Unlocking the Mystery

I take my Multi-Engine flight test this Saturday. I feel fairly confident, however I'm still going to try to get another flight sometime before then to go up with Richard and make sure everything is polished. I feel like right now I'm just starting to cross the threshold between having to consciously THINK about how to fly the airplane, and being able to fly the airplane instinctively. There's certainly a difference, and I started to notice it doing circuits on Sunday. I didn't have to consciously think as much about maintaining my altitude in the downwind or holding my airspeed during the approach, I just did it. Granted I am still a long ways from mastering the airplane, but the change towards that is starting to happen.

It reminds me of a certain memory I have during primary training. This happened more then four years ago now I think but I still remember the experience vividly. This was a fair amount of time before my solo. We were doing circuits in C-GEBW, the flight school's Cessna 150. I was at the point where I was just flying the airplane, and Paul would do the pre-landing check (Master on, Mags on, fuel selected on, carb heat hot, mixture rich) for me in the downwind and was probably dropping the flaps for me as well on the base leg. I remember I was concentrating very hard on holding my alititude and keeping a straight downwind leg, and Paul decided it was time for me to handle the entire workload. I called for the pre-landing check, and instead of agreeing it was time and doing it, he just said something like, "Why don't you do it this time?." So I said, "Ok, do you have [control of] the airplane?" He just declined to take control and said I was doing fine. The first time I felt a little overwhelmed - I have to FLY the airplane AND do the downwind check on my own!?! I chuckle at it now, because the pre-landing check in the 150 takes less then 5 seconds to do, so its really a non-event, but at the time it was a real challenge to carry that out while not letting the airplane wander at the same time. After a little more practice I soon learned to handle both tasks safely and efficiently. Its funny to look back and remember the challenge it was to fly a simple little C-150. Back then Cessna 150's were still complex and mysterious in my mind's eye. Now it seems like there is nothing to them. The challenge of unlocking that mystery is a richly rewarding process.

It has been the same with learning to fly the Twin Comanche, except on a slightly smaller scale. I remember my first flight in C-FINY when we were down in Texas looking at it as a possibility to buy it. It was thrilling to get to fly in it, and it was also so far above my head. The physics of single engine performance, like Vmc (Minimum controllable airspeed with one engine inop) and blue line (Vyse, airspeed for best rate of climb on one engine) were all a mystery to me, as was flying an airplane with a constant speed propellor and retractable landing gear. I had never done it before, and I hadn't a clue how any of it worked. Those mysteries are starting to be unlocked, but I still look forward to the time when I have completely mastered the airplane and can look back on this point and chuckle at how green I still was.

There are also more things that are still a mystery, like IFR flying that I can look forward to unlocking.