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December 25, 2004
Christmas flying
So I was at the airport, washing my airplane, when someone came from the parking lot asking whether the FBO was open. He was looking to rent an airplane to take up his relatives for a little tour. I said I didn't know, and even if they were, I doubt there would be any flight instructors around.
I offered to fly them, and we had a fun two flights with his three kids, the mom, and the grandpa, who happened to be the CEO of a toy company. Lots of pictures were taken, some of which I hope to post here...
Posted by Christian Goetze at 03:39 PM | Comments (4)
December 19, 2004
Landings - Finally
Finally running out of excuses, I started K on traffic patterns and >gulp< landings. Teaching reminds me of how much I take for granted. It is amazing what interesting reponses students come up with. On one approach, we were really not aligned with the runway, and I was waiting for K to fix it with the rudder, when suddenly he did use rudder, just the other one. I couldn't get in fast enough and we left some interesting rubber marks on the runway.
Posted by Christian Goetze at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2004
Preparing for Panel Upgrade
These are the "before" pictures.
Note the paper gasket on the compass window showing
Note the paper gasket on the airspeed indicator obscuring the true airspeed readout window.
Posted by Christian Goetze at 03:51 PM | Comments (0)
December 11, 2004
Use the Rudder!
Today was a really hazy day, so we stayed close to the airport and I introduced K to pattern operations. I really need to find a way to get him to use the rudder. He notices that the airplane veers to the left on the takeoff roll, and tries to fix it with the aileron. Then, when he lifts off, the right wing drops. This is actually a common mistake. Watch takeoffs on any small airport and about 90% of the pilots will drop the right wing on liftoff.
K did nicely with the radio ops and the climbing turn and level-off at pattern altitude went well too. Prelanding check needs to be reenforced, and on final approach once again the coordination bug hits, leading to a very rocky approach. We simply need to do more slow flight practice.
Let's hope the visiblity improves tomorrow, so we can actually go someplace.
Posted by Christian Goetze at 04:49 PM | Comments (0)
December 05, 2004
More Ground Reference Maneuvres
Today we had a 172 with two new jugs, so break-in procedures had to be followed: full power as much as possible. The only thing we can practice reasonably well under these conditions are more ground reference maneuvres.
The weather was rather hazy, and we simply took off to fly over the salines in the south bay. Those are nice and square. K did a good job, and I didn't get airsick this time.
Posted by Christian Goetze at 02:49 PM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2004
More Formations - with Pictures
So today we did another 2-ship formation. Wolfgang from Palo Alto was flying the photo plane, with Melinda Green (a co-worker of mine) taking pictures, and I was flying N626FT with Colin Aro.
The conditions were not perfect, with a lot of smog in the air and some low level stratus. We did several circles over the Golden Gate Bridge. These are probably the best pictures of the lot:
Posted by Christian Goetze at 04:59 PM | Comments (1)