PPL Lesson #2: Straight & level flight

I had to wait almost 2 weeks after my first (trial) lesson to get back up in the air again, but the weather was kind so today I got lesson #2 under my belt. The school I’m flying with has two C152s, but it’s a thriving flight school and they’re seemingly incredibly popular aircraft. Needing the stars to align on both aircraft and instructor availability means I need to book well in advance.

(Note: I could have made things easier on myself by flying with another instructor, but having clicked with my current instructor I’m loathe to introduce a new element just yet. Lesson learned, and I’ve now booked in a good few lessons to see me through the remainder of the summer.)

Anyway, today’s lesson started with a proper pre-flight briefing to go over the main structure of today’s exercise - Exercise 6: Straight and Level Flight - as well as a few mnemonics and acronyms I’d encounter in the air (LAI, FREDA, SHT and LOI) and some threat and error management, before heading out to do my first external checks.

RT woes and nuts on takeoff

Once strapped in, and feeling reasonably confident after my first flight RT success, I made the radio call for radio check and taxi for departure. I managed the initial call well, but even though I was expecting it having read others’ accounts from early in their RT journey, my brain turned to complete mush with the speed and density of information in the response… and in retrospect this was a fairly straightforward reply. I glanced over at my instructor with what I’m sure will become a familiar “I got nothin’” look on my face, and he gestured at his kneeboard where he’d noted all the salient bits down and handled the readback for me. I suspect this won’t be the last time he’ll step in, but I’ll find a way to practice that taxi call between now and next lesson so I can hopefully save demonstrations of my RT incompetence for a different call.

As last time I got to handle the taxiing and power checks - latterly including turning on the transponder, which I’d completely overlooked during startup, oops - and we queued up behind a suspiciously clean-looking PA28 and awaited departure clearance. I managed a reasonably competent takeoff briefing and, clearance received, lined up on the runway and set off for my first totally unassisted takeoff. While there’s certainly room for improvement, my instructor was complimentary and I was happy that I evidently kept close enough to centreline for him not to need to give feedback on right rudder deficiency.

Side note: I also got a good practical lesson in why you keep your right hand on the throttle on takeoff: I’d tightened the friction nut as per the pre-takeoff checks, but it evidently wasn’t quite tight enough and I could feel it wanting to slip back slightly as we were climbing. I pointed this out, double checked the tightness once we’d levelled off and made a mental note to be more assertive with the tightening in the future.

Straight, level and safe

Once over the practice area my instructor gave me a practical intro to the LAI checks we’d covered in the pre-brief, with some timely right-to-left traffic ahead of us hammering home the particular importance of the lookout. He asked me to try to keep that going during the exercise, but having so little flying experience the cognitive load was high and while I managed heading and altitude well throughout - I’ll be generous to myself and call that a partial success - I need to be actively looking out more consistently. Noted, and my instructor said it did improve as the flight went on.

Workload aside, I found the exercise itself relatively intuitive and straightforward: flying slow requires a higher nose attitude to maintain level flight, vice versa for fast flight (or what passes for fast flight in a C152), flaps enable slow flight with approximately normal pitch attitude and more power for better control, set hold and trim controls as necessary, keep in mind flap limitations and pick a good visual reference point for a heading.

Part-way through the exercise we stopped (not literally) for a FREDA check. My instructor emphasised that this isn’t a time-sensitive check in that it doesn’t need to be completed within a certain period of time. You’re better off doing each step individually interspersed with LAI checks rather than zoning in on doing it all at once and then looking up to find you’re in a spiral dive into someone’s pond. Evidently I did these well enough that I’m now responsible for the timing and completion of these checks going forward. Note to self: Set a timer or you’ll totally forget to do them!

Homeward bound

WIth time running low it was time to head back, and after last lesson I’d been keeping a careful track on our position and orientation, so was pleased to be able to pick out both Blackbushe and Farnborough airports as well as Reading and Basingstoke as references. A quick lesson in distance estimation later I made the rejoin call for Blackbushe and my instructor took us back into the circuit.

Two things of note for the circuit:

• thanks to there being two aircraft ahead of us, I got to practice the stuff we’d just been covering to use 2 stages of flaps on downwind to control our speed and maintain distance from the one in front. This also made the base leg really uneventful since we were already well set up.
• On final I took us down to mere feet above the runway numbers before my instructor took over for the flare. Like last time there was a bit of a crosswind but from the other side, and I’d learned that it’s okay to let the aircraft crab into the wind and to use the shape of the runway to confirm ground track and correct as necessary. On reflection this correction was all aileron and my instructor was reminding me to make smaller corrections, and I’m sure I’ve read that it’s more common to use rudder for smaller corrections on final. Will ask next time.

Last bit of fun for the day was my first experience of refuelling - or, more specifically since Blackbushe isn’t yet self serve (coming soon, apparently) - my first experience of taxiing to the fuel pumps and watching someone else do it. All good experience for later.

Debrief

That’s it. Another 49 minutes of flight time in the logbook - 1h49m in total - and some homework to do for next time to bone up on Exercise 7.1 and 8.1: Climbing and Descending.

Things to remember for next time (aside from all the stuff I was taught, obviously):

• seriously, be more assertive when tightening the throttle friction nut during power checks; I’m not quite ready for self-induced EFATO training yet
• bring a writing pad for my kneeboard so I have a fighting chance of capturing salient information from radio call responses
• go easy with the corrections on final and ask about using the rudder in preference to the ailerons for this
• order a new mic sock for the headset - I like to think the old one now lives on in the vicinity of the fuel pump as a really fancy hat for a vole or something

PPL Lesson #1: The journey begins

So, the day finally came. Like a child who’d gone to bed with forecasts of snow filling his head, I jumped out of bed this morning, tore open the curtains and celebrated the sunny skies with scattered clouds in the same way I did the snow-covered ground of my all-too-distant youth. My first (trial) lesson was on!

A shower and light breakfast later I was in the car for the 10 minute drive to Blackbushe, with my pre-loved headset and my virgin logbook stuffed in my flight bag all nestled in the passenger seat. I spent pretty much the entire journey hoping the more serious looking clouds on the horizon beyond the airport didn’t mean a cancelled lesson (spoiler: they didn’t).

Just like my Dad’s old Rover

After a quick chat with “ops” (the lovely Alison), and an even quicker fuss of the flight school’s resident puppy Dakota, I was introduced to my flight instructor for a speedy briefing before making our way to the trusty G-BZEB.

Probably the best way to describe “echo bravo” is as an aeroplane with… a certain special vintage character, and no small amount of charm. Made in the same year I was born, I imagine she’s very much like Trigger’s infamous broom these days. However, there’s no disguising the aroma of what I can only imagine is over 40 years of student perspiration baked into the very fabric of the airframe. It brought back happy memories of climbing into my dad’s old Rover as I folded myself into the left hand seat and strapped in.

Walking through the checklists - deftly replacing any mention of “parking brake” with “instructor’s toe brakes" thanks to the “inop” sticker near the former’s control - was a breeze, and all of a sudden we were taxying in the general direction of the runway. I got to practise some ground rudder pedal and brake control and took us as far as the runup point just off the apron for the powerup and pre-takeoff checks. Since my instructor had mentioned he was happy to let me handle the throttle and yoke for takeoff, this is the point where my palms reached peak levels of moisture.

“Cleared for takeoff at your discretion”

WIth the checks complete and “cleared for takeoff at your discretion” echoing around my head, we were lined up on runway 25 for takeoff and I got my first “your controls” (“…except for the rudder” implied) from my instructor. I gradually eased in the power and, at an appropriate point somewhere between Vr and Vx, pulled gently back on the yoke and we were officially airborne. Climbing away from the airfield I was thrilled to get a “very smooth, good job” from my instructor, and he took control at 500 ft to take us up to 1800 ft and over to the practice area to the north west of the airfield.

We started, as ‘most everyone does, with primary and secondary effects of the controls. No real surprises here - I’ve been binge-watching as many UK-based flight training youtube videos as I can find, reading other students’ reports on the Flyer Forums, hammering Blackbushe circuits in MSFS, and had worked my way through to about midway through APM #1 - and I was pleased to hear from my instructor that I got the hang of all that (at a basic level) fairly quickly. I confirmed for myself the oft-shared wisdom that it’s easier to trim in real life than it is in a flight sim; problem is, I’m not sure I can ever go back!

We still had a bunch of time left in the 1hr session, so we moved onto a preview of the next lesson: straight and level flight. I really enjoyed the exercises around flap position and maintaining altitude with appropriate attitude adjustments and trim. With multiple things all going on at once and all under my control this felt like actual flying, and I’m just waiting for the right time to tell Mrs W that I can indeed multitask somewhat successfully!

Last minute surprises

With that done it was time to head back to the airfield just as some lower-level clouds were rolling in. “Where are we?”, quizzed my instructor. I was just about able to pick out Reading but hadn’t the foggiest idea of which way we were facing (forgetting that I had both the DI and a compass to refer to) but it turned out we were just around the corner from the airfield. We had enough time to squeeze in a touch and go and a landing, with my instructor giving me yoke control down to ~100ft on final for both despite what felt to me like squally crosswinds. All good practice for some real landings down the road.

One final surprise awaited me on completion of the after landing checklist: my first radio call. On reflection, it’s utterly ridiculous (but reassuringly human) that the sudden prospect of this made my heart thump way more than anything else we’d done that day. It was the simplest of calls - “G-EB, request taxi parking” … “taxi parking, G-EB” - but when it comes to more complicated stuff down the line at the very least I can say I didn’t fluff my first one.

Debrief

So, that’s it: 1hr of dual flight logged and a check in the “takeoff” box of my now-nearly-new logbook. Not a bad start to the weekend! Now I just have to sit down and work out the most cost advantageous approach to lessons and get some slots booked.

Things to remember for next time:

• enable flight mode in EasyVFR, ‘cause it doesn’t track your flights if you don’t (or just pony up for SkyDemon)
• FlightRadar24 is a poor backup for the above: less than half of my flight was captured and at a resolution that suggests more erratic flight than I could manage even on my first lesson
• ask about crabbing into that crosswind on final and at what point we should straighten up for landing
• it was a very good idea to put on extra deodorant

Before the beginning

This site is my attempt to capture my journey as I go from zero flying experience to (hopefully) gaining my Private Pilot License in the UK. Please forgive the occasionally flowery prose: I’m trying to capture as much how I feel going through the journey as I do the detail about what I’m actually learning at each stage.