Day 5, My First Flight!

Today was the first day I wa able ot get up in the air in a Piper Seminole. I actually woke up earlier than the rest of the students, headed over to the airport and hopped in the FRASCA simulator to work for an hour on my in-flight maneuvers. I was Feeling pretty good about my memorized checklists and procedures. Around 8:00am my instructor showed up and we spent a couple of hours in the FRASCA observing Jerry, my flight partner, work his maneuvers. He is getting better at the FASCA sim but you can definitely see where "old dogs don't learn new tricks". He's definitely not a sim flyer yet...must be due to him being older and his generation not flying sims much.

Once Jerry was done in the sim, I went out to preflight one of he Seminoles with the flight instructor. The outside field elevation temperature was around 20 degrees so it was very very frigid. So cold we spend a good 10 minutes trying to get both engines started up. Once they were started we taxied out and I conducted my very first flight in the Seminole. The heater the Seminole uses is a fuel combustion heater. Basically fuel from the fuel tanks are routed to the nose of the aircraft where it is mixed with air and ignited. Basically the aircraft has an industrial strength heater in the nose and while the pilot has a control lever to manage the amount of heat being blown into the cabin, there really is 2 settings... off and burning hot. While it was 20 degrees outside.. within minutes I was sweating in the airplane.

The first thing we did was head SE from the field to get out in the open where there was less air traffic so we could conduct maneuvers. The days was crystal clear and you could see the Smokie Mountains on the horizon. Once we were out in the open I started my maneuvers. Steeps turns, slow flight, power off stalls, power on stalls, Vmc or slow flight loss of directional control with one engine recovery, engine out procedures, air start procedures, and emergency descents.

I was able to take a photo after we fully secured our right engine in flight. The photo is below. You can see the fully feathered prop parallel to the wind to reduce drag.

I hope to be able to get back up in the air for a second flight as soon as tomorrow since Sunday is not looking like a good day to fly.