estimate what a bank and wind correction angle should be. I've been doing them since May, so no big deal. It was a beautiful day. The sky was blue, the air was clear. I was very happy. I wasn't thinking about pizza or my instructor or lack of instructor... actually it's nice to be able to throw all your stuff in that right seat! I was just really enjoying being in the air.

Then I came home and landed. The landing was nice, I was on the centerline, maybe flared a tiny bit high. With no wind I had a lot more groundspeed than I was used to. I was more than ready to go around. It's a little tricky to fly from a distant place into an airport and land, when what we usually do is fly a whole pattern and then land. If I'm flying downwind from a runway I know what 1/2 mile feels like. So a lot of times, I'll botch the first approach into a new airport and have to go around. But not today. It just came together.

I did everything by myself. Filled out my own logbook, checked the airplane back in, three-hole-punched the lesson with the checkmarks for my training log. Then sat in the hangar with the group and ate pizza and talked about flying. I know I still didn't really go anyplace. I got maybe 15 miles from my home airport. But I was feeling like a pilot, and that was really neat.

Once a month or so I go out to lunch with some other women in my office. It's mostly engineers but we get the occasional person from finance, IT, marketing, and sometimes an admin. Anyway I told them that I'd just soloed and we talked about flying for a while... yeah, I know I don't need to be talking about flying any more, but it's amazing how as soon as you start flying everyone around you is a pilot.

Adrienne started training but quit because she was just afraid of it and felt it wasn't for her, she'd started mostly because her husband was a pilot and he wanted her to fly. Liz started but quit because she struggled a lot and her instructor basically talked her out of it. She'd never switched instructors. Patricia had finished at a young age and flown a lot, sometimes more sometimes less but always as a hobby. We talked at length about training and how tough it is and one interesting question came up... "Do you think flight training is set up in a way that works for women?"

I've spent at least a decade asking similar questions, because I'm a woman engineer trying to figure out why there are so few of us. Educators have been trying to focus on what motivates girls, with the idea that a motivated student will always learn better. If women are more socially conscious, care more about families and friends, they might not see how math and science help with that some day. Maybe they're not seeing the creative aspects. I've always HATED the statement "You have to learn math so you can balance your checkbook!". To me that's like saying you have to learn to read so you can fill out job applications or you have to learn art so you can roller-paint a room. There's more to life. But I digress.

In flight training, we're mostly adults and we mostly start out motivated. Wanting to be a pilot was never a problem for me. I almost always wanted to keep up with the training, even when I was incredibly frustrated by it.

None of us in this lunch group are "normal" women, we're all a minority in our field, and we're all products of educational systems made up of men. If you make it through four years of engineering school, you're bound to be conditioned somehow, because if you don't learn like the rest of them you're not going to learn. We even feel different when in other groups of women... I'm an alien in a room of elementary school teachers. We just don't communicate the same. I couldn't explain what it was. Patricia said the big difference is that she can say something to a man and he'll often just go with it, but if a woman doesn't understand she will make you explain it until she does. I experienced this early in engineering school, also. Men are more likely to jump in and try something, even if they don't totally understand it. When I started school and saw them all taking over the lab and plugging components into breadboards, I thought they were smarter than me. When nothing they built worked, I realized we were at about the same level; they just had the confidence to fake like they knew something. So I started faking like I knew something, and had about the same failure/success rates if not slightly better.

My biggest flight training issue was constantly wondering how I was doing. If anything got me through engineering school, it was the knowledge that I was generally beating the curve. If I failed a test, everyone probably failed the test. But in flight training there is no curve, it's just you and an instructor. And nobody talks about averages or failure. Once I failed my first progress check, reassuring stories came out of the woodwork, suddenly everybody had a story of failing a progress check. Once I took 45 or so hours to solo, suddenly all kinds of other people talked about taking about that long. Anyway, Adrienne speculated that men just don't care that much about whether they're beating the curve, they'll go ahead anyway because that's just how they are, so they don't ask these questions or care what's average. Thoughts?

We also talked about learning styles and instructor communication, mostly because Liz felt like her entire training program was way too unstructured and she's using the same syllabus I am. I mentioned that my instructor started sending me extra e-mails before flights with his interpretation of the procedures and his expectations. Apparently it's not like that with everyone. I just know there are a million things to read when you're learning to fly: your ground school books, your flight school's standards, the FAA's airplane flying manual, the FAR/AIM. Around lesson four my instructor realized that I'd be swimming in it and unable to function unless he broke it down for me before we were in the air.

But you all know I have a young, new instructor who might not feel like he can afford to lose a student, and might feel like he doesn't know the right way to teach anyone, so he was spent a lot of time early on fishing around to figure out how I learned. Get a guy who's been teaching for forty years and got 100 other pilots to pass a checkride, he might not want to bend his methods much for you. Unfortunately new instructors are tough to come by at big flight schools. People don't want to learn from the inexperienced. Anyone who wants to be flying full-time is probably looking for an airliner job. Anyone flying part-time is probably retired. Balancing a full-time job and instructing in your spare time is tough. My instructor has a full-time job, often spends 2-3 evenings a week with me and his pay is not fantastic.

Is flight training set up for women? Is any training set up for anyone? I have no grand conclusions. Every flight training website in the world already stresses the importance of student-instructor relationships, acknowledges that everyone's learning style is different, and has advice about how to switch up instructors. That advice applies equally to men and women and instructors are supposed to understand it too. I think that, until there are a lot more women learning to fly, that's about all we can say.

It was the entry you thought would never come, right? At least I was starting to think I'd never get to it. Or I thought by the time I soloed, I'd feel so beaten down by months of flight training I wouldn't have the motivation to write anything happy.

As it turns out... I'm happy.

To update you all, last weekend I took my pre-solo check with another instructor and passed, much to my delight and amazement. It took some weather delays to get it in but it happened. I had an airplane Tuesday, winds would be calm, I went to bed thinking my day was coming. Then I woke up at 4 a.m. to storms. And it stormed all day. And a lot of Wednesday. And the forecast is for this to keep going until next week. I was beside myself, and upset. Wednesday I asked my instructor if we could fly, the ceiling was 3000 with scattered clouds at 1500 feet, he said it was too hard to see contrast and tell where a few scattered clouds are with a big overcast layer like that. damn. Today again things were a little weird... but the 4:00 METAR said there was nothing below 3,500 feet. Winds 6 knots.

I was supposed to take part in the info session for the society of women engineers. There was a presentation, about 40 slides, five were mine. I sent them an e-mail saying something had come up. I feel bad about that... but tomorrow and all weekend we're at a 30% chance of storms, more clouds, more overcast skies. This is all I think about. I hope they understand.

I drove after work to the airport and it was raining. hmmm.

I checked weather, pre-flighted the airplane, checked weather again. The rain was holding off. The clouds were only getting higher. We decided to fly up to Newton, because there was a runway there lined up with the wind.

I flew patterns with instructor S next to me as always, not really thinking about the solo thing until I had a not-so-nice approach. I was distracted by another airplane, forgot to get our power all the way out, and when I realized it late the power change was too much and we bounced off the runway and I just went full power for a go-around. After we climbed I was like, "Okay I KNOW what I did, next time if I realize that late there's power in I won't try to land, I got distracted, I won't do that either..."

He was like, "Relax, it's okay. You did a good go-around. I'd rather see you make a mistake and do a go-around than fly three perfect patterns anyway, proves you can handle issues, that's important." To me something in his voice sounded like, I'm still going to let you solo. I started to really feel good.

Finally after the fifth landing or so he had me do a full stop, taxi to the ramp and drop him off. He got out of the airplane and said, "You'll do great. Just..." and then nothing. "You'll do fine." He was stood there in the shade of an old roundtop hangar that looked abandoned.

I restarted the engine, turned the airplane around and taxied right into something I wish I hadn't. It was paved, but with these huge cracks and grass growing through it, I was like, "Damn. great. my first solo and I forgot to stay on the taxiway." Later S told me it was fine. There wasn't really enough room to turn around otherwise. But at the time I just found a path out and went with it.

The solo flight itself is pretty unexciting... three takeoffs and landings. And for me that's landing number 145, 146, and 147. I was nervous on the first takeoff and felt myself getting sweaty, but then settled into the now automatic tasks of the pattern. Call downwind on the radio and level off at pattern altitude and start a descent abeam the touchdown point. Each time I landed I taxied back to the begining of the runway as instructed, and then looked for S to be running my direction waving his arms yelling that I'd done something insane, but he just stood there. And after the third, I came back and got him and he told me congratulations and seemed more excited than I was. He asked if it felt different, if the airplane flew different, I was like, "Not really man, sorry to disappoint. Everyone warned me it'd feel different but you just don't weigh enough."

But the more I think back on it I am excited, it went really well, I was definitely ready. It was a beautiful evening. Big huge puffy clouds with sunbeams shining through. By the time we got back home it was 8:00 and dark, and we flew over the city and landed at Wichita in the crosswind and I did just fine there too. I'm post-solo now. Same pilot, new chapter.

I'm awake at 2 am because I woke up, and something put "flying" in my head, and then I couldn't get back to sleep to save my life. I had a lesson tonight. We picked a runways with some crosswinds, I went out and did a dozen or so landings. He didn't have to get on the controls ever, I get points for that. But my landings weren't all "passable" either... they have to be on the center line. They have to be smooth.

I hit 40 hours this week and it's just looming over me all the time like a cloud. At the school another instructor I'd flown with asked if I'd soloed yet, because it's the perpetual question, and I told him I was still just close and another instructor said he had a student in the exact same situation. He asked me how many hours I had. 40. I asked how many his student had. 25. That's normal. People solo around 20. I am not normal. As my hours creep up I think maybe this is a lesson for me, maybe God wants me to deal with defeat.

One part of me says to get over it, go up Thursday, Thursday will surely be my last lesson before I can take the progress check again. Of course I said that about this lesson too. But my instructor and I mutually agreed I needed... something. He said, "I want you to go up and right off the bat do three good landings. That's what it'll take... you said it yourself that it takes you five just to warm up. I know you're anxious but you're so close." I am always so close. He assured me I've made so much progress. It's his job to say that.

There was so much I wanted from all this. Wanted to take my family on airplane rides, at least take my husband. Wanted to tell you all that I'd done it. Wanted to be part of the neat circle of pilots I've gotten to know on Twitter. But I'm not cut out for this. And I woke up at 2, going over my "I'm quitting" speech in my head that I'll have to have with my instructor. Maybe he'll feel let down because I'm close? Or worse... he won't be. He'll admit he's known all along that this wasn't meant to be and he's been encouraging because it's what I want. I'm scared about hearing that.

It really hurts. I go over other things I'm good at. Oh I'm not fabulous, I'm mediocre, but at least I'm above average at math, writing, initiative. I can be a good friend. I've turned out to be a good wife. It's going to be so hard working at an airplane company, seeing airplanes every day, knowing I couldn't cut it as a pilot.

The only thing I can say about Thursday is that it's supposed to be kinda stormy and bumpy, like it will be the rest of this week, and it's good that I'm doing a practice flight instead of a progress check in that sort of weather. What would have been the sense in nailing it tonight like I'd hoped and then taking a progress check that might be cut short for weather like my last one? So maybe it's good? And then in my head I see myself taking the progress check on a nice day, then having my first solo on a nice day, then telling everyone...

But will it feel worth it, or will it feel like finishing a meal that was always too much for you? Will I just feel beat up and still defeated and afraid of the road ahead? I feel like a round peg being pushed through a square hole. If I make it after all this time, it doesn't say anything good about the situation, just that we forced it through.

They say it's not for everyone. They're right. I just hoped that somehow it'd be for me.

So I did not quit flying. I took a week off, thought about my life, goals, and situation, and decided that I am determined. I am not defective, I really want this, I'm gonna do it, and I'm not going to let the frustration eat my brain. A famous quote goes, "A man is not finished when he’s defeated; he’s finished when he quits." (sadly this is attributed to Richard M. Nixon, who quit, but I digress)

I flew Thursday and I flew Saturday and both days the weather was lovely but it seems I've hit a plateau, which is apparently common. You google "flight training plateau" and get lots of nice encouraging notes, and several of them even point out pre-solo landings as one of the big ones. Being told that I have a normal problem is reassuring.

People ask what's wrong with my landings. To be honest, if I could describe it in detail it wouldn't really be a problem. I had a volleyball coach who was always trying new drills to turn us all into setters. The setter is an important position, and she explained, "Natural setters know things automatically that other people have to be taught. But any of you might be a great setter. We just have to figure out how to teach you." She acknowledged the fact that we couldn't just watch someone set or hear how to do it and pick it up.

Officially, when I didn't pass the pre-solo check, my problem was listed as one with "directional control". But since then it's obvious that I have trouble judging when we're too high or fast on approach, a perception issue telling how far we are off the runway, slow reactions, abrupt corrections, and some issues adjusting the pattern turns based on winds. The last issue... pattern turns based on winds... is one I can work on this week on the ground. So I have. I sit down with a pencil and paper and draw little runways and windsocks in various directions and think about when turns need to be steeper or more shallow, just get it in my head a little more, okay. But all the other issues are a lot messier. I mean it's easy to tell someone on the ground, "I flare too high" and then they say, "Oh, well... don't do that!"

That said I feel a little better because my plateau issue is googleable. My earlier concerns about being scared of flying, which no student blog addressed, are done now. I get nervous, because I want to do well, but I'm not scared. Hell, last time after flying two approaches in a row way too high my instructor just told me to stay low and we were pretty damn low, but made it, and he asked later if that made me nervous. I was like "dude nothing phases me any more. You could tell me to land upside-down in the grass and I'd just do it." Anyway, the internet seems to recommend the following for getting past flight training plateaus:

• Take a few days off and relax so you're not frustrated. Done. I took a week. It did calm me down a lot.
  
• Just move on to something else like cross countries. Not an option for me since I'm part 141, but thanks.
  
• Go fly somewhere for fun. Take your instructor to lunch to remind yourself why you're flying. Maybe.
  
• Switch airports. Done.
  
• Switch instructors... fly with somebody else, get a new set of eyes. That's actually the plan for this week so I'll tell you how it goes.

If anyone else knows anything else, I'm all ears. And I do mean anyone... I don't care if you're a pilot, if you've ever gone from stupid to struggling to nothing to GETTING IT with anything, I'd like to hear how you got there.

I actually really wish I could find more 141 student pilot blogs... it makes a huge difference. A lot of students solo because their instructor just hops out of the plane one day. They don't have to pass a special check with their flight school and prove they can land in all these crosswinds. Also this class C airspace is really getting me down. Yeah I'm good at radios now, but instead of just going up and doing patterns like we would at a little airport there are all these steps. We have to get departure clearance, get ground clearance, get takeoff clearance... and usually either ground or takeoff involves a "hold short" instruction, so the engine is spinning and my student time is ticking off but I'm not doing squat, I'm waiting for Delta or American Airlines to get out of the way. Then we takeoff and fly to some little airport 20 miles away to actually do patterns. Then we head back, 20-30 minutes before my plane reservation will be done, so we'll have time to get airspace, landing, and taxi clearance to get back home. I'm starting to really wonder how many of my 37 or so hours were spent waiting to get to the actual hours.

Anyway I'm just taking all this into consideration so I don't feel like I'm the most hopeless pre-solo pilot ever. Feeling hopeless isn't going to get me anywhere, so I might as well do what I can to get past it. This is definitely what I want.

So I told my boss I wasn't sure if flying was really for me. He's a pilot and has been very supportive of anyone in our group flying, even though he's got to know that half of us dumb students end up quitting, losing currency, or running out of money. This is a bit rare for an experienced pilot... it seems to me like many of them have the "call me when you're real" attitude because so many people start and don't finish. You run into the same thing if you join a running group full of marathoners and you have to walk every other mile, or you start a blog and tell people to check it out when you've only got three entries. Am I right? Disregarding newbies is not isolated to any specific discipline. But anyway my boss doesn't seem to mind where you're at, just likes to talk about flying, and that's pretty cool.

So I told him I it might not happen because I was really struggling and he said, "Struggling? You should read about that girl who learned to fly even though she was born without arms."

Yes, last year Jessica Cox, 25-year-old motivational speaker from Arizona with no arms got a sport pilot license after training for three years in various unmodified Ercoupes. A sport pilot license is strikingly similar to a private pilot license, except you can't fly at night and need approval to go in certain airspaces. And you don't have to pass an FAA medical, if you have a drivers license you can start.

Anyway in her interview about the experience she also said it was tough, and she also thought about quitting, but it was mostly because airplanes are made for people with arms. She didn't mention having trouble with landings. Maybe she didn't notice. Sort of like when I go clothes shopping with women who are not six feet tall and their standards for "clothes that fit" are so much higher from mine? I'm too busy looking for big obvious things to notice the little frustrations they point out. We struggle on totally different levels.

So for this and other reasons, I'm probably not going to quit flying. But I am still taking the weekend off to try to relax and not think about it. I've got some website code work to do, did some sewing, washed some clothes, we watched "The Three Amigos". I've been going through old livejournal entries adding tags, so maybe I can get some big tags besides the "flying" one that's been used so much lately. The journal is funny because I frequently have these spells in my life where I'm talking about one big thing. When marc and I got together in October 2005, I was apologizing over and over for talking about the same thing. But when I read the story from the beginning it plays out like a great movie, and I was always getting lots of comments. Same with grad school, and the marriage amendment saga, and all these little chapters of my life. No matter how this flying story ends it is a chapter, and it makes for good reading, and the experience is priceless. Am I obsessed and overthinking it on a near-unhealthy level? Maybe. But if nothing ever finds its way into taking up your whole head, are you really living?

Most of my flying entries have been private lately, because I'm ashamed of how things have gone. But that's not my normal style. No, I started these blog entries to be honest about my progress as a student and I need to keep it that way.

The forecast does not look good.

I am at 34.2 hours.

Last weekend, I went on a pre-solo progress check and did not pass. It was cut short for weather, but had it gone on, it would have been a big mark against me. I failed to demonstrate good directional control on landings, and broke altitude on steep turns, among other minor things. I accepted it... then as days went on I felt worse and worse. I thought my first solo was so close, and now it's not. at all. It's just eating at me.

Tonight I had a practice flight with my normal instructor to see if we could clean things up and have another go at that check. Steep turns improved, I bet I could pass on those now. The landings did not. In fact, they've gotten worse... which kills me because I thought I had landings down. And since it's such a huge thing, I'm not sure what to do to get them back.

I'm really starting to wonder whether this is the right thing for me to do. Not everyone is cut out to be a pilot. I'm no quitter, and it really upsets me to think of quitting anything, and I hate admitting that there's something I can't handle. I made it through grad school. I've made it through some painful 10K races. I've worked on some ugly political campaigns. I see things through to the end.

I enjoy flying, and talking about flying, and deep down inside part of me still likes the idea of taking off in a little airplane across Kansas whenever I want to go someplace. But a bigger part of me is so incredibly frustrated, and I just don't see a light at the end of the tunnel. Even my instructor says he felt like my landings were great two weeks ago, and then what happened?

Anyway tonight I asked him if we could just move on. First solo is a silly ceremonial formality anyway, I'm sick of re-doing the same damn lessons, why can't we just skip over the short field takeoffs next time? He said he'd ask about it for me, he's not sure it's allowed. So he said we'd go up next week and do pattern work. I'm not sure I can do it. I pushed the lesson from Tuesday to Thursday, to give myself a little break. I spent June working on landings. all. of. June. Three different instructors, a dozen or so hours, we flew to little airports and just went in circles. But at least then, sometimes they'd mix things in... I can do stalls and ground maneuvers and some IFR work and slow flight.

Sometimes I feel like quitting takes a degree of courage and honesty that I don't have, that's the real problem. Maybe I'm not so tough after all, I just go with things, that's why I don't quit. It's not so noble.

Our hero is at 29 hours. Still haven't flown solo. But you know, it's really bothering me less and less... mainly because I actually do feel close to it. We're just doing some tidy-up review lessons, redoing some maneuvers that I neglected for a few weeks to run pattern work, then I have some tests, then we have to wait for PERFECT weather, you get the picture. So I guess I am on the 40 hour plan that I never wanted to be on... oh well, beats the 50 hour plan, yes?

So many things are FINALLY clicking into place. I'm a machine on the radios. Tower, no tower, doesn't matter, I get just about everything, I can say what I want to say. It's occurred to me that air traffic control is actually my preferred method of communication. You know how I've written before that I hate when people at work IM me with, "hey" and then wait for me to respond and then ask me their question? Well aircraft radios don't play that either! You'd never call tower and say, "hey." You tell them where you are, what you want, and then get the fsck off the frequency and wait your damn turn for someone to entertain your request. If only life were so easy!

I can land. Okay it still needs work, but I think it might always still need work, every pilot wants to do better landings. But the point is I can get us down, and most of the time we're pointed the right direction, and I don't flinch, and I'm not freaking out, and I can tell at any given time how we're doing. I can call out all the steps of a traffic pattern in my sleep. And so many other things are in my head, too... call me at 3 am, I'll tell you what to do if the engine fails.

So I can't get sucked into over-analyzing how many hours it's taken me to get this far, plenty of people take a long-ass time to get somewhere. And since solo isn't the finish line anyway, just a point along the way, it definitely doesn't mean anything real. Do I want to come smiling into work telling everyone I flew an airplane by myself? sure. but it's scary too. okay, petrifying. so I keep telling the competitive, number-conscious side of me to CHILL. we're all gonna get there.

I got to fly some more yesterday, after taking a week off to go to Atlanta. It was a nice time. We went to a little airport and did touch and gos in the pattern for two hours.

I've learned that landing is all about gaze-shifting. As you look further out, you detect tinier changes because you have more perspective. When you're looking at a little screen you're really limiting the processing power of your brain, but look out at something big and there are wonderful things going on that you don't even know about. Obviously this applies to more than just airplanes.

An instructor once asked me to describe the landing sequence and when I got down to where we'd be about 20 feet off the ground I just skipped to being done, and he wanted more information so I was like, "I don't know, adjust pitch based on... what you feel?" He didn't like that either. And this frustrated me, because if you're not learning to "feel", why should it take multiple lessons? If it's a concrete thing we should be able to make flashcards for it. But when it was explained to me it sounded like something you feel. Making all these little adjustments as you go? come on, that's not science.

I think now that he didn't like the word "feel" just because it seems to cancel out the word "know". When I was a high jumper there was a time in every jump where I did just feel. Since 99% of high jumping is approach and the jump itself, there's not a lot you can do in the air. So you just leave your mind and let the physics carry you. Airplanes aren't like that, you have to focus intently. More like surgery, less like falling... and there's no cushy relaxed feeling once you're on the ground because you have to keep going in a straight line and you're still in an airplane, where air and wind have strong effects.

So on final approach I stare at the numbers on the runway and aim for them. Then when we're over those, everything shifts to the end of the runway, and then later out to infinity, and I do my best to judge when we should be flying straight and when we should be pitched up to land on the main wheels based on where I know we are and airspeeds I know. Occasionally it all comes together now... I land by myself, and it's a big deal, because I was getting really worried about it.

After a landing we take right back off again. On my last flight the instructor told me to glance back behind us to make sure I'm still lined up with the center of the runway, not drifting off... I'd never done this before. I was barely aware the airplane had a back window. But it did, and when I looked back I saw the runway numbers getting smaller and further away. I was happy. Not only was it a cool view, but all that intense focus on the ground from a few minutes ago was undone and left behind, and I could see it go.

I realize I haven't done a flying update in a while... mostly because things have slowed down. Not my hours, mind you, those have increased. I'm at 23 or so. I fly at least twice a week. But the knowledge is, well, slow. We do pattern work. No lesson plans, no new checkboxes, just flying in circles around an airport touching runways. I go through the pattern in my head every night as I'm falling asleep. Seriously abbreviated version: full power, takeoff, climb, 90 degree turn, another 90 degree turn, fly along the runway, do the landing checklist, start descent, turn base, turn final, land... repeat. The version in my head has five times that many steps. But I've got it down.

My landings are messy but they're happening, almost. they're hard and unpretty and uncomfortable and I'm always really happy to be on the ground, then we go again. I still get occasional assistance from the guy in the right seat, whoever that is... not instructor S, he's been on vacation, I haven't seen him in weeks. But he'll be back and find that I'm like a soap opera: miss days and days, nothing's really changed.

People ask about solo but I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, such a small percentage of your hours have to be solo flight... why not just knock those out at the end? What's the advantage of saying you flew by yourself after so many hours? One thing I've encountered with the general public is that they feel like once you solo, you're pretty much done. Not so. There's a lot more instructor time that has to happen. So even though the competitive side of me is disappointed that I won't be flying solo any time soon, the logical side of me realizes that your "hours to solo" is just a number. No reason to get to it first. It'd be like saying you finished the mashed potatoes for thanksgiving dinner by 11am... that's a great checkmark, but the whole meal is what matters, the fact that you focused on potatoes first doesn't say much.

We did practice emergency procedures today so at least i got to leave the pattern for something. We just went through the motions of what to do if the engine quits or there's a fire. He said I did a good job picking out a field to land in and aiming for it... we don't actually land in the field of course, but I can prove that I can line up with engine power as low as possible. I like brown fields. I think green ones might be corn and that sounds messy.

The nice thing about Kansas is that there are LOTS of fields... no shortages of places for emergency landings, that's for sure. And the fields make other things easier too. It's like learning to fly on a giant sheet of quad rule paper. You want to turn east, just turn that direction and when you're lined up with the roads you're golden. You can see what a mile is, and a half mile.

I talked to a girl who learned to fly elsewhere and she was frustrated with Kansas because there are no landmarks to aim towards... just land. I guess it depends where you come from.

On Thursday's flight we landed on a runway that I hadn't used much... the one further away from general aviation parking at the Wichita airport, 19R. No huge deal, it was just the one we were cleared to land at. Unfortunately when we taxied off I had no freaking clue how to get back home. You get ground clearance when you taxi off... I had clearance for taxiways charlie, bravo and alpha and was on charlie but who's to say what combination of those would be the right ones to take, and where. Anyway I somehow got to bravo but stopped, admitting I had no idea where to turn. I froze.

instructor s Okay now what's something we can do if we're not sure what way to go?

I fumbled around on the displays to bring up a chart of the airport, which looked like this:


inst What's something else we could do?

I zoomed in further on the display.

inst Besides using the map... what could we do?

I stared at him. Then suddenly over my headset I hear ground control, "seven tango kilo you're going to need to turn left on bravo, then left on alpha to your hangar." Hey, magic! I turned left and went along our way.

And of course I looked at instructor s and said, "See, I got it! You just stop and look lost until ground control notices and feels sorry for you."

Apparently you can also request a "progressive taxi" which means they give you more detailed instructions about how to get around, but I'd never heard of this in my life. or maybe I did, it was just lost in the craziness of everything. Sigh. a little education at every step.

this entry will have the exciting answer to yesterday's trivia question about airplanes flying backwards.

Is it possible for an airplane to fly backwards? By that I mean, let's say you're standing outside your house, look up at the sky, and there's an airplane that looks like it's passing over you tail first.
Yes, quite possible... mostly because the airplane is moving through the air, but you are standing on the ground. But let's continue...

If it's even possible, what does it mean?
It means the plane is going against one hell of a headwind. There's so much drag it's being pushed backwards, but wind over the wings also means you've still got plenty of lift. The magic word here is groundspeed... you have a gage that tells you what your airspeed is, and it's always going to be at least 60 knots or so in a little airplane. Your groundspeed is that, plus whatever the wind is doing. So if the wind is 60 knots against you (negative), you're just going to hover like a helicopter. 70 knots, and you're going backwards... relative to the ground. Relative to the wind you're pushing right through it like always.

What types of airplanes could do this?
In theory, any airplane could do this, but it's more likely in a small plane or glider with a low stall speed (meaning that they're capable of staying up even while flying slower). A little single engine can fly quite nicely at 55 knots or so... and it's not uncommon for winds at altitude to get to that. A Boeing that stalls at twice that speed is probably less likely to find winds fast enough. Winds do get faster at higher altitudes, but that almost cancels out my question because it's tough to notice what things are doing 39,000 feet above your house.

How long could an airplane sustain this configuration?
Cookie goes to metawidget for "4) as long as the wind, their fuel and their patience last". Since there's just as much air going over the wings, the airplane is just as stable as it always is. When you think about it, the plane really has no way of knowing the difference between lift from weather-related wind and lift from "we're moving through the air" wind.

What do you think's going through the pilot's mind?
crisco747 guessed that I was thinking "oh, shit..." but since I'm always thinking that it's not really a fair answer, I'm not giving him a cookie. Instead I'll give it to rynhollis who cheated and ran off experience, but yeah, we basically think it's a cool fun trick. Until we try to get somewhere, that is... then we're thinking, "I wish I had a more powerful airplane."

Technically an airplane can't fly backwards because you can't reverse the direction of the propeller. A propeller, just so you know, is like 2 or more little wings... all airfoils, and when the prop spins air moves across each blade and each blade gets lift, but since they're tilted forward instead of upward like a wing, you're pulled forward. If you could reverse the propeller I think the whole thing would just fall out of the sky because the airplane body just isn't designed to go that way... for one thing, the body itself would be blocking air to the propeller. But I'm open to other interpretations of this.

Anyway to make a short story long (and take up two lj entries) I got to do this the other day practicing slow flight in a 55 knot headwind. The "you can go this many miles on your remaining fuel" display sort of went nuts, because it wasy saying we couldn't go ANYWHERE which was true. Other than that, everything was normal, the plane flew just fine, my mental state wasn't any more heightened than it normally is. My instructor was more excited about it than I was because frankly everything right now is a big deal to me, so he has to be very specific about which things are also cool to non-new pilots.

If I were to give out cookies to everyone who answered some or all my questions correctly just about everyone would get one. There are of course other types of airplanes that are meant to fly backwards, this is just the only experience I've had. So... points.

And now for a bit of physics trivia related to my last flight...

Is it possible for an airplane to fly backwards? By that I mean, let's say you're standing outside your house, look up at the sky, and there's an airplane that looks like it's passing over you tail first.

If it's even possible, what does it mean?

What types of airplanes could do this?

How long could an airplane sustain this configuration?

What do you think's going through the pilot's mind?

Winner gets a virtual high-five, and possibly a cookie. If you are an actual pilot you must wait 12 hours before answering.

Airplane update: I'm at 16 hours and have yet to do an unassisted landing. I'm close though. It's funny to talk about it with non-pilots, because they're usually like, "Yeah, I bet landings are a tough part of flying." Really they're not a tough part of flying... they are flying. Saying that landings are tough hurdle in flight training is like saying that choosing what ingredients to put in a soup is a tough part of making soup, or that sewing fabric together is a tough part of making clothes.

When you're in the air you're in a lot of air, so we go up there and practice things that will make me able to land. Everything I've done so far applies... we practice handling the airplane in slow flight because on landing, it's slow. We practice finding airspeeds and altitudes because that's what has to be balanced. You land an airplane by getting it into a state where the wings aren't lifting it up anymore... but if it's 10 feet above the ground when this happens, things will be uncomfortable. Same for if it's at the wrong angle or a the wrong place in the runway. So everything is timing and tradeoffs and adjustments and feeling.

There's not much to takeoffs because the airplane is going from a flat controlled place to the air, where there's lots of room. It's like jumping off a cliff... the jump is no big deal. You can jump off any cliff in the world. There's always going to be air there, and you'll always find your place in it. Maybe the Wright brothers had trouble taking off, but ever since then we've been pretty good at making shapes that fly, so it takes a student 2-3 takeoffs to feel okay about it. I was taking off by myself at lesson 3... it didn't look straight and pretty but we were airborne.

In head-case news, I've been feeling pretty good and relaxed lately but last night was funny, because when we got the airplane back to its home there was a crowd of people pushing planes inside the hangar because of the storm coming in, and this guy looks at me walking up and says, "ARE YOU OKAY?" Guess I'm not as chill as I thought! Well, we'd been landing and taking off for an hour and a half, it was tense, requires a lot of focused, maybe I just looked focused still? Nah, probably look freaked out. Good thing I still have like a million hours to go until I get done and can take passengers, I don't think people like when their pilot looks scared.

We're doing landings these days, which is fun and challenging and of course a mess, I don't think I've done one unassisted yet but tonight was our first night of a full lesson of solid landings so I'll deal.

Runways are named after their direction (0-360 degrees, with 0 being north, 90 east, etc) and if there are two in the same direction, they're just called left and right. Wichita has two runways at 10 degrees (so barely east of north). Runways are always put at tens... you'll never find one at 117°, so we always say tens... if it's going straight west (270), you'd say 27 (two seven). And 10 is just one.

So tonight we were doing all our landings at my happy hometown airport on "runway one right".

Which means I'm cursed because I can't say "runway one right" quickly and elegantly on the radios every time I fly the pattern, request a landing or repeat back a clearance, it's impossible to say once, it comes out sounding like "won way won white" or just a blathering of nondescript syllables. so yeah... that's my hometown airport.

Of course I have other goals for landings... I miss the centerline consistently, can't hold airspeeds, still have that same altitude problem. but if they just would have made the runway at 20° right, you know? throw me a bone?

I didn't write about Thursday's flight much, because honestly it was so bad I almost quit this whole project altogether. I landed thinking it was an utter waste of time, fuel, engine hours and money. But now that I've had a good flight and some perspective, I should put down some things.

First... Thursday I was an emotional wreck. I'd just learned that two good friends of mine had been laid off, and many more were worried about their jobs, and it got so bad I had to take 30 minutes or so in the afternoon to just go to the private bathroom downstairs and sob. For the record, I've cried at work like three times in my entire seven-year career, craziness happens all the time and I'm tough. But Thursday, it was all happening.

After that, I sucked it up and figured I could go fly. You're not really supposed to fly under emotional strain, they say, but I figured I'm tough, and like always there's an instructor there, so what's stopping me? But it was one of those flights where nothing went right, I was screwing up maneuvers that I'd done on previous lessons, I couldn't keep the steps in my head, nothing was automatic, nothing clicked. On the ground afterwards, I felt angry. I think the stress of the day may very well have affected me without me knowing it.

Flash forward for today. It wasn't perfect, but every time I repeated something, I did it a little better. I felt better. I wasn't frustrated. I heard radio calls and responded... sometimes even said the right thing.

I used to be a high jumper. I think flying is sort of like that. It's repetitive, but you have to change your game to match the conditions of the day. Every little mental thing matters. It's weird because I notice these similar patterns that I remember from track days... focus depends on what I've eaten and who I've talked to and how bad I want it, if I go in feeling aggressive like I'm gonna take it, I do okay. If I'm scared of it, it gets me. I'm not sure everyone is this involved as a student but it's what it takes from me now. I'm always exhausted when I get done. These lessons involve an hour and a half or so of time in the air and I'm IN IT, but about an hour after I'm on the ground and have food in my stomach I'm ready to pass out. Like now, yup, I'm definitely heading down.