Lesson 5, 1.6hrs

Ed and I departed Boeing Field to the North on runway 31R and enter the pattern for a southeast departure. The plan is to head South and practice some of what I've already learned and add short and soft field takeoffs and landings into the mix.

I need to get a chart of the area so I can study at home. I'm already forgetting some of the names of landmarks we saw along the way. One is Lake Youngs, which is really a funny shaped resevoir with no houses around it.

Just south of Lake Youngs is Crest airpark, which has a roughly 3000' runway that is pretty narrow. It is surrounded by trees. We landed here 4 times during the lesson and each time it was a bit freaky to me to see how close the trees were on both takeoff and landing. It reminded me about this months "I Learned About Flying From That" column in Flying magazine, where the author narrowly clips some trees in the dead of night taking off in his fully loaded Piper. Not something you want to do!

At Crest we practiced short field and soft field takeoffs. Short field you run the power up while toes on the breaks, then release and climb out at 65 knots (mainly to clear the trees). Soft field you keep the yoke in your lap during takeoff roll, releasing enough as you gain speed to balance the nose in the air and not dragging the tail. Once the mains come up its nose down to gain speed to 60 knots, then nose up again to climb. Quite fun, actually.

We also practiced turns around a point for a bit and I need to figure out how not to be spiraling in towards my point. In some ways I'm anxious to solo so I can go out and practice these maneuvers on my own. But there's quite a bit more I need to learn first...

Back at Boeing field we do a soft field landing (done with power on). I did pretty well on this one!

Next lesson is Sunday.