Freaking Libras

Officially, Happy New Year Everybody! If your baby didn’t go missing it was just because I ran out of time.

This one:

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/01/loyola-early-new-years-baby.html

This one:

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/01/01/2009-01-01_city_welcomes_new_years_first_new_arriva.html

and This one:

http://www.bakersfield.com/hourly_news/story/652441.html

are all mine. You should have watched them more carefully.

In other more pertinent news, I finally got checked out in the 172.  As you may well remember, I was sentenced to getting checked out in the plane on New Year’s Day but due to some technical weather difficulties I had to wait it out until yesterday. I think God likes to mess with me, because it’s not fair to make me wait several days to do something I don’t want to do. I know life’s not fair and all but nobody needs this much stress in their life and I’ve been really good lately so karmically I’m not sure what’s going on. Maybe it was that rabbit I ate a few weeks back. You shouldn’t eat bunnies.

In any case, I arrived at the airport and was sent out to preflight which calmed me down a little, because it’s hard to mess up a preflight, you haven’t even left the ground yet. It also gave me a chance to try and remember everything I could about how the plane I hadn’t flown in 4 years was set up and reminded how difficult it is to check fuel in a highwing plane. It requires like climbing and ladders and ridiculous feats incapable of man.  So after the preglight I crawled into the plane and checked out the instrument panel, trying valiantly to use my undeveloped photographic memory to memorize the placement of any necessary items and after a brief discussion on quirks of the airplane and how their particular radio worked, we were off.

We traveled to the training area they use to practice all their maneuvers and did some slow flight, stalls and steep turns. I managed to do all those fairly well and next time I’m out there I will try to remember to take pictures. It was actually a really gorgeous day, there were some clouds but they were hanging around the mountain and hill tops while the rest of the sky was a clear blue. After proving that I could still fly an airplane, we headed back to my Local Airport and did some takeoffs and landings, including a go-around (when you pretend like there’s some reason you can’t land and have to keep circling the airport, like a deer jumped out in front of you, or there’s a tribe of circus performers who decided to take over the runway while you were out flying and refuse to stop their tricks) and emergency landings. My instructor then signed me off and said to go at it, so I did a few more to/landings and called it a day.

So, it was of course not really something I needed to worry so much about, and I actually knew that but telling yourself that and convincing yourself of that are two separate things. But the good news is I’m officially checked out in it and I never have to do it again, other than the biennials I discussed once. But that’s not for another two years.  I’m going to do a little more solo work because some of my landings were a little iffy. Mostly just because I was coming in too high. The mountains in the valley throw me off and I always feel like I’m lower than I am. And I know I can land planes well. I’m not 100% confident all the time, but I did know that I could land that Cherokee well. So I’m trying to get my flying skills in the 172 up to the same standards with which I flew the Cherokee. The problem with the highwing planes is that they’re a lot like Libras. They get within 3 feet of the ground and then think “you know, maybe I shouldn’t land. Maybe it would be a better idea to float down the runway for the next 400 feet without ever touching the earth. I mean, the ground isn’t such a great place to be, I’d rather be flying- after all, I’m an airplane. But you know, on the other side… the ground is kind nice, it’s hard and safe. Gravity is sort of fun… but I do kind of like this whole floating in air thing… what should I do? Pilot, what would you do?”

And then you as a pilot are like “DEAR GOD MAKE UP YOUR MIND” as you head towards the trees at the end of the runway.

All this happens because of ground effect, which as I mentioned in a previous entry, is interference with lift from the ground. So you can be within like a wingspan of the runway and just never settle to the earth. I loved the Cherokee because it was a lowing plane and when you landed it, it landed. It didn’t do this wishy-washy-maybe-I-will-maybe-I-won’t land thing that Cessna’s are prone towards. Freaking Libras.