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First Solo Debrief

KRNT, 190130Z

Winds Calm, runway 16 in use, standard left pattern at 1000’ AGL east of the runway.

Ceiling: 5500 BRK, 7000 OVC, scattered light rain

AIRMETs: Mountain obscuration, moderate icing. Freezing level 2000 feet. No factor, I’m just in the pattern today.

Informal PIREP reported hail on final in the previous flight, so I called the briefer for an updated VFR area briefing for Renton Municipal with a focus on convective activity. We’re OK.

Fuel nearly full, 6 quarts of oil in Rainier Flight Service’s Cessna 172S N639SP.

Preflight: Inop strobe and taxi lights. A recent tail touch has me paying special attention to the rudder. Control surfaces are still scratched, but the damage is minor and the bent metal guard doesn’t inhibit the rudder’s range of motion. The airplane has had recent troubles with the flaps deciding to stay down when rolling on the runway during touch-and-goes, so I’ll pay special attention to make sure they do what I tell them to do.

The first three laps are with my instructor. The plane had just returned from another flight, so I tried a hot start. Crank, crank, crank, nothing. I guess the engine’s cooled down. Temperature 11 C, dew point -1. I prime the engine with a 3-second rich mixture. Now I’ve flooded the thing. My first flooded engine. My instructor just had me crank, but I knew what he was doing from common sense and studying the 172’s POH at the barber shop on Saturday: He’s having me crank with a low mixture and full throttle to get the intake back into a combustible condition, then swapping the mixture and throttle controls once the engine catches for a normal 1000 RPM idling speed on the tach. Mixture out 1” to taxi. Break check.

Altimeter 30.09. The wind has picked up and is now 190@4 KTS. 2 KT crosswind. 639SP requests taxi for close traffic with Papa. Cleared to taxi to runway 16 via Alpha. I goof a little on my turn up to the runup box and I’m almost in the taxiway for my mag/vac/alt check. Only the tower and my instructor are there for my goof. The engine is singing. Differential breaking with full right nosewheel and almost a half open throttle are needed to get my momentum going to taxi back to the taxiway centerline to hold short of runway 16.

We hold short for a 737 to land, then we’re cleared to take off. Throttle and right rudder come together in perfect harmony for a beautiful centerline ground roll. Airspeed stabilizes above 55 KIAS and I rotate, establishing Vy soon after. It’s perhaps my best takeoff. I do three laps with my instructor in the plane. Request stop-and-go, cleared. Once abeam my touch down point I bring the power back to 1500 rpm and prepare to lower the first 10 degrees of flaps. I turn base. The base and final turns at Renton are a little tricky since being straight over Lake Washington messes with your depth perception. I’ve overshot the centerline and need to line up. I’m a little fast and below glide path. Perfect—nose up and I’m back in business.

I have a natural bias to land flat. In my recent lessons I’ve started using a little power to counteract this, and I’ve gotten some wonderful landings out of it. It got addictive. It got the better of me. As we neared the approach end of runway 16, just off the shore of the lake, I was getting less and less happy with my approach. Time for a go-around. Full power, flaps 20, climb out, retracting flaps as appropriate.

To be sure I was nervous. Preparing for the solo I’d been rereading the Emergency Procedures section of the POH, reading AOPA articles about engine failure on climb-out and the “impossible turn,” thinking about what to do if I popped a main tire on touchdown or one of my brakes quit. It gets you a little nervous, thinking about all the ways your airplane might kill you before a solo.

Two more laps with the instructor. Once again I overshoot the runway centerline while turning final. I realize that I’m unconsciously pointing to the left as I start my landing procedure abeam the touchdown point, robbing me of valuable base leg length which I’d rather be using to establish 75 KIAS at a 500 fpm descent to get flaps down to 20 degrees. Back on centerline, I let myself land slightly flat. Stop-and-go.

Final lap with the instructor. This time I’ll beat that base leg. I stay just above the close edge of I-405 as I slow to 85 KIAS/500fpm descent/10 degrees flaps before making a crisp 30 degree standard-rate base turn. Without much hesitation, I turn final. Things are looking good. I fly a stabilized 65 KIAS centerline approach just below glide path, adding power to correct. I cross the threshold, close the throttle and flare…not as much as I could. I’m beginning to wonder what happened to those 20 wonderful landings I made last week. Nonetheless, my instructor thinks I’m ready. We taxi back to Rainier Flight Service and he endorses my log book for close-traffic solos. He adds a few of his personal minimums for students: 1500 foot ceiling, 8 miles visibility, maximum 8 KTS crosswind, prior permission required. The sun is going down, so he sends me out for two solo laps rather than the planned three. He calls the tower to let him know it’s my first solo, and the controller offers to stay late to assist, past the normal closing time of 8.

ATIS has switched to AWOS. Ceiling now 3000. Winds moving in. Engine start, lean the mixture 1” to taxi, run up (a much better runup turn), cleared to take off. I climb high, I climb fast. I defeat the base leg again and I’m on centerline. Tower calls the wind 060@8. Landing on Runway 16 means I’ve got just under an 8 KT crosswind. Too late now. Cleared touch-and-go. My left wheel touches first and I’m on the ground. I zig zag a little on the ground roll, turning more freely with less weight in the plane. Flaps up—yes, they went up. Back on the center line. Here I go again.

One last try. I got the centerline last time, now just add the right flare. My instructor wants the stall warning horn to go off a second before I touch down. Happy to oblige. I hold the aircraft off with the nose up as the mains caress the asphalt runway. My fourth landing and fifth approach of the night restore my belief that I was ready to solo tonight. I turn off at Foxtrot, thank the controller for staying a few minutes late and park the plane. Then I see it—for both of my solo landings, I left the mixture leaned out an inch rather than keeping it full rich. I have to laugh at myself. With all the bothering about flaps, transponders, landing lights, P-factor, tower communications, 30 degree banks, hugging 405 and flaring just right with the power cut, I forgot to enrich the mixture before requesting my takeoff clearance.

Live and learn. I’ve logged the first 20 minutes of the required 10 hours of solo flight required for my private pilot’s certificate. They’re the last .3 hours of my 19.2 hours logged to date. I look forward to completing this certificate, earning my instrument rating and building hours flying friends around and taking long trips to visit family in the Midwest, but for now I’m just enjoying the ride.

Fiction, fun and profit

A few months ago I realized I needed to read faster. I've always been an "A" student. I've shown my employers that I have the skills and wit they acquire. I needed to read faster because you can drown in the technical information available to people these days. The web is competing for the former juggernaut of time-sinks, television. What's more insidious is that the web surfer always has cause to surf further in the name of learning something edifying or useful to his job. I don't know anyone who complains that he can't find "anything good on the internet" the way people would gripe about there being nothing on TV.

With a strong and growing career in software engineering and a new hobby of aviation, I picked up the book 10 Days to Faster Reading, published by the Princeton Press. It's been a great investment, both of the paltry monetary sum and the 10 days themselves. The book mentions the physiology of reading, how our eyes make short stops when scanning across a page, how you can practice grabbing more words per eye movement and such.

What I realized was that technical science and math textbooks can train you to be a slower reader. Math books in particular are very dense, forcing the reader to savor each word, grok each sentence and appreciate each subtlety before moving on. But most of what we read isn't that dense. This extra redundancy allows readers to skip entire sections which may not apply or read passages quickly, confident that the important information will likely resurface soon. If you studied too hard in math, though, you may be carrying your habits over to non-technical works and slowing yourself down unnecessarily.

My solution? Read more novels. There are plenty of other reasons you would want to read novels as an engineer, but start with this one if you haven't picked up any pleasure reading in a while. Having an interesting plot and characters to look forward to can accelerate your engagement and your pace of reading. It just might train you out of reading each sentence like a mathematical equation.

*Note: 10 Days to Faster Reading notes that pleasure reading should just be done at your own pace. After all, it's for pleasure. While that's true, reading faster doesn't mean you miss much. I remember knocking back entire Goosebumps books in between 30 and 60 minutes as a kid, and I didn't enjoy them any less for the speed.