When I changed flying
instructors at Pearland Regional Airport a few months ago, my new teacher,
Jeff Kling, shown at right in front of his Cessna 150, started off right away
with preparations to show me how to land an airplane.
We painstakingly (with the “pain”
being entirely on my self-induced part) practiced “slow flight”, the conditions
required for landing. This involves turning on the carburetor heat, pulling the
throttle back to decrease the engine RPM’s to 1700, and slowly adding flaps—10 degrees,
20 degrees, 30 degrees, until the aircraft’s speed drops to around 40 mph—all the
while maintaining your altitude and keeping the airplane’s nose pointed up so
you don’t go into a dive. Can you see where I might be feeling a bit stressed
here?
In any case, the idea is to
slow the plane down enough so that it can no longer fly and therefore falls out
of the sky! The critical part of this equation, is that you’re close enough to
the ground at this point so you hit the runway without breaking off your
landing gear. It’s a fine line, but I’m always confident that Jeff is there to
catch me when I…well…FALL!
During our last flying
lesson, the weather turned out to be glorious! We had slogged through a month
of days that were too windy, too rainy, or too COLD to even get the plane
started. But this day was perfectly sunny, amazingly calm, and a whopping 59
degrees!
I’m getting better now at taxing, where you use the rudder
pedals to steer the plane with your feet while it’s on the ground (the yoke
[steering wheel] only works when you’re in the air). I actually managed to keep
the plane going fairly straight down the runway during our takeoff, as I pushed
the throttle all the way in, increasing the speed until the plane lifted itself
off the ground, and I took off into one of the bluest skies I’d seen in a long,
long time.
Jeff had me practice my turns, and that dreaded “slow flight”—again!
At the end of our session, we headed back to the airport, where he asked me to
fly the pattern (the rectangular box around the landing strip). I flew parallel
to the runway, then began the slow flight procedure. I turned final base and lined
up in front of the air strip to start the descent. But this time, Jeff didn’t
take over the controls as he had done in the past.
The ground was coming up fast. I picked a spot on the runway
and kept my eyes glued on it, keeping it in the lower third of the windshield
to set my glide path. The airplane stall alarms went off, alerting me to the fact
that we were falling out of the sky. I’d already figured that out; I didn’t
need any more stress!
"Nose up! Nose up! Nose up!" yelled Jeff. And before I knew it, we hit the ground; but not nearly as
hard as I had anticipated, and best of all, the landing gear still appeared to
be attached—a very good sign!
“You did it all by yourself!” he said. “I never even
touched the controls!”
I was excited and beaming! But, at that point, I had a
bigger problem, because I forgot that I couldn’t keep steering the plane with
the yoke—I needed to switch to my feet to keep the plane from veering off the runway.
My elderly brain was on overload, but I did manage to drop the wheel and step
on the rudder pedals just in time!
While I taxied back to the hangar, Jeff once again mentioned
the perfect weather. “I always take advantage of days like these,” he said, “and
let my students land the plane, even if they’re not quite ready.”
WHAT?????
Thank you Jeff for a wonderful day of flying and best of all—LANDING!
