Can you feel the g's?

Let me ask you something. When is the last time you operated a car that was built in 1968? Would you depend on that 40 year old transmission to take you to where you need to go on a road trip? I guess I would have to now answer yes. Because in a similar way, I depended on the wings of a 40 year old Cessna 172 to not fall off in the middle of my first flight as a student pilot. My father, doubling as my flight instructor, saying "Oh they make planes much better than they make cars, don't worry." It was my first real lesson about flight. After you have done your pre-flight check and have diligently assessed the avionics, ailerons, and elevator trim and have lifted off the ground, it is of no real use to then start questioning the structural integrity of the aircraft. I confess that for the first half hour I was doing this. But eventually previous experience kicked in, and I decided to submit to the notion that those things were out of my control and no longer worried about the propellor snapping off. What a metaphor for life! 

Interesting thing about the propellors not working, we were at 5,000 feet level flight. My father reaches for the throttle and pulls it back (off), the propellor stops turning. I look at him and ask, why would you do that? It was the best way to prove to someone that if you lose power you wont just fall out of the sky (we had debated this fact earlier). Actually it was quite nice without the engine, we just sat there both staring forward, cruising quietly through the earth's gorgeous atmosphere, two descendants of the great apes in a metal box impersonating a bird thousands of feet above the ground sailing into the great blue yonder. So if it ever happens don't flip out. The glide ratio is how far you can get as you lose altitude. 20/1 glide ratio for perfect conditions in the 172 means that if I'm 5,280 ft (statute mile), I could technically get 20 miles for an emergency landing. However wind changes this dramatically. 80 knots is the glide speed that maxes out the glide ratio so adjust the yoke and trim accordingly, AFTER first completing the emergency checklist.

I noticed that it is better to be aware of heading, airspeed, weather, and most importantly where you are on the sectional chart! Because when you have to land, you not only have to remember in which direction the airport is, but you have to find it! 

The elevator trim is my friend and makes life much easier, it does away with the need of keeping constant force on the yoke. After setting a climb angle use it to set the yoke. 

I also learned to read the weather reports called METARs, meteorological report. Use this weather service

It will give you a report like this:

KRFD 272254Z 33008KT 8SM OVC008 14/13 A2971 RMK AO2 CIG 005V010 SLP058 T01440133

The first piece:

KRFD

K stands for contiguous United States, I have no idea why the K. RFD is the airport identifier (not code) We actually fly out of poplar grove airport C77, it is uncontrolled (no tower), but we use the Rockford forecasts.

272254Z

The date and time. 27 is the 27th of May at 22:54 zulu (Greenwich mean-time), minus five hours for CST during daylight savings, the time is 5:54 pm the time of the last update. 

33008KT

Winds. 0/360 degrees is north, 90 degrees is east, 180 is south, 270 is west. So here winds are out of 330 or 30 degrees West of North at 8 knots (nautical miles per hour). A nautical mile is 6,075 feet as opposed to 5,280 (statute mile). A nautical mile is one minute of latitude (the distance between north and south pole being 180 degrees). If one degree of latitude has 60 minutes or 60 nautical miles, what is the circumference of the earth?

8SM OVC008

Visibility is 8 statute miles or 8SM. Clouds are overcast at 800 feet or OVC008. If it were 8000 it would have been 080. 80,000 ft is represented as 800, just drop the last two zeroes. 

14/13 A2971

Temperature, dew point, and pressure. 14 degrees celsius, dew point 13 degrees. Set the altimeter to 29.71, thats inches of mercury, one atmosphere being 29.92 inches. As you can tell we are dealing with slightly high pressure. 

RMK AO2 CIG 005V010 SLP058 T01440133

Remarks - AO2 means automatic machine did the reading that can discriminate precipitation (AO1 can't).  CIG variable ceiling from 500 to 1,000 feet. SLP - sea level pressure 058, its in milibars or Pascals 1013.25mbar is one atm, 058 means you dropped the 1-0-1, so pressure is 1010.58. The last is measure is the exact temp and dew point - 14.40 degrees C, and 13.3 degrees C.

You can check the weather anywhere at anytime, it really is a modern marvel. Can you imagine how much riskier things were before this weather service? We are panzies compared to older times.

One time during a turn we banked at 45 degrees, it was a two g turn, it was pretty cool. He looked over and asked, "can you feel the g's?". I wanted to say, "maybe we should ask the wings..."

That was the first day.

On the second day, it was a bit windy. We drove out to the airport anyway, it was such a beautiful day, the only cloud cover was broken at 10,000 feet. The sun was glaring and bright. It was just a little too windy, 16 knots gusting to 21 knots. We called it, not today. We walked back to the car, I was staring at the sky. My father says to me, this is good that this happened, many times you will be tempted to ignore reasons that ground you. But remember, "it is better to be on the ground wishing you were in the sky, than in the sky wishing you were on the ground."  It was a good lesson.