rotation speedhttp://www.dreamschooner.com/rotationspeed/en-US2012-02-23T07:01:35ZSquarespace Site Server v5.11.81 (http://www.squarespace.com/)Robot that Flies Like a Birdhttp://www.dreamschooner.com/rotationspeed/2012/1/16/robot-that-flies-like-a-bird.htmlRick Felty2012-01-16T17:36:53ZI love watching Teb Talks and especially from people successfully solving interesting puzzles.  Building something that can fly like a bird is one of those challenges and this is a pretty cool demo of a big success.  Wonder where this will lead? 

]]>Zurich Departurehttp://www.dreamschooner.com/rotationspeed/2011/12/27/zurich-departure.htmlRick Felty2011-12-27T17:31:00ZA very cool video with great shots of the events that take place prior to an aircraft departure.  I especially like the footage take from the air above the taxiing and departing jet.

]]>LOT No-Gear Landinghttp://www.dreamschooner.com/rotationspeed/2011/11/10/lot-no-gear-landing.htmlRick Felty2011-11-10T18:22:34Zflying gear landing 

Nicely done!

]]>"The Downwind 360" - Cessna 172http://www.dreamschooner.com/rotationspeed/2011/10/24/the-downwind-360-cessna-172.htmlRick Felty2011-10-24T17:59:29Z

This is a video that documents a slightly unusual pattern during practice at Norwood (KOWD).  I decided to include part of the run-up in this video and it starts after I had gone through some of the checklist.  There were some faster planes departing Norwood at the time and so I offered to begin my run-up on a connecting taxiway while the jets passed me on their way to the active runway.  So when this video begins, I had done some of the run-up in the Cessna 172SP but you'll hear me given instruction by ground to proceed to the runway to finish things before takeoff.  Once out there I finish the run-up checklist and it's important to note that after I call the tower for takeoff, he mistakenly starts to call be a Cherokee, and then catches himself.  This becomes relevant a little while later.  So I'm cleared for the pattern and I head out.  It's a right pattern for 35 at Norwood, and on the downwind as I'm getting things stable, just before making my mid-field call, there is a call from the tower to Cherokee 2081-Sierra.  As you will see, I don't answer.  I remember wondering how I had missed that call, but now it's clear that I automatically ignored it because it began with Cherokee.  A few seconds later he calls me back with call sign only and we get things straightened away.  Because of traffic, the tower asked me to do a 360 in the patter for spacing.  Not sure I'd ever done this before, but it made sense and as a bonus, it now gives you a better view of Boston in the distance and Norwood Airport as I come around.  The other interesting thing about this pattern is that the wind had come up after I took off and the tower let me know that they would be switching runways after my landing from 35 to 28.  One plane after me requests 35, but I know that I'll be moving to 28.  As you will see, once on the ground after a pretty nice landing, I exited the runway to the left as I normally would, which is appropriate.  But it becomes clear that the tower had been planning for me to roll out further and exit to the right to head over to the departure end of 28.  Of course, he never told me that, so I ended up going the long way, which was fine.  So in this video, there are a couple of interesting moments where communication is a little less than precise.  It ends with me asking for a squawk code for a flight to Keen, NH.  That will be by next video, so stay tuned!  In summary, there are 3 HD cameras, ATC audio and some interesting pattern work on this video.  Thanks for watching.
]]>Cessna 172SP Pattern Practice at Norwood (Sept 2011)http://www.dreamschooner.com/rotationspeed/2011/10/17/cessna-172sp-pattern-practice-at-norwood-sept-2011.htmlRick Felty2011-10-17T16:27:25Z

A short video, one trip around the field at Norwood.  I was getting the feel of the plane and conditions that day.  All it all it was a successful practice and I learned or re-learned a lot.  This video has no ATC or Coms on it because I neglected to plug in the cord. So what you get is a basic pattern at Norwood in the Cessna 172SP as if you were a passenger not wearing a headset. The only thing you missed in the audio here is an experimental plane behind me asking whether I was going to be a full stop or not. The controller told him I was cleared for the option, and I keyed the mic and volunteered that I was planning a full stop. This was because the winds that day were fairly gusty and I was trying to get comfortable with them. I then heard a thank you from the controller and a mic click from the experimental. After this pattern both the experimental and I taxied back to parking to fly another day. Three HD cameras on this video but only ambient audio.

]]>Flight from Norwood to Plymouth in the Cessna 172SPhttp://www.dreamschooner.com/rotationspeed/2011/9/20/flight-from-norwood-to-plymouth-in-the-cessna-172sp.htmlRick Felty2011-09-20T21:06:59Z

This is a full flight video from Norwood, MA (OWD) to Plymouth, MA (PYM).  This trip was for a morning meet-up with Andrew Blanchard (http://www.youtube.com/user/atblanchard) who flies out of Marshfield (GHG).  While this trip could be made a bit faster, I decided to enjoy the ride and so you'll hear me reference cruise speeds under 100.  There isn't much to point out during the trip really.  There is a lot of cross-talk chatter on the PYM frequency as I begin to approach the airport.  This is because there are a number of other airports in the region that use the frequency 123.0.  For example you'll hear a lot of calls from planes at Block Island, which is 58nm away!  And the only other thing worth noting is the wind.  As I got the ASOS you will hear that the wind is light but from 310.  And yet you'll also hear the planes using runway 06 at PYM.  The wind was shifting all over the place and so what had probably started out as a light wind more from the east that morning, was now moving toward the west.  But people were still using the east facing runway.  So in this approach, that would end up giving me a high percentage of cross wind and some small percentage of tailwind...but no headwind.  So in hindsight this meant my ground speed was probably higher than I was used to.  More experienced pilots would probably have an easy time with that, but you'll notice that in slowing the plane on the rollout I get pretty far right of the centerline.  It was an interesting learning experience because even though I heard where the winds were, I went with the crowd on the chosen active runway, making my landing less than I wanted it to be.  The wind was so changeable that day that by the time I had the plane parked and shut down, they were in the process of switching the runways 180 degrees!  And by the time I left, I departed from the crossing north runway!  Lesson learned.  This is a 3 camera HD video with ATC audio.  You'll notice that I decided to use one of the cameras for a more direct forward-facing view instead of pointing it at me.  Looks pretty cool on the landing but I would love to know what you think.  Enjoy the video.

]]>Landing the SR20 at Portsmouthhttp://www.dreamschooner.com/rotationspeed/2011/7/26/landing-the-sr20-at-portsmouth.htmlRick Felty2011-07-26T19:22:18Z

This is the landing portion of the longer OWD to PSM flight video here -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1Ao3kn5lvs. I edited it down to use the last few minutes of flight as I entered the pattern for landing. It was also such a pretty afternoon that I re-edited this one to remove the shots of me and replaced them with longer looks out the windows. So this video should give you a better idea of what it's like to make that approach. Enjoy.

]]>My First Civilian Passengerhttp://www.dreamschooner.com/rotationspeed/2011/7/22/my-first-civilian-passenger.htmlRick Felty2011-07-22T15:18:43ZJust two weeks after completing my first BFR (biennial flight review - see previous post) I was able to accomplish another major milestone.  For the first time in my short flying career I completed a flight with a non-CFI sitting in the right seat.

This trip started as another planned meet-up of fans of both the Uncontrolled Airspace Podcast and our new podcast the Stuck Mic AvCast at Boire Field in Nashua, NH.  Several members of both shows were planning to attend as well as several loyal listeners and as the weather was looking great, I booked a plane to head up there alone.  The trip from Norwood to Nashua is about 20-25 minutes tops and sometimes I drive when the weather is iffy or worse.

But for this weekend, the weather looked great with clear skies and calm winds and no threat of rain.  Even the summer heat was holding off.  This would be a great day to get some more experience in the Cessna 172 on a short hop flight I had done several times before.

 Then, because of her schedule, the oportunity to fly with my wife came up for the same weekend.  For one reason or another we had never flown together.  She loves flying so that was never an issue, but mostly I wanted to get more comfortable being a pilot.  I wanted to have a lot of the aviation stuff so ingrained that I could enjoy the flight and tend to my passenger without too much distraction.

We got to Norwood early and I began preflighting the Cessna while she did some phone calling and picture taking.  (Most of the pictures you see in this post were taken by her using my iPhone4 with a wide-angle adaptor.)

 This Cessna is pretty much exactly like the one I have more than 60 hours in, but there were some small differences I had to aquaint myself with.  We had a little trouble getting my squelch where I wanted it, but settled for what I could dial in.

Eventually all was set and we took off with a normal departure on runway 35 to the north.  I asked and got flight-following and turned to the northwest to give us some clearance from the Hanscom Class Delta.  I like to make that move heading north which does two things, points me toward the edge of the Class Bravo which gives me altitude options and sets me up for avoiding Hanscom's busy airspace should I not get cleared through.  

Eventually I turned due north toward Nashua and kept the plane right at 3,000 ft.  Flight-following was almost unnecessary as we spotted several planes in the distance on our own and maintained clearance from them.  Once handed off to the Nashua tower I was asked to keep my speed up for separation no doubt.  I didn't really want to keep my speed up, but I did as requested.  

 

 

This threw off my landing rhythm so I came in a little high and long, but was able to keep the speeds where they should be.  However, because I was thrown a bit, I rounded a little too high and then flared.  With a firm plop I landed on the centerline.

Fortunately my wife has a lot of experience flying as a kid with her dad and was familiar with the occasional firm landing.  It wasn't what I wanted for our first experience, but she seemed pleased with the flight and told me at the end of the day that she would fly with me again.

 

We parked the plane and then met-up with the various other pilots/aviation podcast fans, having a nice meeting over breakfast at the Midfield Cafe.  In the picture to the left is Jack Hodgson of the Uncontrolled Airspace Podcast with Robert Cigliano of the New Pilot's Pod Blog.  Robert flew his Piper Sport in from Long Island!  As is the custom, we ended things by heading out to the ramp to look over the planes.  

 

 Mine was the most pedestrian of the bunch, with a Cub and Robert's Piper Sport flanking me.  The full set of pictures from the day can be found by clicking on the link in the upper left of this page called Aviation Photography.

The trip back to Norwood was a little more bumpy as the heat of the day created thermal areas, but not bad.  We were cleard direct through Hanscom at or above 2,500 ft but below the Bravo which starts at 3000 ft.  Threading the needle I like to call it and my altitude control was solid.

 

The roughest part of the whole day was what I thought would be the easiest, my landing back at Norwood.  I basically came in too hot, probably with the Cirrus' airspeeds in mind.  I let the plane float to bleed off the speed, but didn't bleed enough and again flared too high.  So I landed firmly, but this time going a bit too fast.  Breaking caused the plane to pull a bit to the side, but I eased off and as the speed settled, everything smoothed out.  Again, not what I had planned for my first passenger flight but I learned a lot from the experience.

 

Fortunately, my wife said she'd fly with me again and we'll be looking for that opportunity soon.

I'm probably being a little hard on myself, but for me, it's back to pattern practice to smooth out those landings!

Happy flying!

 

Below is a video of the landing at Nashua, with two camera views and ATC transmissions.

]]>My First BFRhttp://www.dreamschooner.com/rotationspeed/2011/7/2/my-first-bfr.htmlRick Felty2011-07-03T00:54:41ZOn Friday afternoon, July 1, 2011 I did my first BFR, or Biennial Flight Review. Two years before I had passed my PPL checkride in Cessna 172SP, N13151 on July 11th which meant that I had to complete a BFR by the end of the month of July this year.

In addition, it turned out that the only plane in which I was current had gone in for repairs a few weeks before this date, so I also had to be checked-out in another plane. Fortunately, there was a plane I had been approved to fly up until early this year, when my currency lapsed. That plane, N13151 was very familiar to me because of my checkride in 2009 and the preparations necessary to pass, so I was looking forward to being current again in her. Even though I hadn't flown the Cessna in 7 months, I was confident that I would pick things up again fairly quickly.

That said, there were some pressure points here. I hadn't flown anything in 2 months. My flight hours for this year so far were the lowest I'd had since I started training years ago. I was out of this particular cockpit for 7 months and I was working with a new CFI for this ride. Not exactly the way I would have wanted to arrange things!

But the CFI for this ride, Cliff Lanyi had put me at ease about the whole thing when I called up to book the flight. He said we could easily kill two birds with one stone in the time available. He also said that he likes to base his BFRs to some degree on what the pilot feels he needs to work on which sounded good to me.

The flight window at Norwood (OWD) was from 3 to 6pm but we started with an hour of ground discussion. Based on some initial comments from me about my flying over the past few years, we spent our time talking about tracking VORs on the G1000 and some airspace details I hadn't put into practice yet. I had mentioned that I had gotten so comfortable with the GPS (as I'm sure many pilots are these days) that in the past two years I had not tracked a VOR once and felt I might be a little rusty, especially on the hardware side. I also told Cliff that I had yet to fly into a Class C airport and so we reviewed a number of details about flying in and out of Charlies. This included the fact that going into and out of a Class C you need to have a squawk code and so on departure, your first call will be to clearance to get one. This is not something I'm used to as Norwood, a Class Delta.  Probably old hat to many, but this was good refresher information for me.

Next we charted a game plan for our flight that afternoon.  Since I was interested in using VOR's, Cliff suggested that we depart Norwood (OWD) and track to the northwest using the Gardner VOR (GDM.)  We would do a landing there and then head almost due east to do some touch and goes at Hanscom or Bedford (BED.)  On the way to BED, his plan was to again use the Gardner VOR but track away from it on a radial that would allow us to miss restricted areas R4102 A&B just to the south of our course.  So we looked up the radial that would make the most sense and made not of that.  It was the 105 radial which would also take us close to directly over Fitchburg (FIT.)  We would then do a couple of landings at BED and that would complete my BFR and 172 check-out.

I liked this plan a lot, perhaps because I would be adding two new airport to my PIC landing list!  I had used Gardner as a navigation point in the past, but had never landed there and for many reasons had never gone to Hanscom (BED.)  BED is a very busy airport, almost too close to Norwood to be worth the trip and it's in a tricky bit of airspace.

As a bonus, because N13151 needed to begin part of its 100 hour maintenance, we would leave it at BED and fly back to OWD in another 172SP - N2081S.  This was a needed repositioning and would fit in nicely with our flight plan.

So with a plane and a plan, we headed out.  Light winds and a 5000ft cloud deck we took of and under the Bravo shelf, holding at about 2500ft, began tracking the VOR.  I was able to refresh myself with the locations of the TO and FROM arrow and of course how to select the VOR for display with the CDI key.  Cliff also walked me through some of the sub pages I didn't often have time to dial in on the G1000 while on short flights.  Although I now travel with my iPad, there is of course a wealth of data available on the G1000, if only you can remember where to look in the menu system.  So we looked up nearby airports etc.

I had gotten used to adjusting the GPS when for one reason or another I got further away from my original course than I had planned.  Cliff reminded me why that can be a bad idea, especially if you have planned to have ground reference points along your route.  You might switch the GPS or VOR to track from where you are NOW, but that new route won't line-up with places you expected to see out the window.  So if you keep centering the needle with the Direct button on the GPS, you can create problems for yourself in certain situations.

Our course took us over my house, which I mentioned to Cliff as if I was a student pilot, getting some pleasure out of noticing.  Soon after that Cliff showed me how to lean the mixture in the 172.  In our training, we'd never really done much with leaning in cruise flight, so this instruction was golden!  He then suggested that we do some slow flight, which sounded good to me as this was not something I got to practice a lot, or ever!  After doing some clearing turns, I got the plane into a landing configuration and with the power at idle, we travelled for a few minutes with the stall horn sounding.

My slow flight execution was far from perfect, mostly because as I set things up I lost altitude, but it was a good practice run and I did a few turns in slow flight as well.  Cliff commented that we had held our airspeed at about 35kts for a short time, which was cool to hear.

Then we headed to Gardner Airport (GDM.)  The Gardner VOR is west of the Gardner Airport and the town of Gardner, so when I have the airport in site I began tracking straight in that direction.  As we approached, Cliff suggested that a little engine out practice would probably be a good idea.  So after getting a good look at the airport, he pulled the power at I pitched up for best glide, which in this 172 is 68kts.  We ran through the restart procedures and made radio calls (not MAYDAY but normal pattern ones explaining that we were doing a simulation) as I maneuvered for a landing on runway 36.  This whole process reminded me that I need to review my memory checklists for emergencies in this plane.

As we started the procedure, it felt like we were too low for this landing to work out, but that 172 sure can glide, and it turns out we had enough altitude to make it all work.  But by the time we were abeam the numbers on the down wind, the site picture for landing looked perfect.  Made the final radio calls, added flaps to ensure adequate landing distance on a somewhat short field and put her down very nicely on 36.  It was my first 172 landing in 7 months and was quite nice.

As we taxiied back for takeoff, it was clear from Cliff's comments that I was doing great and seemed to him to be a solid pilot.  Great words to hear and a nice reminder of why we do BFRs.

At the hold short line at GDM, I configured the radios for the short flight over to BED and double-checked the airspace ahead as we would be both avoiding R4102 A&B and coming in below the Class Bravo.  We also left the VOR set to GDM because we would be tracking away from the station over to BED.  Here's a obvious situation where resetting the VOR tracking inflight makes NO sense since you aren't tracking to a destination, but following a fixed radial.  Obvious stuff, but good to see it in practice.  Some of these things are being used less and less with GPS in the mix, so this was great stuff for me to work on.

On the way over to BED we dialed in the frequency for FIT to listen for traffic and heard a plane approaching from the east for a landing on runway 32.  Based on our position, that would put it almost directly ahead of us as we headed west, so we began looking.  We caught sight of it pretty far out and made some radio calls to confirm separation.  All of this was happening near the restricted areas and I instinctively drifted away from the other plane's path but toward R4102.  I never got close, and we discussed how quickly one situation can impact another.


We soon switched to the BED ATIS frequency and then called the Tower and slipped into a right downwind for runway 29 where we were cleared for a touch and go.  I hadn't done a lot of touch and goes in my training.  This was perhaps because most of my primary training was in a Cirrus, and touch and goes are harder on the planes.  So doing a touch and go, would be a bit of a new thing for me.  There were several other planes arriving at Hanscom as usual, but fitting into the pattern was no big deal and getting the right speed and flap configuration was just like I'd been doing it every day for the past few months.

There is plenty of runway to play with at BED, and when I felt I was a little fast, I pitched up a bit and landed a little beyond the numbers and slightly off center, but cleared the flaps, powered up and took off very quickly.  There was a bit of a crosswind at that point on 29, so Cliff wanted me to work on that the next time around, which I did and landed fairly well.

All in all a great flying day and learning experience.  I would recommend a BFR to every pilot out there and probably should fly with a CFI more often.  Cliff told me as we taxiied that I was now approved to fly the Cessna at ECAC and was good for another two years on the BFR!  Plus I got to go to two new airports and was now approved to fly two planes, a low wing and a high wing!

 

 

We parked 13151 and switched to 2081S for our quick trip back to Norwood which went well.  All in all a great day of flying and very productive for me!

]]>The Stuck Mic AvCast - Episode 4http://www.dreamschooner.com/rotationspeed/2011/7/1/the-stuck-mic-avcast-episode-4.htmlRick Felty2011-07-01T16:18:12ZVictoria Gets Her Commercial, Navigating Thunderstorms, & Ejection Seat 

Above is a link to play Episode 4 of the Stuck Mic AvCast, the aviation podcast about learning to fly, living to fly and loving to fly.  You can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.  Click on the graphic link on the right rail for more information about the podcast itself.

 

In this episode, Victoria returns from her 2 week long adventure to obtain her Commercial Pilot certificate to join us on Episode 4. Tune in to hear about her intensive flight training, how she contracted a flight instructor on a daily rate, and flew her bottom off to reach that Commercial ticket on her 7th day of training.

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