The Katana and me.

The flight with Andreas in the Porsche powered DR400 just served to remind me that I really want to FLY an airplane. The club rules (and common sense) prevented Andreas from allowing me much pilot in command time in the Robin. The flight sated my desire to see the world from the air but did little for my need to rock the wings. With my German constantly getting better I found a general aviation club based right at Stuttgart airport. Stuttgart is a pretty good sized class C airport where GA planes share the single runway with the big boys. Seemed like a good place to get the feel of German air traffic.

I emailed the club and hooked up with Werner, a designated examiner for the European equivalent of the FAA (the JAA). He agreed to let me fly the club Katana as long as I took him along for the ride. I have flown 8 different planes since starting my license and I really enjoyed the time in the Cessna 150 at Friday Harbor. Since the Katana is also a two seater, but a completely modern one I thought it would be a gas to fly. I was right.

Germany has been enjoying an unseasonable spate of sunny skies and cool, but clear air, so I was really looking forward to seeing the foliage from the air. I arrived early at the airport and found yet another general aviation operation so I grabbed a price list. They told me that with a checkout I could fly any of their planes by myself. This seemed too good to be true, but it certainly sparked an interest. Next time, first the Katana.

Werner and I took off with no mishaps. The ground and tower gave reasonably clear English instructions and I have no doubt I would have done fine on my own. Werner only grabbed the stick once and that was to make a minor course correction for our exit from the class C airspace. I could have done it myself had he been able to give clear instructions, but I think his English lagged too far behind his thinking for him to risk telling me what to do. This problem reared its head on the landings as well. We flew an absolutely gorgeous route that I highly recommend to the Stuttgart visitor. We flew along the Swabian Alps until we hit the Hohenzollern castle. This fairytale number warranted a few circles then we continues on to Ruetlingen. From there we headed west towards the Schwazwald. Whipping the Katana along through the valleys towards the Dönau river was a complete gas. Often the plane was below the level of the surrounding table lands as we slalomed along. At the Dönau we hooked a right and buzzed another couple of castles and a few really nice looking towns. Then we did a one-eighty and headed back towards Neuschwanstein. Well short of there we decided to land at Mengen.

The pattern at Mengen is not close to a normal left traffic rectangle. There are all sorts of jogs and dodges that get slipped in because of noise abatement. Since I could not be told how to fly the pattern in real time this led to the stick being yanked around a bit by Werner. It was really annoying since I was trying to get the feel of setting up the Katana for landing. We did two landings at Mengen so that I woud have three altogether. That allowed Werner to sign my book allowing me to drive Katanas while here. At least I can after I get a JAA license. We paid the tower at Mengen for our landing. Far more surprising than the different tower and ground controllers is the ubiquitous landing fee here. The fee ranges from a few Euros to over a hundred for airports where they do not want general aviation traffic.

Stuttgart is over a hundred bucks for a single engine if it is not based there. The mysteries of the landing fee are still a bit murky to me as the prices Werner quoted were quite different from those mentioned by the FBO. After Mengen we headed back to Stuttgart and again the approach involved enough dodging that I kept getting the stick taken away. My landing was really nice though and did not have a bit of assist from Werner. My evaluation of the Katana is that if you have the money you should buy one over the 150, but since I have no money I will dream of a 150/152 with VFR instrumentation.

A spectacular day flying a really nice plane. When I returned to the lab I was still so giddy that I must have seemed high. My enthusiasm was catching because when I mentioned where I had been to my collaborator he immediately wanted to go flying with me. Hmm I though, perhaps it would be rude to leave Germany without taking my host up for a short spin.

Nothing but clouds since I received my Private Pilot Certificate. My father-in-law is in town and I would like to take him flying. Astonishingly, my brother-in-law has said it would be okay to take my fourteen year old nephew up (he loves maps and flying over his neighborhood is going to be great). I would like to take Nell for a flight… and maybe the boys. I am set for a flight to Las Vegas on Thursday in a Diamond DA40. It’s a full glass panel and it will be a good demonstration of what having a little plane for the Vegas trips would be like.Adam returns on Wednesday and we’re trying to plan some sort of airport-hopping trip to build some time and get used to cross-country navigation.

Directly after getting my license I left for a three week data collection trip to the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart. I thought perhaps I would look into getting a flight while I was away. Nothing pressing you understand, not like an addiction, just an understandable desire to observe differences in customs. I made it through three days before I was surfing the web trying to find possibilities. At first it seemed there were no airports in Germany save the one I arrived at. Then, when I found airports I could not find FBOs. Turns out a lot of this problem was due to my not speaking German well enough to understand what I was reading. Eventually I found the resources for not one, but three flights, each a completely different experience. I think I can hold out ‘til I get home to fly again, but that is only because I am flying right away when I return.

On my way up to Paso Robles to take my flight test I decided to hold the Elph out the little window to circumvent the problem of shooting through scratched plexiglas. A piece of advice: hold very tightly to your camera if you try this. There is a good deal more wind than you might suppose and I nearly lost the camera. That would have been typical.

By way of a short follow up to my previous post on the test: the story of a flight log. My grandfather’s enlistment in the Royal Canadian Flying Corps for the tail end of the First World War was a major source of entertainment for me as a child. There were photos to be examined, letters to be read, and most interesting of all a small yellow book with a leather clasp that contained all his flight data. A log book from the First World War probably only counts as an historical document in my melodramatic mind, but I got a real thrill as I flew up to Paso Robles knowing it was in my pocket. The last time that book left the ground in a single engine airplane, the plane was slow, ungainly, fragile and well armed. I made shooting noises as I flew up. Several planes took damage from my bullets, along with some farm houses and a VOR.

When I passed the test I asked the examiner to sign me off in my grandfather’s log as well as my own. Colin just had the same examiner sign the log for him. Hopefully I will not have to pry the book from his fingers as it is one of my treasured possessions.

This is the class G airspace sketch where the examiner drew the lines and then the clouds and said, “This is class G, label it and give visibility and cloud clearances.” You can see where I am writing things, crossing them out, writing them again. I have no idea. He helped me with pretty much all of it. So if you want to take a ride with someone in Class G airspace and have it really feel like a ride in Class G airspace you should probably pick a different pilot.

It was a great flight up to Paso Robles. A little over two hours in the air. All the things that I love about flying. Dramatic paths cut through the clouds, an entirely different view of the way the weather lies on the land, a view all around the broad circular band of the horizon.

Following my virtual lines in the sky, drawn by the clever technology of radio transmitters and recievers, I scooted up the coast, past Santa Barbara and over the mountain range between the coast and the first part of the desert basin. Paso Robles sits on this plain, between the wet of the coast and the dry of the desert.

Click to continue »

I passed. I now hold a Private Pilot certificate and the United States Government says that I can carry passengers in a small, single engine airplane which lands on terra firma (as opposed to the water).That’s the important thing. The truth is a long story. There’s a story for the way up (I forgot to bring a check, Nick forgot to give me the logs for the plane (but he wrote a check for the examiner, so I forgave him), and I saw a missile launch as I went past Vandenburg Air Force Base.

There’s a story about the check ride, because a strict examiner would not have passed me, but since I have a strict instructor, and the examiner knows the quality of instruction, I was allowed a little more latitude (and altitude) than the FAA specifies.

There’s a story for the way down, because it became my first night solo, included a period where I was totally JFK Jr in greyed-out conditions, and ended with my first solo night landing. I have a really solid instructor for Private Pilot. When I was greyed out I could hear him, “Fly the plane. Don’t look over there, fly the plane. If you need help from Los Angeles Center, they’ll help you, but fly the plane. Fly the plane first.” I flew the plane. Unlike JFK Jr, I looked at my little artificial horizon, with the little plane, and kept it’s wings level, nailed the altitude (7,500 feet above sea level), and followed the radio beacon radial toward Camarillo. Half an hour later, after a lot of instrument staring, the grey faded to black, the night sky started to show up, and the lights on the ground started to glow gold. Then I could see to fly again. It helped that I could ask Point Mogu Approach to check if Santa Monica was clear enough to land (it was), and in general have those people out there on the radio with me in some sense. More tomorrow.

I flew yesterday at 10am. Eventually Adam and I will get around to describing our primary instructor, Bob Delleo. He’s a fairly strict guy and has exacting standards. That’s been, at times, very frustrating (and demoralizing) when taking a lesson, but from my reading it sounds like it makes for a better pilot. Your first instructor’s voice is in your head for a long time, so it should be a really helpful voice. Bob’s is.

So tomorrow I am meant to fly up to Paso Robles (about a ninety minute flight for one hundred sixty-two nautical miles) for my check ride. The same FAA examiner that rode with Adam will ride with me and determine if I can be certificated as a pilot. (Pilot’s are not licensed, they are certificated. Huh.)

I am so nervous I can’t eat. Even yesterday.

The last time I flew with Bob and I was so distracted I screwed up pretty much every maneuver. It was embarrassing. My landings were terrible. He didn’t think it would be a good idea to sign me off to schedule the check ride, he thought he should do some more work with me. I flew the next day and I was fine. I did every landing okay and did the maneuvers. The truth is that I shouldn’t fly if I am nervous or stressed. No one should. There are times that I have gone out to do a little landing work, gotten up, done a landing, decided that my head wasn’t in the plane enough, and taxied back and shut down. That’s the responsible way to fly.

Yesterday I climbed into the plane with Bob. I hadn’t flown in a week. Some of the things felt unfamiliar, like the seat position. Well, the slide catch was broken, but I figured it out. The wheel was chocked, which it isn’t normally. Little things to throw me off. But I started to go through my check list and the comfort of the routine brought me back to the plane. I listened to the Automated Terminal Information System (ATIS) and wrote down the weather and stuff I needed. I adjusted my altimeter and called the ground controller to taxi. Now I was in the plane.

We did two landings (a soft field and then a short field) with similar take-offs, and then we flew up to Point Dume and did maneuvers. We flew home over a layer of clouds. It was some of the most dramatic flying I have done. We skimmed in under a high broken layer at eight thousand five hundred feet and a lower layer near twelve hundred feet that was sliding in from the ocean. We dropped over the edge of the lower level, high over the airport, and slipped down into the traffic pattern. It was great. It was everything I wanted flying to be.

I did a soft field landing and Bob helped a little on the throttle at the last moment, which demonstrated how just a little power could really soften that last moment. He said I had flown well and that if I can fly that well for the check ride that I’ll pass without a problem.

Back this morning for some more review of the oral portion of the exam. I know the things about aviation that I need to know, as long as I don’t freeze and blank.