Jan Solo!

Maintain VFR at or below two-thousand, roger.

In the days before radios and intercoms were standard equipment on aircraft, the instructor (sitting behind the student) would tug on his shirttail to get his attention, then yell in his ear what he needed to communicate. It became tradition to cut the student's shirttail off and hang it up at the club after the student's first solo, symbolizing the instructor's confidence in the student (no need to get their attention and yell in their ear anymore).

While the tradition seems to have died off, at least in my flying club, the excitement and import of my first solo was not diminished by the intactness of my shirt. 

I am no longer an aspiring pilot. I am now a "pilot". Well, a "student pilot", if you want to get all technical, but I am now entrusted and permitted to fly an airplane by myself. Within certain limitations, of course. But still, I can now take the ship out and be completely responsible for flying it safely.

Typically, prospective solo students must be checked out by another CFI before that student can be signed off to solo the club's aircraft. Fiona duly made the arrangements two weeks out, but due to an acute instructor shortage (job opportunity!) and crummy weather, I was only able to complete the oral exam portion of the examination. After the second attempt at the flying portion of the test was scrubbed due to high winds, I was convinced that I wouldn't have an opportunity to solo before I had to leave for the Pacific Crest Trail.

I was in bed (at four o'clock in the afternoon, depressed) when the text from Fiona came through -- she had put in a good word with the club owner and he'd agreed to let me solo without the phase check. How's that for confidence? Now if only the weather would cooperate.

The First Solo
After weeks of brutal crosswinds, gusts, turbulence, low overcast, and all manner of lousy weather, Wednesday, April 22nd was nearly windless: perfect for a first solo. Fiona and I went around the pattern a couple of times to get in the groove, and then she had me taxi back to the tiedown, got out, and said "Have fun!".  This was it. I was on my own.

The very first thing I did when I had the airplane to myself was over-lean the engine and kill it.

I restarted and completed the rest of the taxi and runup, and suddenly found myself accelerating down the runway, and then airborne.

I couldn't stop smiling. The airplane seemed to leap into the sky. I had climbed a thousand feet before I had barely finished the crosswind leg. Ok, time to focus. Head in the game. Talk through it. Carb heat, throttle, pitch, flaps, pitch, throttle, flaps, cleared option, base turn, pitch, final approach, alllmost down...almosst.....the airplane just kept floating down the runway about five hundred feet farther than I was used to. All that right-seat ballast really does make a difference! Finally it settled onto the runway, and I was officially a solo pilot!

When Neil Armstrong landed the Eagle on the Lunar surface, after a journey of a half a million miles, with the eyes of the world on him, do you know what his first words were?

Celebration? Backslapping? "Woohoo"?

Negative. He said "Ok, let's get on with it..." And proceeded to run the after landing checklist with Buzz Aldrin. That's pure pilot. 

It was with that example in mind upon my first solo touchdown that I kept my mind on flying the airplane - flaps, carb heat, trim, fuel, throttle, let's go.

I went around the pattern a couple of times to get the yips out, and decided at that point that I'd had enough excitement for one day.

Fiona was all smiles when she greeted me. It sure felt good to mark that first .5 hours of "Pilot in Command" time in my logbook. Half an hour down, 249.5 to go until I'll be the one sending new pilots off with a "Have Fun!". I can't wait to log them.

 

 

The Tenor Contemplates His First Solo

According to my logbook, as of this morning I have completed one hundred and four landings and received 28.5 hours of dual instruction.  It is right around this time in a student's career that their instructor must take a deep breath and let them leap from the nest, unassisted.

I'm told that your first solo is when you realize what this flying thing is really all about. I'm nervous, of course, but confident in my ability and thrilled to be at this first milestone. Flying an airplane alone makes you the PIC (Pilot in Command). Previously, if anything went sideways, I could hand over the airplane to Fiona, and she could could ably save my bacon. When I'm up there alone, it's all up to me to make the mistakes and recover correctly before they kill me. I can't wait.

I've learned a lot up to this point -- crammed quite a bit of knowledge and skills into my (abnormally small) head in a short amount of time, but nothing teaches a lesson like making dumb rookie mistakes and having to fix it yourself. I taught myself engine mechanics using exactly this method.

Of course, just as I've reached this important step in my flying career, Real Life™ conspires to put a hold on flying for four months while my wife and I hike the Pacific Crest Trail. You can follow along on our epic hiking adventure over at our PCT blog at www.asinglestepPCT.blogspot.com

Until then - straighten up and fly right.

What's Our Vector, Victor?

Learning the radios is probably the single most nerve-wracking skill a pilot needs to master.

Proper radio procedure is essentially another language. Yes, it sounds mostly like English - sometimes remarkably like English - but it is not regular English. Just like any other foreign language, there is a unique vocabulary, grammar, and a cadence that needs to be internalized before one can be proficient in speaking it.

There are just a few simple rules to follow that will have you sounding like a real pilot in no time. Follow these and you're most of the way there:

1. Thou shalt not utter the name any number above 9 (pronounced "niner"), for they are unclear and profane. Numbers higher than niner shall be pronounced by their individual digits. For example: thirteen is "one-three", 270 is "two seven zero", etc.
2. Thou shalt identify yourself after every transmission, JanDrees.
3. Thou shalt utilize the NATO Alphabet when spelling anything or saying any letter. Only November-Oscar-Oscar-Bravos use civilian letter pronunciations.
4. Thou shalt speak rapidly and with a marked vocal fry. You are a pilot and in a damned hurry, but you also need to sound cool and collected.

A Typical Conversation in Aviation Procedural English
Any flight departing a towered airport requires a call to Ground Control to let them know who and where you are, and what you want to do:
 
"Oakland Ground this is Cessna SevenFiveSevenJulietDelta, a Cessna onefivetwoslantUniform at Landmark West. We'd like to taxi to two-eight right for VFR to San Pablo Bay with Romeo."

Ground will come back with an acknowledgement and taxi directions. At Oakland, there's pretty much just one taxiway for GA aircraft, so it's easy:

"SevenfivesevenJulietDelta taxi two-eight right via Delta Charlie maintain VFR at or below two-thousand squawk zero three five six"

...to which you reply: "Taxi two-eight right via Delta Charlie squawk zero three five six, SevenJulietDelta".

Next, after preparing the airplane for blastoff, you switch your radio to the tower frequency and ask for permission to use the runway:

"SevenJulietDelta holding short of two-eight right ready for departure." Which gets reply:

"SevenJulietDelta winds three four zero at one-two, runway two-eight right cleared for takeoff, maintain VFR at or below two-thousand, follow the freeway north-west" to which you reply:

"Cleared for takeoff two-eight right, SevenJulietDelta."

Being thus properly blessed, you may now escape gravity's surly bonds.

You probably see the pattern here - identify and request, response with instructions, acknowledge by repeating the relevant parts of the instructions and identify. At the basic level this is how most exchanges go.

Why Not Just "Rrrrrroger"?
Instructions are read back to double-check that the pilot understands the instructions. Simply acknowledging ATC with a "roger" is not the same as verifying you heard it correctly. It may seem pedantic, but there's a very good reason for this.

Imagine a complex traffic situation, where the controller is attempting to wrangle five or six aircraft in the pattern at the same time.  Bonanza FiveSixSevenPapaOscar is a fantastically important pilot-guy in a big hurry, and he doesn't hesitate to let the controller know that he's not happy about being kept waiting. She gets fed up and tells him to "Continue holding short at two-eight left. I will TELL you when you are cleared for take off !" SevenPapaOscar, half his attention diverted by his girlfriend in the right seat, and the other half occupied with the letter that his wife's lawyer just sent him, doesn't hear the whole transmission - he hears only "blah blah cleared for take off". Playing the part of the fantastically important pilot-guy for his girlfriend, he responds "rrrrroger". The controller assumes pilot-guy has been sufficiently told-off and shifts her attention to the other aircraft to let PapaOscar cool his heels a bit longer.  PapaOscar, thinking he finally got his clearance, proceeds to attempt a takeoff directly into the path a Gulfstream on short final, resulting in a really neat explosion and a handsome insurance payout to his widow and her boyfriend.

This is more than just a scary story - the worst accidental air disaster in history happened in almost exactly this way.

_________________

To not end this post on a total downer, I will relate a story that happened recently to me a friend of mine. I My friend thought he was getting pretty good at this flying thing, having just completed twelve touch-and-goes in a busy pattern. After the last landing he clears the runway and calls ground "SevenJulietDelta is clear of runway two-eight right on Golf".

Those of you paying attention will notice that I left off the "where to" part of the transmission.

The controller replies "SevenJulietDelta, say parking." (meaning: "where are you parking so I can tell you how to get there."  "Uhh, Parking!" Fiona laughed all the way back to the tie-down.

Until next time, straighten up and fly right.

________________
If you want to listen to professionals speaking the aviation language at a busy airport, go here.  KOAK also has some streams; if you listen, you just might get to hear me making a fool of myself on the radios.