More Plane, More Power

The new beast. Photo credit: Cami Martin

Time to break the six-month stretch of silence. With the roar of an airplane engine perhaps? I suppose one reason for the lack of fresh content on here would be the fact I didn’t do a whole lot of flying during the summer. Instead, I was busy working as a student literature evangelist, selling Christian books door-to-door to pay for school. That was a success, as well as serious character building work. Now I’m back at Weimar College and though it’s hard to believe, it’s my last year of college—for now. I’ll be graduating in the spring and then who knows what’s next? I guess we’ll see…

Meanwhile, what’s been happening recently has been quite the ride. I had just gotten back to flying, building time for my commercial ticket hour by hour in the 150 and 172 when a new opportunity presented itself. I’ll write more on that later, but what I will say now is that I found out it’s time to start moving up again in the aviation world. Enough toodling along in fixed-gear, fixed-pitch planes. Time to get my complex and high performance endorsements!

The timing couldn’t have been better. A week off from school was coming up, so I seized the chance to knock out the endorsements and aircraft checkout in one go. For the plane I was going to start flying—a turbocharged, retractable gear Cessna 182—I was going to need 10 hours of dual instruction in order to be able to rent it solo. So I scheduled in my lessons and got down to learning how to fly the next biggest sibling in the Cessna family.

We started off with the basics—slow flight, stalls—and then moved on to the new features. As a boy, part of what makes flying fun for me is the buttons, knobs, and levers. Getting a complex aircraft endorsement meant getting another lever to play with: the landing gear handle. As we began pounding the pattern at Lincoln, the previously-annoying GUMP check finally became relevant for me: Gas—still a pointless item when flying a Cessna that feeds fuel from both tanks simultaneously; Undercarriage—now I have gear to lower, and I’d better remember to do it too!; Mixture—still the same; Prop—yay, another knob I get to move!

I also got to try my hand at using the emergency gear extension pump. If for some reason the wheels don’t come down like they’re supposed to, perhaps because the electrical system gave up the ghost, or the gear motors croaked, a backup system gives at least a chance at getting those wheels down so you have something to land on. Practicing for such an event was quite simple. Pull the landing gear pump circuit breaker, put the gear handle in the “Down” position, slid out a red telescoping rod handle from just in front of the seats, and begin pumping. It didn’t take too many pumps before I could start feeling a lot of resistance in the handle.

“I see wheels appearing,” my instructor was saying as he looked out the side window. The resistance was building as the hydraulic pressure was pressing the gear outward and into its locked position. A moment later a green light flashed on, indicating the wheels were down and locked. Nothing to it. Provided you haven’t had a hydraulic leak.

Getting ready to go to Monterey. Photo credit: Cami Martin

As well as gear systems, I learned how to use such things as a prop control, and cowl flaps. I also learned that full throttle is not the way to go in this turbocharged plane, as overboosting is something that will happen if you push that black knob all the way in. Learning how to fly this new plane was lots of fun, but the most fun I had was on the final lesson.

Since I wanted to get instrument and night current again, and since this airplane is meant to go places, my instructor suggested we fly to Monterey for dinner and fly back at night. I was definitely down for the idea, and to meet one more objective that I had—to fly the plane fully loaded—I recruited a couple passengers to go along.

The flight got off to a less-than-routine start when I noticed oil droplets rapidly puddling up on my windscreen during departure. “Did you put the oil cap back on?” John, my instructor asked. Oh duh. After landing and taking care of the greasy problem, we were on our way to the coast. I was quite excited because from the weather reports, we were going to be getting in a real instrument approach!

We began with a localizer approach to Monterey Regional Airport. The entire approach path was clear, so I had to create my own “clouds” by wearing the Foggles. But when we set up for the localizer at Watsonville, it was clear we were going to get the real thing. Turning onto final, I remembered to take my Foggles off. “That would have been a shame, to have flown the whole approach with those on,” John laughed.

The sight was gorgeous. The late afternoon sun was diffusing its light across a flat sea of fluffy white cloud. Our craft descended to meet the cotton below and I couldn’t help but exclaim at the spectacular scene as we dipped lower and lower into the fleecy pond. It’s times like these that stand apart from the rest of flying, with all its procedures, rules, and regulations. You almost forget about the gauges and the course you’re flying. For a short moment you’re simply lost in the beauty.

A moment later we were “in the soup,” descending along an electronically defined path toward an airport we could not yet see. Several hundred feet more and then the blank outside turned to a dark shade of gray before a landscape materialized. We broke out of the overcast with the runway in sight, right where it was supposed to be. Needless to say, the feeling was exhilarating.

After dinner, during which I remembered that we forgot to cancel IFR upon arrival (oops), it was time to head home. Departure was in the dark under IFR until we climbed out over the cloud deck where we went VFR. Then it was straight back to Auburn for my three night full-stop landings. When we finally pulled in, everyone was pretty much done for the day. 3.4 hours on the Hobbs meter. But I was now instrument current, night current, and most importantly…qualified to fly the C182TR solo!

Stay tuned to see where this new aircraft takes Air Mike!