Lessons 12 and 13: Flying with Jamie

After flying one lesson with Shane, I went back and forth over e-mail with Chief Jim. My flights over the next couple weeks all wound up getting moved to Jamie. I had flown once with Jamie early on and liked his style. Jim and I settled that Jamie would be my full-time instructor moving forward. Sounded like a plan. However, in the pre-brief for my first lesson with Jamie, he let me know that he was in the process of changing his schedule to not work weekends. As I’ve mentioned before, that’s a deal-breaker, so this was a big disappointment. While he wasn’t cancelling anything already on the books, he was not accepting any new weekend appointments. We agreed to keep the next couple weeks of appointments on the books while I worked on figuring out who my long-term instructor would be. In the meantime, I flew four of the most productive lessons yet, and my flying came a long way.

A few words about Jamie. He’s a no-BS kind of guy, who takes flying and teaching seriously. On my first flight with him, way back when I was a lowly 2 hour pilot, he asked me what I had been doing. I told him - if I remember correctly, I had done just introductory flying - straight-and-level, climbs, descents, turns. I said that I hadn’t even taken off yet. I told him that Grant had done a fair bit of the actual controlling of the plane. He harrumphed, and said, “No! You’ve got to fly the plane if you’re going to learn. We’re just going to go up there and fly around.” He was the first guy to tell me to not be afraid to control the airplane when it needed controlling. We were up at altitude and he pushed all the controls full to their stops one at a time, and each time, the airplane did what it did and then came back to center. It felt scary, but it was just fine. Back then (and probably now, too), I was tentative at the controls. Anyway, the point is, Jamie tells it like it is. If I screw up, he says it. If I’m doing something at the standard, he says that too. I’m a fan, and I’m sorry that we won’t be working together through to my private pilot license.

As he and I reviewed my lesson logs, we realized there were a lot of holes. I hadn’t practiced all the emergency procedures and I didn’t get signed off on airport operations. I mentioned that I still felt weak in stalls, and of course, my landings are complete shit. We worked up a bit of a plan. Every lesson would include some amount of touch-and-goes to practice landings. The first lesson, on Saturday the 26th, would be finishing emergency procedures. Sunday the 27th would be airport operations. Tuesday the 29th would be solely pattern work. Finally, we’d do some maneuvers practice on Saturday, September 2nd.

The emergency procedures lesson went great. We practiced emergency descents and engine off landings. There’s a lot of time spent on emergency procedures, with good reason. The airplane only has one engine, and if it stops working, you need to be prepared for it. The most common reason the engine dies? Running out of gas. Sigh. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen. Anyways, we climbed to about 4000 ft, pulled the power to idle. I started running through the ABCDE checklist. A - pitch for best glide speed. This ensures that airplane will go the furthest horizontal distance while losing the least altitude. You pitch the nose of the airplane for 70 knots. B - best airfield. Pick a place on the ground to put it down. C - run through the checklist. Try to get the engine started again. Since we were simulating this, I simulated doing the needful, which I now thankfully have memorized. D is Declaring an Emergency, which I skipped since we weren’t actually in an emergency. E is execute, and if you’re on the ground, evacuate. This maneuver went fine, and practicing like this cements the ideas that I’m training. Once I picked a field, I circled over it, descending slowly, until I was setup to land on it. I got relatively close to the field, then executed the go round. We climbed back up to 4000 ft again to practice emergency descents. You do these especially when you have a fire, and you want to put it out. If you go fast enough, you starve the fire of oxygen. The procedure essentially goes: 1) Turn off all the air to the cabin, 2) Turn off all the fuel, 3) Bank the airplane sharply to one side and push the nose down 20 degrees. 4) Watch the airspeed, and when it gets to the top of the green arc, level the wings and pull up. I’ll admit, I thought this was going to be super scary, but it was really fun. We did 2 or 3 of these to make sure I had it, then went back for pattern work.

The next day was airport operations. Jamie suggested we fly up to Paine (KPAE). Paine has two runways and a complex set of taxiways, so it’d be a good place to work on airport operations. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned, but the airplane I fly is a “glass cockpit”, which means that all the core flight instruments are electronic, and I have integrated GPS and all kinds of other goodness. The avionics (Garmin G1000) are complex and overwhelming, but as I’ve been flying now for a couple of months, I’m becoming more comfortable with it. On this day, we put in a flight plan. Before we left the ground, we picked a GPS waypoint (ZEMSO) that was comfortably outside SeaTac’s Bravo airspace, then PAE. After punching that into the G1000, we were set to go, and the navigation functions would guide us right to Paine. We requested 34L and Paine, which is a 10,000 ft runway. After landing (which was one of my better ones, though still not great), Jamie said, “Ok, Rick, get us to the Central Ramp. You’re on your own.” Central Ramp at Paine is where the general aviation aircraft all park. Long story short, I did it without a hitch. Ground gave me a set of taxiway instructions (Alpha-Juliet-Delta). I read them back and started taxiing. Funny story. Jamie saw that I had it under control so looked at his iPad for a second. When he looked up he said, “WHAT!!!” and jammed on the brakes. I looked at him, freaked out, and said, “What? What did I do?” He looked around, and realized that all was well. He thought that I was on Charlie and not on the Delta taxiway. Not following ground instructions is a major no-no. Better safe than sorry. Once at Central Ramp, we asked for instructions back to 34L (Charlie-Alpha this time). One almost gotcha happened here. Neither of us took a moment to do the before takeoff checklist. I had leaned the engine for ground ops. As I started the takeoff roll, I realized that the mixture wasn’t at full rich. I pushed it in, and we took off fine. It was just another reminder that those checklists are there for a reason.

Jamie told me to climb to 4,000 ft, and set a course for Whisky 10 (W10), a little airport in the trees on Whidbey Island. He got out the POH (the Pilot’s Operating Handbook) and started doing performance calculations. I looked over and then just kind of ignored him. I know what these calculations are, even though I’ve not had to do them yet. Every airplane has an operating handbook, and a key part of that handbook documents the minimum runway lengths for takeoffs and landings. This number changes based on the altitude (the higher it is, the more runway you need). It accounts for the ability to climb over (or land over) a 50 foot obstacle at one end of the runway. I knew what this meant - W10 was a tiny runway. I wasn’t going to stress over it though. I was just flying the airplane. Once we got to 4000 ft, Jamie pulled power and said, “Engine failure. Now What?” We were over W10, but I couldn’t really see it. I strained my eyes, and asked where the field was. Ah…I could just barely see a strip of asphalt amongst a bunch of trees. Jamie said, “Runway 34 is active, what are you going to do?” I said, “I’m going to make a spiraling descent at best glide speed, then do a left downwind for 34.” “Sounds good. Let’s see it”, he said. I must say, my spiraling descent was pretty amazing. Maybe a little fast, but nice and tight, and I lost about 1000 ft per spiral. I came out at about 1500 and turned north for the downwind. Jamie said, “What are you doing?” I said, “Entering downwind.” He said, “Runway 34! My controls.” I turned NORTH for the downwind, but that’s the downwind for 16, not 34! In the spinning, I got disoriented about which end of the runway I was going to land on. This is important, as you always want to land with a headwind. Jamie, turned the airplane into a 180 to try to get back to 34. To remind you, the engine was still running, but it was on idle this whole time to simulate a power failure. He said, “Rick, I think you just killed us.” We were both laughing, but it was a sobering moment, and again, a great reminder of why you train. Jamie pulled a rabbit out of his hat, and had us lined up for the runway (we would have lived, I think), before he called for a go-round.

Two really fun lessons, I learned a lot. It’d keep getting better.