Commerical Maneuvers and Traffic Alerts

I finally got up today. Sure it was only a week but it was one long week of not flying.

My flight had originally been scheduled for 7PM, but my plans for the afternoon got canceled. Rather than doing more night approaches, I thought it would be a better use of time to refresh my commercial maneuvers instead. After calling up my instructor we were off at 3PM.

Off we went into the wild blue yonder. I had visually checked the gas as always and we were running 14.5 gallons. That will get us just under 3hrs of fuel burn if we lean it right, and we generally do. I strained the tanks as always to check for water and that came up negative on both wing tanks and the sump tank at the bottom of the fuel system.

For those who may not know, the Cessna 150 runs on a gravity fuel feed system. The gas is stored up top in the wings and through the magic of plumbing, finds its way down towards the engine. Water in the fuel is a very bad problem for GA aircraft (Jet-A you don't get that problem as often) so the manufacturers have installed sump drains at the lowest points on the left and right wing tanks, as well as bottom of the fuel system right before the fuel goes into the engine. We check the fuel for water and other "contaminants" before each flight to ensure the integrity of the fuel.

So off we went. I noticed the right tank was reading almost empty even though I visually inspected 7.0 gallons in that tank. It was probably just a miss reading though since these gauges only have to legally show "FULL" and "EMPTY". That's it... In between you can guess all you want. This right tank gauge was probably reading just above empty which made the flight legal.

But of course, being the concerned pilot I am, stop and check one more time. Yup there's 7.0 wonderful gallons in that tank. Let's go!

Clearance off to the south practice area is attained, cleared to runway 24 via taxiway whiskey, runway 1-5R, short of 24. Run up goes well and we pull up to the hold short line and call ready.

There's a not so new woman working tower. She's been with ISP since I worked there back in my senior year of high school. She's a very nice lady, slightly older starting a new career. Unfortunately she had problems right off the bat with clearance delivery. She was just uneasy and didn't have courage in her radio transmissions. Eventually she got signed off on clearance (and is very efficient at it), got signed off on ground after some time, and now is most definitely training at local. She handled her self pretty well given the amount of traffic she had, and there was of course someone else watching her and helping here out here and there. They are very good at training here at ISP. I had some very top notch help when I was learning what it would be like to be an ATC. I'd still enjoy that job if I ever decided to quit flying for some reason. Yet something tells me I've invested a lot into this aviation gig to give up now ;-)

Well, long story short she eventually decides to make a 172 go around and side step so she can roll me and the two guys behind me. Quite honestly, I probably could've taken it on a roll a few times, but as I've said before -- If you don't feel comfortable rolling me, I don't feel comfortable with you rolling me either. She did a good job, and she'll become more efficient with time.

We opted for the short field take off which is the one maneuver we use 10 degrees of flaps in the 150. This takes the weight off the wheels sooner since it is increasing the resulting lift vector and decreasing the downward force on the ground. It was a pretty good take off except on the first 100' I managed to let the nose drop for a second and it touched pavement. I probably would've gotten away with it on a flight test, but you can't "probably" get away with it in real life.

Off to departure - NY Departure N63*** 500 for 2000.

Left turn 180 climb maintain 2000 till the south practice area.

As we're climbing through 1,600' the engine sputts... What the... It kicks right back in and only kicked out for a second, if that. But it had enough to scare the crap out of me. EGT is still running hot so we have all 4 cylinders. The plugs aren't misfiring and RPM is still high. Oil temp and pressure is good. The only logical solution could be water. All it takes is a drop and that's it. After some more assurance from my instructor we keep going off to the practice area.

We get cut loose int the practice area and start with some steep (50-55 degree turns). I let the nose drop on the last 90degrees on the first to and finally my instructor just forces me to look outside. Ignore the instruments for the first time in over a year, and LOOK OUTSIDE. Magically it works. I guess all that experience he has pays off huh??

Next up we do some slow flight -- I don't believe thats on the commercial flight test but it's good to do anyway since your just "landing" it on an imaginary deck. That goes well and its time to turn around. We're getting too close to the Class Bravo for my liking. We had back east and we're getting traffic calls like crazy. 2 O'clock 2000 3 miles, 10 O'clock 1 mile 2500'. So much for getting to do Chandalles(sp?) and Lazy Eights. We opt to head further east towards Smiths Point Park. We had been previously given a restriction of 2000', but we see if we can get a block altitude of 2000'-3000' which is approved. We do one Chandalle and as I'm rolling out on my 180 heading I see smoke... Wtf is that?! Shit there's somebody doing aerobatics and he's awfully close.

With that note we decide to head back west and do a steep spiral. This was my first time doing one of those and it was pretty simple and enjoyable. My first impression was that it was like turns around a point but I was quickly prompted to just keep the nose on the point you want to descend onto. Easy enough!

After that maneuver we were really starting to loose daylight. On go the nav lights and our instrument back lights. We decide to call it a day and head in for an ILS 24 into ISP.

Another fun approach with some nice vectoring by our friends at NY Approach. Take it down to 300' call the runway insight and squeak the tires for a pretty good landing.

Off to ground and over to parking. Afterwards my instructor goes to tell me that he's being awfully picky (which is good) and that I should be good to go as soon as I get 250hrs. It looks like this will be another flight test where I just barely meet the minimum hour requirements. Nothing wrong with that though.

Something tells me I'll be building time quickly once I pick up my commercial and CFI-II tickets (hopefully!)

I am up way later than I want to be. Hopefully I can sleep in for a bit tomorrow.

Until next time,

Happy flying!

-Matt