Week 1 Reflection

     This first week learning how to fly planes for Senior Project has been an amazing learning opportunity, as well as an extremely memorable and fun experience. The breadth of information that has been thrown at Ben, Henry and myself is very large, so studying this information and preparing for the next day in the air has been occupying a large amount of our time during the day. I can speak for all three of us when I say that we have been throughly enjoying learning how to fly these aircraft, as well as interacting with the amazing instructors at the concord aviation center.

    Thus far in our project, we have been educated on a multitude of topics spanning from basic aerodynamics, reading weather in the sky, learning about the many instruments in the aircraft's interior and, of course, learning how to actually pilot the aircraft. The planes that we are piloting are not very large, which makes the wind and other weather conditions affect us while in the air far more than what a person may be used to in a commercial aircraft. This hypersensitivity to weather conditions paired with the controls that are nothing like what you may see in a car have made piloting the aircraft very difficult to get used to. Speaking for myself, I have found that even over the course of just the first four sessions that we've had, I have made some serious improvements on my ability to control the plane without scaring my instructor or myself.

    The 'goal' of our project is for each of us (Henry Krehbiel, Benjamin Greenberg and myself) to be able to take the aircraft up for a solo flight without the aid or presence of an instructor. Currently, it is rather unclear whether or not we will be able to actually achieve this goal, but speaking for myself, I can look forward to the next week with some optimism about our chances. Regardless of whether or not we actually end up achieving the goal of performing a solo flight, I can walk away from this project with a newfound interest in being able to pilot a small aircraft, and looking into the future, may even want to pursue this further and potentially gain a license to fly a plane. Overall the project has been going very well so far, and I am waiting impatiently to get into the air again.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Today, I again flew in the same aircraft with the same instructor, and overall, the experience was far smoother than yesterday. Firstly, I had no motion sickness while in the air, which was partly due to the weather. I was able to do a full takeoff on my own today, and made some maneuvers in the air including S-turns and descents/ascents. I was able to have my hands on the controls while descending to the runway for landing, however the instructor took over for that part. There was a lot of information that I was presented with on how to effectively use the instruments and how to do certain maneuvers, so I spent a large amount of time going over this information with my father (a pilot himself) following the lesson. Overall, today was a great day, and I am very excited to continue tomorrow. Total flight time = 2 hours Total study time = 3 hours (1 in the morning before leaving, 2 in the afternoon following) Total = 5 hours
Read more

Senior Project Blog - Monday 5/13

 Today was a rather long day. Knowing I was going to have an hour of ground school before actually flying today, I prepared myself by studying and filling out some sheets that my instructor had given me the night before for a couple of hours. Following this I headed to the airport, went over how to perform and recover from different types of stalls, and more information about different scenarios in the air and different parts of the aircraft that I hadn't learned about at this point. During the flight itself, we performed two separate takeoffs and landings, practiced turns with a 45 degree bank, turning around a point, and some radio calls that I hadn't performed yet. This was a LOT of new information for one day, so I left the airport feeling pretty overwhelmed. Luckily, my instructor gave me some sheets to go over upon returning home, and I looked over these and familiarized myself with them for a few hours when I got home. Total Hours today: 7 Total Project Hours: 28
Read more

Senior Project Blog - May 23rd, 2023

 Much like yesterday, today began with studying the landing traffic pattern with my dad at home, practicing the pattern extensively, and ended in the same way as it began. In anticipation of the flights that I will be performing after I get the traffic pattern down, I spent a lot of time going over the different waypoints in the maps of the New Hampshire and Massachusetts airspace, as my instructor informed me that soon, we will be doing a "cross country" flight, which is very exciting. Today however, we simply took off and landed many, many times. To put things rather bluntly, my landings need a lot of work. As the day went on the maneuvers in the traffic pattern became second nature, with the same being said about the radio calls. However, the actual act of landing the aircraft is something that I will need to practice more extensively to truly get a grasp on.  Total Study time today: 4 hours Total time at concord aviation: 3 hours Total time today, 7 hours Total project ho...
Read more