Prop Washed

The Biannual Flight Review!

2010-07-21T17:19:00.000-04:00

I got my Private Pilot Certificate in July of 2008, and as per FAA regulation, every private pilot must have a flight review, consisting of an hour of ground school and an hour of flight instruction, every twenty-four calendar months. I don't like to procrastinate so much, so instead of waiting until the thirty-first, I got it out of the way today.

Now, for my checkrides in 2008, I had myself all tied up in knots, spending every waking moment that I wasn't in the airplane studying from five pounds of flash cards (No lie. I just weighed them, yes I did!) and the Jeppesen and Rod Machado Private Pilot textbooks. I planned numerous flights, for the practice of getting fast with the E6-B flight calculator, which operates much like an old-school slide-rule. I slept very little, ate even less, and fell apart completely when my first checkride ended in a pink slip (I was Captain of the Failboat that day, in other words), and when I did pass finally, on my second try, I remember feeling as though I'd been carrying a hundred-pound backpack around since July of 2007, and it was finally off.

I was determined not to make such a mess of myself for this biannual flight review. Everyone I talked to who's been through one of these has said it's not the big deal I was trying to make it. When I asked one friend of mine if I should be hammering away at my flashcards, he rolled his eyes and laughed and said "God, not those damn flashcards!" and proceeded to tell me I'd just be doing a few touch-and-goes, a power-on stall, a power-off stall, and some hoodwork. When I asked the flight instructor who was going to do the BFR for me what I needed to know and what I'd need to know how to do, he reiterated what my friend said, and told me he wasn't so concerned that I had all that information from the massive flash card deck in my head as he was that I could effectively look up that information in the source documents, and that he's seen pilots who haven't flown since their last BFR, and they've done all right. It wasn't pass/fail. The FAA wouldn't come take my certificate away if I had a spazzy moment and lost or gained too much altitude in my steep turn.

So needless to say, I lost no sleep over this BFR, and gave my cards only a cursory look-through over the weekend.

For the oral part of a checkride, an aspiring pilot pretty much should be a veritable font of aeronautical knowledge. It's good to show that you can look things up in the big FAR/AIM regulation and information manual, but it's also impressive to be able to quote the book chapter and verse. (I admit I was told at my checkride that I didn't NEED to know which regulation in the FAR/AIM pertained to the minimum equipment needed for a VFR flight, but it was kind of cool that I could quote it. Always the overachiever I am.) However, for the biannual, you don't have to have at the ready all the theoretical information. For instance, today we talked about what I'd need to do if I were flying to Guelph, Canada and back, which is practical, real-world knowledge for me, in case Rozzie ever needs to go back to the Ontario Veterinary College and I'd like to cut the trip down from five hours in the car to two hours or less in the plane. We talked about weather minimums in the real world, and how they pertain to the routes I'd realistically fly. And I also learned that while I live under the Duke Military Operations Area, that airspace doesn't start until 8000 feet, but I do also live smack under Military Training Route 707, which explains all the C-130s and EA-6 Intruders and such I've seen fly over lately, low enough that I could jump up and grab onto their landing gear and go for a scary ride, if they had their gear down. Being aware of such things helps one keep from becoming the hood ornament for a low-flying military plane.

Then up in the air we went. I started out twitchy because the last time I flew in the airport's Tomahawk was the day I failed my first checkride. Since June 2008, whenever I went flying, it was in my own Cherokee, the plane in which I passed my checkride, but that plane is down and waiting for me to save enough for an engine overhaul, since somewhere down the line of ownership, someone deemed it adequate to just take the engine apart, paint it, put it back together, and call it a fresh overhaul. That owner can kiss my flying butt.

I guess the biggest challenge, besides the nerves inherent in such a skills challenge as this, is that I'm so used to my callsign being "Cherokee 15388" that it was a huge code-switch for me to remember I was "Tomahawk 9284T" today. So all but my last two radio transmissions went something like this: "Wellsville Unicom, Chero- crap. Tomahawk 9284T for radio check, Wellsville." Wellsville Unicom read me loud and clear. Then "Chero-crap Tomahawk 9284T" was departing on Runway 28, was downwind for Runway 28, and finally at the end, overhead and ready to join downwind for Runway 28. I finally stopped calling myself "Chero-crap Tomahawk..." for my last landing and when I was clear of the active runway.

The next biggest challenge was using my rudder pedals more. I did better than the last time I flew with our chief pilot, but I still need to knock it off with the ailerons during a cross-wind landing and do most of the work with the rudder. This I will file away and practice next time I'm in the air.

I still did better on my left steep turn than I did on my right, but I'm loath to make right turns, just because I can't see as well turning right. The power-on and power-off stalls weren't so bad, but I HATED the power-on, 15-degree turning stall, but that's the one that will most likely bite a pilot in the butt, since that could for real happen during take-off. I've always had a thing about stalls. I did two recoveries from unusual attitudes, under the hood, and then we had to call it quits on that because I didn't want to throw up on the chief pilot. I still felt a little sloshy, even as he and I got the plane back in the hangar, but I think all I needed was to get home and get a snack.

So now I'm legal for another two years, although now the pressure's on to get my instrument rating. I'm really thinking about it, even though when I'm in the air, I prefer to be able to look outside, but it will mean I'll fly more and fly safer. We've got to get my Cherokee... or is that my Cherokrap? back in the air. But I'm glad to have my first biannual flight review in my rearview window!

Blue Skies, and I'm Grounded!

2010-06-11T18:36:00.000-04:00

Well. I haven't been flying much lately because my Cherokee has been having engine issues. I'm not an airplane mechanic, and I don't even pretend to know a ton about engines. This is a personal shortcoming of mine I'd like to improve sometime, but on the other hand, there are very talented people out there who ARE airplane mechanics, who will forget more about engines than I'll ever know, and the way I see it, I could muddle through things like oil changes and such, then worry that I did it right, or I can pay someone who knows what they're doing, know it's done right, and be on my way.

Well, even the guys who know what they're doing are puzzled by this lack of RPM.

My Cherokee 140 has always run rough, really likes the mixture to be leaned out properly, but nothing like this. After the annual inspection, my friend and I were flying and taking turns doing touch-and-goes at the Wellsville airport, where my plane is hangared. It was a hellishly windy day, one on which I would have just called it a day and not attempted flying, if I were on my own, but the friend I was with happens to be the one who taught me to fly, and he's going to school to be an airplane mechanic. He's good people to have around in this situation.

So on my last landing, I had the mixture full-rich (as per the landing checklist!), and was trying to get back on glideslope. We were red-over-red and the airspeed was way too low. Landing, I pitch for 70-80 knots, and we were down in the 60s, which was enough to freak me out. My friend told me to put in more throttle, and I already had the throttle almost all the way to the wall. My engine RPMs were not what they should have been at this setting, so we added carb heat, I did my landing, and he wanted to take another crack at the runway, so I said fine. The plane was sluggish, and didn't want to climb for him, either, but again, this was one of those days where you could really visualize the wind toward the ground sort of rolling.

After, I asked the mechanic at the airport to take a look at my plane, and explained the crap that was going on with the RPMs. He looked over my engine logs, decided that the sparkplugs needed changing- it was 1993 the last time the Cherokee had new sparkies, and they had 430 hours on them. The mechanic said he likes to change them out at 400. Well, spark plugs are an important art of an engine, and when they get worn, all kinds of havoc gets wreaked, so all parties involved thought this would take care of the problem.

Fast forward to the next attempt my friend and I made to fly. Now, I'm still pretty much a baby pilot, and have not much confidence in myself, especially after the plane's been in the shop. So I waited until my friend was available to fly with me again, just to be safe. Well, we got taxied to the departure end of Runway 10, and did the runup, and because we had such a hard time with the RPM before, we cranked it all the way up to full throttle, full mix at the runup. (usually at runup, I power up to 2000 RPMs and do my magneto checks, check carb heat, vacuum pressure, etc, then back to 1000, so this is unusual to runup at takeoff power.) We should have had that RPM as high as it could go. Instead, it was maxing out at 2200-2300 RPMs.

Not good, Muchachoes. Not good at all.

So a back-taxi to the hangar and another date with the shop, and they checked my mag leads, and a bunch of other stuff. My distributor blocks were shot to hell, as they'll get with age, and another trip through the logbooks confirmed it's high time to change them out. The carburetor still looks good, so they didn't think it was that.

Well, talking to my mechanic today, he's still puzzled. There are now two of them on the case, and they're getting a little irritated that they can't figure this one out. They're going to switch out the carburetor, but during another perusal of the logbooks, it was discovered that 70 hours after the last major engine overhaul (this plane gets its engine overhauled every 2000 hours) three of the four cylinders were changed out, with no explanation. I'm told this isn't good at all. Furthermore, my mechanic told me it looks like whoever did this last overhaul "just took the engine apart, replaced a couple seals, and put it back together."

Great!

The happy thing is I know the Cherokee and I are in good hands with the team of mechanics working on her now. The thing that's making me want to stomp on baby chicks is that it sounds like whoever owned the plane at the time of the last overhaul was cutting corners. They got through just fine, but now I have to pick up the sweepings.

Plus, it has me thinking about all the things weird the mechanics discovered when they did our first annual inspection on the plane, in 2009, not the least of which was that the propeller that was on my 1972 Cherokee was pitched wrong, causing a lot of vibration in flight. Our mechanic called Sensinich, the manufacturer, and learned that not only was this not the original prop on the Cherokee, but that the propeller in question was built at Sensinich in 1950 and hadn't been back to the factory since it left the assembly line that year. (Props have to go for overhauls, too.) Putting the mystery prop together with the cylinder mystery, it makes me wonder if someone didn't do a nosewheel landing and have a prop strike or something, in the past, and just didn't document it. If you have a prop strike, the engine is supposed to be completely overhauled, and that's hella expensive.

So I don't know. We have a mystery on our hands, anyway, and I can't wait to get it solved, because all this nice weather's a-wasting. And I also have my biannual flight review in July, and I really don't want to take it in the Tomahawk at the airport.

Pfffft.

Prop Washed

2010-05-09T19:47:00.000-04:00

Hi! This is my blog all about flying: my adventures in my Piper Cherokee, interesting things I've learned about flying, and some stories about my long, strange trip to earning my pilot's license.