I'm still flying! It's been so long since I wrote that first article that I bet whoever among you who read it figured I washed out by now. The "bear cub" who'd just found his you-know-what but didn't know what to do with it insofar as landing a real airplane was concerned, is now an official Student Pilot. Larry's signature now adorns my 3rd Class Medical Certificate. I soloed on Friday, September 13, 2002. I'm now close to starting the cross-country phase of my training, but this piece will only go through to that great date above.

How all this relates to flightsim per se is hard to tell. This is all more about the trials and tribulations of a hard-core flightsimmer doing real flight training than any commentary about flightsim itself. This is not to say flightsim references aren't peppered throughout. After all, that's what led me to try flight training, and the diary entries below result from recounting what's been going on to a group of other hardcore flightsimmers.

We pick up the story where my last article left off, with me doing just OK at landings at the end of eight hours of lessons. We were using Cessna 150's.

As it turned out, I was about to be introduced to crosswind landings:

I called Larry, my CFI, late this afternoon to make sure we were on. He told me there was a crosswind today. He said if I was busy we could go another day, but I wanted to fly. He said, "I guess we'll have to do crosswinds sooner or later." I got the impression he was hoping this would come later.

Larry has upgraded the avionics of his Cessna 150's considerably. (Actually, this a is a 777 mural I got from Sportys.com -- I figured I needed as many pictures for this article as I could get)

When I arrived we talked about doing crosswind take-offs and landings. At first he figured this wasn't something doable in flightsim, but then he remembered I had rudder pedals. I told him I'd done plenty. He talked about slipping the wing into the wind and using opposite rudder to align the plane. As we taxied, he also talked about the crab-kick method. He said that's what he did, and the implication was that method was more advanced, I suppose because of the timing involved.

He had me apply full aileron into the wind (from our right) at the beginning of the take-off roll. I needed to apply just a touch of anti-weathervaning left rudder. The wind was nearly canceled by the torque. As the airplane gained speed the aileron began to center itself, and I only had to apply a little resistance and let that happen. He wanted us to get to 60 rather than 50 before rotating.

Airborne, I had to crab to the right to stay along the runway line and did a lousy job of it the first time. He had me look back and we were well to the left of the runway. I was surprised by what even an 8-10 knot wind could do. When we got up to 2500 feet he had me practice and get the feel for side-slipping the wing with opposite rudder.

Larry showed me a crosswind landing using the slip method. He did it without flaps. We came in significantly faster than normal, not even playing with stall speed. I figure this was because, as Tom (Goodrick, friend and flightsim mentor) has previously mentioned, you don't want to get the plane so slow it's exposed to a gust, especially a crosswind gust. Then we went back into the pattern and he had me do one.

My first approach was OK, but I turned final a little early and was getting blown to the left of the runway. I turned right to line up, and then dropped the right wing and applied left rudder. I applied too much. Leroy said that was common with beginners. I got it aligned and brought it in. It was a little rough, but not bad. I leveled the wings right as we were touching down and got pushed to the left some. Then we went up again. This time I overshot the turn onto final and had to come back left. I did a better job on the approach but was still herky-jerkying around some. By the time we touched down I'd gotten it straightened out and that landing was not bad, better than the first. I'd kept the wing dipped all the way in, and could feel the right main touch first.

Then we did one using flaps. He said anyone who says to not use flaps on a crosswind landing is full of BS. He went on to say there was a point when the wind was too strong to use them, but they were fine in a slight wind like we had. This time I lined up and really held it. But I leveled out too high. Larry said, "You don't want to land the plane from up here!" I brought it down but got a little overwhelmed. At the last I really over applied the left rudder and we actually hit fairly hard and the tires skidded to the left. The approach that had been so good turned into a horrible landing.

Larry had been saying all along that a crosswind landing is difficult because with all that's going on landing a plane, one has the elements of alignment and slipping. In fact he had said that when he really wants to see how good a pilot is, he'll watch them do a crosswind landing -- it can't be faked or done well by accident. He said that I was somewhat an advance student, but that my landings weren't to the point of really being up to doing crosswinds. But he wanted me to get a glimpse.

A few seconds into the air.

After the lesson I asked him about soloing. I said I didn't really care, but was curious. He said experience had taught him not to try to solo students too early. He said I was doing OK, but my landings weren't there yet. He said I could get up and down all right, like if something were to happen to him while we were up there, but that wasn't enough. He said he looked for consistency; for example, three good landings in a row would indicate one wasn't good just by accident. But he said the main thing he looked at was simply whether he felt he was needed in the cockpit. The closer a student came to soloing the less he would talk and the more he would observe. He wanted to see a PIC attitude. We talked some about decision-making, and I essentially asked for and received permission to do things without asking or hesitating. I told him I felt more in control, but just wasn't sure when to ask and when not to. He said he would stop me if I began to do something wrong, or point out things I was missing.

So, a couple of thresholds were crossed this evening. I did my first crosswind landing. And I got clarification about taking more control.

Yeah, right, no problem. Crosswind landings? "I've done plenty." The truth is I had done plenty of crosswind landings in flightsim in the three-or-so years I'd been into it. It's hard to avoid them if you use Real Weather at all. Not long after I started flightsim (FS98), I specifically practiced them. But I doubt I'd really specifically practiced crosswind landings in a long, long time. I do now. And I also practice a lot more of what an advanced simmer would consider "basics," and I sure as hell practice in the small, slow planes a lot more than I had been. So real training has changed the way I approach flightsim. From what I've learned, real pilots do the basics over and over and over.

Another thing I do now that I probably didn't do nearly often enough is going around when an approach looks bad. In flightsim sometimes it's easy to force a landing gone wrong or to just say what the hey and let the plane go down. (As it turned out, I believe the first landing I attempted in my first complete hour of solo was a go-around. I joked that it may have been the quickest go-around decision in aviation history, for after turning to base it was immediately apparent everything was off-not aligned, too high, too hot.)

"I did my first crosswind landing." Even if it wasn't textbook, it was my first real one. That's part of what is exceedingly satisfying if you're a simmer who's getting the chance to do the real thing: the opportunity to do in reality things you may have done a hundred times on the sim.

At about the same altitude as the layer of haze. And yes, that is my finger and not a cloud.

To some degree, the lesson above was a turning point. I was at a stage where I felt I had the ability to be in more control. I needed permission to do it. Perhaps that's just me and a bolder individual would have just grabbed the reigns in such a situation. Larry was perfectly clear about where I was in relation to what he was expecting for soloing. I didn't have the PIC attitude, but I was getting there. After a couple more lessons...

It was one of the calmest, coolest days yet, with a slight Nor'easter. We did no stalls at all today, which may have been a first. We began with some S-turns-along-a-road, something we hadn't done since my second lesson. Even though it wasn't windy like the first time, Larry wanted to see how I controlled the plane, particularly whether I was able to keep the plane level during the turns (not completely). He said later he wanted to check this while I was busy having to concentrate on the road, to divide my attention.

Then we went straight to the pattern. My landings are getting smoother (and my take-offs are getting really smooth). I'm not sure how many we got in today, maybe six, some with flaps and some without. Larry said I've got the basic hang of it, that now we're "fine tuning." Mostly this referred to the last little bit of rudder before touchdown, figuring exactly where to make the turn to base, judging whether to add power, etc. He said he figured my landings would start to improve because I was doing better at take-offs.

This isn't to say that I greased any or errors weren't made. On one I didn't align using the rudder and there was a little sideways squelch when the mains touched, but it wasn't a tongue-biting thump, either. On another with flaps I didn't get the nose down enough and lost quite a bit of airspeed and had to throttle up a bit. It's hard to describe how steeply this plane approaches with the flaps, how pitched down you must be. On the second to the last one I told him I felt like I was fighting the nose some, that I'd wanted to trim down. He told me to go ahead, and on the next one I did. Once re-trimmed he had me let go and the plane was configured just right, nose down, stable airspeed -- a slight rudder correction at the bottom, and it was my best one yet.

One critique was my yoke-handling after the flare. After rounding out, waiting for the plane to come down the last few feet, I'd been giving the yoke little forward pumps. I didn't even know it. He said to just be patient and let gravity do its job. As I held the yoke back and the plane slowed, there would be less pressure, and to bring the yoke farther back into the pressure each time that happened. He said this was one of the things flightsim couldn't teach (maybe it could if one had a force feedback yoke, I don't know). He also commented that there were no hydraulics involved, what you felt was what you got.

However, he also said that my flightsimming experience had put me ahead of where I would otherwise be, perhaps three hours worth. He went on to say that the flightsim experience would pay especially big dividends when we started the navigation and cross country phase. So in that regard, considering the cost of three hours of lessons, maybe Flight Simulator has now paid for itself and then some.

I don't want to say that landings are becoming more routine. It would be fair to say they are becoming less "scary", less doubt-filled, more controlled.

Left seat. And imagine that -- I can see over this control panel!

An S-Turn-along-a-Road is a windy-day maneuver. I'd never heard of them until real training. I'd read about Lazy-8's and Chandelles and had briefly played with those in flightsim, but not S-turns. The maneuver is pretty much its name: You draw an "S" along a road, so that road is the center of your path, like a dollar sign, "$". A road is picked that is perpendicular to the wind direction. The idea is to cross the road with the wings level, and make a 180° turn back to the road so that one's wings are back to level when the road is crossed again, and so on. The trick is that on a windy day one must gauge and vary the bank of turns, all the while keeping track of one's position relative to the road. This can be done in flightsim, and you can see how you're doing by watching your track line in the GPS or in flight analysis. The trick in flightsim is that you have to manipulate the side views while you're banking.

Larry is not into flightsimming, but his teenage son is. His attitude is fairly discernable from his comments about it I've related. It's useful but it's not the real thing. He's occasionally asked me whether I've practiced various things and is generally positive about it. I was slightly surprised, but greatly pleased, when he said flightsimming had put me ahead and would more in the future. Sometimes I wondered if it was actually holding me back, if it was creating unrealistic expectations on my part or had taught me bad habits I needed to unlearn. Though I was making progress, I wasn't there yet.

Today I got really dejected for a while. I was making little dumb mistakes and my first landing just flat sucked. I nearly ran the plane off the runway it was so bad, and cussed at myself out loud.

The wind that was rolling in from the north turned to about 35-40° between the time I got there and the time we got under way. So I had about a 10 knot right-quartering headwind for my take-offs and landings on runway 36.

Beginning descent to pattern altitude. Either that or the camera has just "banked."

The first dumb mistake was during the pre-take-off checklist. I looked at the compass and then set the directional gyro to 41°, but I got confused by that backward way the compass reads. It was really at 19°. Larry caught that one immediately. Then later after we got up and were practicing medium turns, as I came back north after cutting a decent 360° turn, Larry said, "OK, now give me the one-eighty to the right that I asked you for."

After forced landing practice we headed for the runway, but we were close to the airport and due west of it, a poor angle for pattern entry. I was a little confused by this and even more confused when he said Jim (a post-solo student who was out with the other Cessna 150 at the time) was on downwind. I couldn't see Jim. It turns out Larry had said to announce to Jim we were headed for downwind. So this first landing started badly from the get-go. I was behind and trying to play catch-up the whole time. By the time I'd radioed we were at the point to turn downwind, with little runway left. The downwind leg was long, so final was too. The wind had more time to affect us and the power had to be increased. Short final was largely under control, but I did that left rudder overdose right at touchdown again, and the wheels squelched and the plane jerked and I cussed.

Larry said, "That's the stuff of which landing gear failures are made." And he said not to be afraid to get onto the rudders once the plane was down to keep the plane going where it was supposed to go, and demonstrated, serpentining the plane down the runway on the roll-out.

By this time we were to the point where we had to go all the way to the far end and come back the full length of the taxiway. The ride up the taxiway seemed to take forever as I mentally kicked myself even harder than I'd kicked that left rudder. I thought to myself, "I'll never solo at this rate. I'm getting worse instead of better."

I can honestly say that I am proud of the next three landings I made. My touchdowns were all good descent-rate-wise. Though a little later than perfect with power adjustments, I did those sufficiently as well. On one of these the plane was gliding slightly to the left, and on another the nose was off-center to the right just a bit, but both were fairly smooth. The last one -- well, I sort of needed that last one. In my opinion it was the best landing I've made yet. I thought I was down all the way when the plane pivoted slightly to the left and then the left main touched down. I asked Larry what happened and he said I had the right wing tilted.

Later, he said after the "trashy" landing, the landings were good and had gotten progressively better. He said the first one was a good lesson in what happens when one gets busy and behind the plane (was this set up by him intentionally perhaps?) He said we'd made a lot of progress today. I was going to leave and had gone to the airport office, but decided to go back and ask about the last landing, what I'd done wrong. This time he seemed a little confused and started talking about the first one. I said "No, the last one, when you said the wing was tilted. I was sort of surprised when the nose came around; that first it was only on the one wheel." He answered, "It's supposed to come down on one wheel on a crosswind landing."

It sure is.

"That's the stuff of which landing gear failures are made." Ouch. As bad as that was, it was more diplomatic than the utterance I'd made just a few seconds before, and far more diplomatic than the noise those mains made when they squelched into the pavement.

After that horrid landing, having to come back up the full length of the taxiway, I experienced a combination of emotions that is hard to describe. I figured I'd just added at least another three hours of pre-solo flight to my training. I was torn between sobbing and banging my head into the control panel.

If Larry said anything meaningful then, it has since been forgotten. I think he let me just fume for a bit in silence as we made our way back to the other end of the taxiway. As I write this now, I have to wonder whether his taking the plane down the full length of the runway so that we would have to come all the way back was done intentionally so that I'd have to time to get it back together. One way or another, I was able to. And again, as I write this now, I wish I could remember how I turned it around or if Larry did say something critical.

It turned out that three or more hours of training were not required before soloing, because the next time...

I'll never forget today as long as I live. I flew a real airplane all by myself.

It was a slightly tricky day. When I arrived the windsocks were hanging straight down. But there was some wind, and every now and then the windsocks would show a slight southeasterly crosswind. When Larry and I took off we began to hit thermals all over. Upon encountering a particularly forceful one, Larry commented that a glider would have just rolled it over and spiraled upwards. We plowed though it.

Things just seemed to click today, nearly a mirror image of the first half of the last lesson when nothing seemed to go right. It wasn't perfect by any means, but I must say I largely recognized when things were off, and was able to do a little self-critiquing. We didn't do a whole lot before we headed back in for landings. We did some turns, slow flight, departure and descending turn stalls (one each; those went well). He gave me a tough forced landing scenario. We weren't over anything that looked very inviting. I turned us back towards a radio tower and then realized there would be guy-wires all around it, and adjusted to find a safer nearby spot. It seems like we were actually just talking more and even kidding around a little. There's nothing like hitting a thermal updraft to liven up a conversation.

This is not to say you don't have to be careful when you hit one of these. They can make a turn or climb or descent really interesting. In fact, there was one at the beginning of the downwind leg, making it initially difficult to hold the pattern altitude. Luckily, there didn't seem to be any coming up on final.

I think we did three landings. Again, not perfect, but decent. The first one was a little hot and we glided some, and I should have used a little right rudder. The next two were slightly better. As we turned off after the third one Larry got into the glove box to check the time-record for the airplane against the Hobbs meter. I asked him if he wanted me to go straight or right (back to the hangar or back down the taxiway for another go). He said to take a right and I did.

Then he had me stop the plane and I looked on incredulously as he opened the door and got out! Especially after last week I didn't think this was going to happen for at least another three hours. Well, this was it! I wish I could remember exactly what Larry said but I swear I just can't. He didn't say much. I'm not even sure if he actually said to just get up in the pattern and bring it back in or if that was just understood. He must have. He said, "I'll be waiting right here and watching," as he shut the door and moved away from the aircraft.

All of a sudden that cockpit seemed pretty damned big. I'd already re-trimmed and shut off the carb heat, so there wasn't much to do but give it a little throttle and get going. I thought about the guy who'd emailed me about being scared so bad at this time his knees knocked, and wondered if I would get scared. If I did it was only a little. I'm pretty sure that as I rolled down that taxiway there was a sizeable grin on my face.

The grin left at the end of the taxiway and it was time to really get back to work. I made sure everything was set, radioed my intentions, checked for traffic, and off I went. I got off and the wind immediately pushed me to the right. I remember seeing Larry standing between the taxiway and runway as I went by, and thinking again how empty the cockpit seemed. I went around to downwind and bucked the thermal, and then had the biggest fright of the flight -- radio traffic! Someone somewhere called a position and I must have jumped three inches out of my seat. How dare this person abruptly and loudly interrupt this glorious flight with radio chatter!

Then it was time to come down. I tried to use what we'd learned about the conditions from the previous three landings and made nice transitions from downwind through to final. It looked good. It felt good. I brought it on in. It'd be nice to say it was a greaser, but I actually bounced a tad. Nothing horrible, it was still a decent landing.

Right seat. Notice there's no one there to block the view!

I got up to Larry and stopped. He came up and opened the door and I grinned again, "Dang, I bounced it." He said, "Well done. You do it better when I'm not in there with you. That wasn't a bad landing under these conditions." Then he said to do it again to make sure it wasn't an accident, so I did, without the bounce.

Later I told him I had been really surprised when he exited the airplane, that I didn't think it would happen yet. He said it was better to just do it that way, that there was nothing to be gained with long drawn-out discussions about it. He said that he'd been looking for consistency. He said he had some concerns about the wind but I'd showed him I could handle it. He also commented about how the flightsimming had made me more experienced -- something about not having to go up there and chase needles, a reference that I already knew the basics of flying and knew the instruments. He also said that this was more of a psychological hump than anything else because I hadn't done anything I hadn't already done. (I'd just done it all by myself)

Joe Zuzul
jzzl@earthlink.net