If only I could describe how it feels...

Me with the Arrow after earning the complex endorsement.

A whirlwind couple of days... completing the ground and flight training required for a complex endorsement and to meet the insurance requirements for me to fly the Arrow as Pilot in Command.

Monday

Monday after a quick pre-flight briefing we take to the pattern to practice take off and landing procedures and simulated engine failure. Cleared for take off I line the plane up on the center line of the runway. My CFI, Scott, stops me and tells me to burn this image into my brain. This is what I should make every landing look like. If I want to be a commercial pilot I must be able to land on the center line every time.

I take off and launch into the pattern, feeling behind the plane and stumbling through verbalizing the pre-landing checklist. I am too high on final and round out like I'm landing a 182 with the nose way too high for an Arrow, but I get away with it and land gently if not correctly. I land exactly on the center line. The next two times have similar results. Exactly on the center line but a too high pitch and not really rounding out over the runway, more like stalling the plane over the runway rounding out and touching down just at or above stall speed. My CFI tries to get me to focus on the pitch I need to maintain the airspeed I need and the right landing attitude I need to hit for a good and safe landing.  We also verified the landing gear emergency extension lever worked. It did. One time the gear lights failed, I heard the gear come down, felt the kicks of the gear locking in, but the lights didn't come on. I flew downwind not sure what to do, my brain running through what I've learned and drawing a blank. I started to ask for help, then my eye went to the panel light switch. It had mysteriously turned itself on. I turn it off and the gear lights came on.  We do 10 trips around the pattern that day with me starting to understand better what I need to do but not quite executing on it.

Tuesday

Tuesday, I have to complete 8 more take offs and landings and 1.2 hours of flight before endorsement and insurance sign off is possible. Depending on my performance it could take more time. I have another pilot in the back seat as ballast so I can see how different it is to land a heavier loaded Arrow. He is also hoping to learn some more about landings in the process. This time my CFI promises to cause the gear to fail often and I'd have to identify, troubleshoot and resolve it in the pattern. The pre-landing checklist is key. We do normal, short field and soft field take offs and landings. I feel less behind the plane and am stumbling over the pre-landing less. Boost, (carb), Gas, Undercarraige, Mixture, Prop, Safety. I keep forgetting to verbalize the final check of the landing gear on short final. Three green over the fence I should say. I forget. I'm not as perfect with the center line as I was the day before, but I get better. Each time we taxi back he points out what the requirements are for commercial pilot landings, what is required for a normal landing and a short field landing. If I want to be a commercial pilot, no time like the present to start working on that effort. We should be getting off at Delta easily each time he says.

Every time I put down the gear I wonder if it will come down, or how it might fail. Sometimes it works. One time the gear doesn't come down at all. I quickly use the emergency gear extension lever and it locks into place without a hitch. Another time the gear comes down and I'm on an approach that I think is good, I have the right pitch and airspeed. I'm over the fence and my CFI prompts me to check the gear. I glance at the gear lights and see green so I say Three green over the fence. I get told, Go around! Why? I ask. I was set up for a great landing, I thought. Go Around! I execute the go around and see why. The left main gear light is out. I see the bulb is loose. Damn it. I shove the bulb back into place and we have the three greens. I'm going around. I let the tower know. Cram, climb, clean - flaps, gear, flaps and flaps. As we climb away from the runway I have no problem verbalizing. That won't happen again! Now I'm mad. That won't happen again.

The next time around I verbalize the checklist and when I'm on short final I touch each green bulb quickly. Three green over the fence, I say. My landings are starting to come together better, my reactions are quicker and I feel less behind the plane. Around again, on downwind, gear down, I hear it, feel the gear lock into place, no greens. My hand moves quickly to flip the panel lights off. Three greens. We land and taxi back. Three more times, my CFI says, make them count. The mysterious gear failures stop and my CFI is silent. I am able to concentrate more on my landings. The sight picture I needed for the pitch and airspeed on final was coming together. Then it was over.

We taxi back to the club and my CFI grabs my logbook and goes inside. Our "ballast" and I tie down the plane. We go inside and my CFI is waiting for me to sign in the plane so he can enter the required endorsements into the computer system so I can check the plane out solo. Then he asks for my pilot's license so he can put my pilot certificate number into the complex endorsement. No asking me if I felt confident I wouldn't kill myself this time. No need to waste our breath. He knows and I know, I can do this.

Wednesday

Today, Wednesday, I have the Arrow reserved early. I want to take it up solo quickly to cement what I've learned. I'm not near as nervous for my first solo, or even my first solo in the 182. I am calm. I do the run up and line up for take off. I'm cleared for take off and flip on the boost pump. On the center line of the runway I review the situation, Blues, reds, all greens, no reds, I say. Meaning I've checked the mixture, the prop, gear, oil temp and oil and fuel pressure gauges and there are no red warning lights anywhere. I move the throttle to full smoothly and off I go. Lift off at 68MPH and pitch for 100MPH. Positive rate of climb, no more usable runway, gear up, I say and move the gear lever to up. The gear goes up, Hear it, see it, feel it. Gear transit light is off. Noise abate turn crosswind, at 750 AGL shut off the boost pump, make sure fuel is still flowing, reduce MP to 25", pull prop back to 2500 RPM. Already at pattern altitude, pitch, then power to 17" and 2350 RPM since I'm staying in the pattern, trim.

Turn downwind. Boost on, gas full tank, gear down. Gear comes down, hear it, feel it, see it. Three greens, one, two, three. Mix is full, Prop leave alone. Cleared for landing. 14" MP and 10 degrees of flaps. Slow the plane to 100MPH. Let it start descending, turn base. 25 degrees of flaps. I'm high, 40 degrees of flaps. Boost, gas, undercarriage, mix, prop full, safety. Pre-landing checklist complete, I say.  Turn final. I maintain pitch for 85MPH. Keep the numbers in the same spot on the windscreen. Adjust the power a bit for some sink over the mall. Three greens over the mall, I say, touching each one, just to be sure. Maintain that pitch, aimed at the numbers, round out and reduce power at the same time. I touch down ON the numbers, ON the centerline, lightly. I let the nose gear down, reduce power and turn off on Charlie. This time I let out a whoop! There! Check that out, Scott! I say out loud. Yes! THAT's the way to do it!

I pull clear of the runway and stop the plane to clean up and review the after landing checklist, another habit to get into for commercial flying. I tell myself if I do two more like that, I'll stop early. My next two didn't land ON the numbers, but they were ON center line and perfectly within the commercial spec I was secretly thinking was a long way away from my grasp the day before. I easily taxi clear of the runway at Delta.

What a glorious feeling! I'm adapting to newer and more complex planes quicker. Flying the Arrow doesn't seem as difficult as I thought it should be. I was able to do some my best landings in what feels like forever in a plane I've flown all of 5 hours. I never know when a particular phase of learning and flying will come together with relative ease or difficulty. But when it does come together, be it easily or with difficulty, when it all clicks .... sigh .... I just don't know how to describe it. No matter what, it is wonderful.

Emergency Gear Extensions

My most recent flight in the Arrow was described as "quite efficient" by my CFI. 0.5 hours on the hobbs. We went up to practice emergency gear extension and troubleshooting and we got a bit more than we bargained for. 

We talked about the various ways the gear can fail, how to troubleshoot and how to resolve the different gear failures. We then went up to put the theory into practice. Instead of heading out to the usual practice area we turned towards Mt. Lick as soon as we gained altitude to a different practice area. It is a long shallow valley just on the other side of the hills from Reid-Hillview.

Once there he took the controls and demonstrated the maneuvers you can do to "help" the gear get down and locked when it doesn't lock. Then I got to do it. It was fun. Then I slowed the plane to 100MPH and he had me put the gear down. I knew what was coming, I knew the gear would fail to come down for some reason. I suspected a circuit breaker was pulled en-route to the practice area perhaps. No matter. I knew what to expect and it was as expected. The gear did not come down at all. No sound of the wind changing, no "Gear Transit Light", no kick and clunk as the gear locked down and no three greens. So I cycled the gear and tried again. Nope. OK, time to use the emergency gear extension lever. When held down is allows the gear to free fall and lock into place. You slow to 100MPH to do this so there is less wind resistance on the nose gear fighting gravity on the free fall.

I pushed the gear extension lever down and heard the air flow around the plane change. I felt the two main gears lock into place but didn't feel the third, harder kick of the nose gear locking down. The gear down lights for the left and right mains came on but not the nose. Hmm. That was strange. Fly the airplane. Two greens, no nose gear. We tried switching the bulbs between the gear lights. It was possible the nose gear light was bad (not the gear). I doubted that. I didn't feel the gear kick down. Sure enough, it wasn't the light bulb. Here we were practicing gear failures and all of the sudden we had potential for a real one.

My CFI undid whatever he did to the gear to cause it to "fail" in extending and the nose gear kicked into place. Three greens. So, the gear extended with the help of hydraulics but not in the free fall mode. That's not good. If we had actually lost hydraulics or electric we wouldn't be able to get the nose gear down in this situation.

We were both intrigued, was this a one time thing or a real issue? We tried it again. He failed the gear extension system (I'm pretty sure its the circuit breaker.) And I slowed the plane down and pushed down on the lever again. The two mains locked down. The nose gear did not. Turn on the hydraulics and the nose gear locked into place.  Third time's the charm. We did it again, this time he held down the lever. Two greens.

We talked briefly as I retracted the gear again. Do we go on with the rest of the flight as planned? Or abort and get the gear checked out sooner than later? As far as I could guess, this could be a sign that the front landing gear system was weak and about to fail even with hydraulic assistance. I suggested we head back and get this checked out. We had no problem with the gear operating on the approach. Of course this time we had the hydraulics on!

We landed the plane and told the A&P about the issue. He immediately took it to the hangar and jacked it up to swing the gear. The mechanics repeated the same sequence we did and the first time the nose gear locked into place, slowly. That was with no wind. He retracted the gear and this time put just a little bit of pressure against nose gear as it came down in "free fall". All it took was a fingertip of pressure and the nose gear wouldn't lock into place. The mechanic pulled on the spring attached to the nose gear that is supposed to assist with locking the gear in and the spring was very flexible. Too flexible. He decided to replace the spring.

We will find out in our next flight if the spring really did the trick or not.

Arrow.... Arrrroooowwwww... its an Arrow

After what seems like forever hiatus from flying this week I'm back in the sky where I belong!

N1455X, my new friend for the next round of training.

I started flying with my CFI to work on my complex endorsement this week. For this we are using a Piper Arrow II. It's a 200 HP machine with constant speed prop, flaps and retractable landing gear. It's also a low wing plane (obviously). The first low wing I've flown left seat in.

Aside from the usual awkwardness that comes from flying a new type of plane, my biggest problem has been remembering the type of plane I'm in! I've got almost 300 hours now and all but 2.3 of them have been in Cessnas. I'm very used to identifying myself as "Cessna 123AB" or occasionally "Skylane 123AB". All of the sudden I have to remember to say "Arrow". Out of all the newness, that's been one of the things I've stumbled over often. For some reason I've been wanting to say "Archer". Probably because it starts with an "A".

We've done two flights and 6 take offs and landings so far. Another 19 take offs and landings and 2.7 hours of dual are required for insurance purposes. I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of the plane. The thing I'm not at all familiar with is the retractable gear of course. I started using the BCGUMPS "checklist" in the 182 and now the letters all have meaning, except this plane is fuel injected so no "C" for carb heat. The trick with the gear is making sure its down when it needs to be down and up when it needs to be up. The mechanics of that work easily, knowing when to do it is a little less easy but its coming together. I've started talking through everything I'm doing, in part to remember what to do and in part to get into the habit of verbalizing more.

Next flight will be emergency procedures (emergency gear extensions and seeing how this particular plane glides for a power off approach). After that will be a lot of take offs and landings with my CFI "failing" the gear as often as he can to get me to the point I'm paranoid about it working or not working. That way I'll never get caught in an unintentional gear up landing.

The last thing, and something I need to prioritize higher in my flying, is keeping my ass on the center line. No good to drift around! If I want to be a commercial pilot I'd better be able to put the plane where it should be every time! No good for me to be lazy.

Anyway, I'm learning more and flying more and that makes me happy. I hope you are all happy too in whatever you're doing.