Today was pretty fun! The ground school covered the basics of the airplane and the instruments. Learned a few cool tricks, like if your static system gets clogged (powers your Airspeed, Altitude, and Vertical Speed Indicator [VSI]), and you know the clog is PAST the Pitot tube, you can break the VSI to get your Airspeed and hopefully Altitude back. That re-creates your static system.

Then it was out to the plane! A quick pre-flight and off I go. N5915A was built in 1956, before bells & whistles were invented. Some of the instrumentation does not work, but the important stuff does. It’s VFR anyway.

I learned today that the owner of Northwest Regional (52F) decreed that there shall be no more Touch & Go maneuvers at the field, so we have to fly over to Justin’s Propwash Airport (16X) which might just be one of the coolest named airports around. I did several Touch & Gos, and one wave-off landing because I was too high in the pattern.

So far, my biggest challenge has been maintaining instruments while flying. I’m using the trim more and that is helping me maintain attitude and altitude. I had a couple of rougher landings today, but nothing worse than some of the carrier style landings that the pilots over at AMR have been doing. You know, the ones where the pilots don’t even open the flight deck door to say “Seeya!” on the way out?

I’m working on my float while landing. I had an instructor tell me several years ago NOT to float. Just put the bird on the ground. This one is encouraging float. I still hear that other instructor in my head.

Off to study and prepare for tomorrow!