Lesson 17 - What is epiphany
October 11, 2022
epiphany
noun [ C or U ]
a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, or suddenly become conscious of, something that is very important to you
Exactly two weeks ago, I had my last lesson and after that lesson, I was beat. I walked away after that lesson knowing that the plane was controlling my actions rather than my actions controlling the plane. It is our natural tendency to feel the sting of rebuke more powerfully than the good things. Typically, I am not someone who dwells in the past, or feels depressed for something isn’t going my way. I learn from my mistakes, and I move on. That is one thing I am very good at - to move on from the mistakes in the past. I tried to recollect “ what went wrong ” and discussed with Justin and Drew about the area I needed to improve in. It didn’t cheer me up a whole lot, but we did identify a few things to work on. The only way I would be able apply any of the changes in my understanding of handling of controls was in the actual flight, so today I was looking forward to see how that translates in reality. I made a deal with Drew. Before we stepped in the plane, I told him:
I am not getting out of the plane until I land it to your satisfaction. That's my deal to you.
The lesson started with maneuvers. I took off from Runway 26 and departed to the South, to our training area. The weather was beautiful - more than 10 statute miles of visibility and 5 knots of direct crosswind. With such a beautiful weather, we were expecting some traffic up there for sure.
The initial part of today's lesson was to re-discover the rudder control and it was an eye-opening lesson. After about 19 hours of flying, I do have some understanding of how physical forces work in third dimension and I was astonished to witness how much stability rudder adds to the maneuvering, especially in two dimensional maneuver, such as turning a plane.
As we reached 3000 feet altitude, Drew asked me do a standard 360 degree turn to the left side. I used ailerons to turn to the left, and as I did that, due to increased G-factor on left wing, the nose dropped. I should have anticipated that and I should have trimmed my pitch for easier yoke controls, but I didn't, and as a result of my compunded errors, I dove and lost 400 feet altitude within the matter of seconds. So I put the back-pressure on the yoke and slowly started to climb back up to 300 feet, and then some more. My Vertical Speed Indicator (VSI) was almost perfect sinusoidal wave by the time I finished my 360 degree turn.
Drew was surprised to see that, but by now he has understood that the best way to teach me is to demo. He said to me,
Drew: Now let's do it again. but let's just relax and turn the plane around in circle without thinking too much. I am going to demonstrate one.
Seeing is believing. I learnt from that demonstration a hundred times more than when I was trying to learn from my mistakes. It's a very fine adjustment game between pitch, power, trim, and rudder, and when you get to the desired output, you don't really need to do much - only monitor and make small corrections. Plane flies by itself. Drew's demonstration really helped me understand how these controls work together in harmony.
After I practiced the turns, we turned back to Rostraver and practiced a few traffic patterns. I was determined to get my landings down to perfection and I wasn't going to stop until that happened.
I got pretty close, extremely close to what I was hoping for, but then in the last few seconds I could not hold onto my nerves and I messed up. I landed, but it wasn’t as smooth as I wanted it to be.
After the lesson, and especially after Drew’s demonstration I have realized a few things:
I observed that there was a slight lag between my control input and change in the site picture. I believe that has been a massive disconnect between my actions and reactions. I have been expecting the site picture to follow immediately, just like driving a car. But the forces act a bit differently in fluids, such as air. There is considerably low amount of friction between the air and the control surface, and hence, it takes some time for the plane to react to change in control my actions. This was the moment of a sudden revelation for me as to why I was all over the place when I was trying to control the altitude and bank in the turn.
Adding rudder control to my turns and on final approach was a win for the day. It was remarkable to notice how much stable the turns and the final approach got after I introduced rudder control. Previously, I was fighting to maintain the ascend and the descent rate. With the correct rudder input, the transformation was night and day. My turns and final approaches became incredibly stable.
For most of my final approaches, I naturally tend to get on the backside of the power curve. But even then, as I touched down, I found the transition from airspeed to groundspeed really fast. To state the numbers, on touchdown my speed was about 65 knots, which is more on the back side of the power curve for the landing of Cessna 172. Drew and Justin have emphasized on multiple occasions that I have to maintain speed of 70 knots, because speed is my friend. But as the ground nears, to hold the nerves and let the plane land by itself - it is very difficult for me. Somehow I want to get on the ground as quickly as I can. That is something I have to work on next.
There is one more item I have to work on and that is rounding out the nose as I prepare to land. On couple of occasions I flared too early too much and even at 65 knots the plane entered the ground effect prematurely and I gained 20-some feet altitude instantly, and the pleane bled off the speed rapidly, risking the stall at 20 feet, rather than at 5 feet above the runway. That was enough to ruin the otherwise excellent landing. In the end, It all came down to holding onto my nerves and making much finer adjustments to the input controls.
Overall, today's lesson was a striking improvement over the last lesson. I have slowly started to develop the “ feel ” for the controls and with more reps it will only get better. Drew and Justin pointed out that my taxi, take-off roll has improved so much in last few lessons that it is coming naturally to me now, and similarly, it would not be long before my landings will get to that point, too.
I am waiting patiently for that moment to come.