Check-out on Cessna 172

In order that I can fly the group aircraft solo I must first complete 3 hours training on the type, this also allows me to get the feel of the aircrafts flight envelope with the safety of an instructor on hand. The past few days have seen me reading all I can find about the Cessna 172 in preperation for today's check-out process, it is pretty amazing how easy the net makes research. The weather today was pretty poor, I arrived at Blackbushe early in the morning expecting to have it cancelled however the METAR was giving overcast at 4000MSL with a 10knt crosswind, light rain and 7000 visibility, this made flight possible although far from ideal. I talked it through with Peter the CFI who is going to be carrying out the check-out. We decided we could go up and see how it is in the air and if possible we would try and do general handling otherwise circuits.

Luckily the rain eased off a bit so I went out and carried out the 'A' check, removing the wet covers which conspired to transfer there wetness to me. Peter joined me and before long we were ready to depart. The take off was pretty much textbook, lifting the nosewheel at 55mph and rotation at 60mph it was then easy to climb away at 80mph. Yes, Lima Sierra has an airspeed indicator in MPH rather than KNOTS, I understand this was a British idea.. and not a particularly good one however adjusting to the difference proved no problem. Once at cruise altitude I had the opportunity to feel the stability of the Cessna 172, it was a very easy task to keep the aircraft from banking and only a slight touch of right rudder was required to keep the ball in between the white lines. The Continental 6-cylinder engine lived up to its reputation by being as smooth as silk through all power settings. Peter asked me to perform some turns at 30degrees which again was a simple affair, the rudder is slight going in to the turn and once established at 30degrees both the ailerons and the rudder can be returned to neutral and she just sits there at 30degrees in a perfectly balanced turn. Likewise, opposite aileron and slight rudder to roll back to straight and level. This is a really easy airplane to fly.

One problem I did have was continually allowing the aircraft to descend, this was due to first having no horizon due to the dense haze and rain and adjusting my brain to the different perspective. I guess this will come with time.

Once happy with turns, climbing and descending we moved on to stalls. The first stall was done in clean configuration, in order to look after the newly serviced engine I reduced power gradually whilst maintaining our altitude, this took a little while and eventually we were just mushing along with full up elevator. The symptoms of the stall were there, she felt like she wanted to brake with buffet and the nose bobbing a bit but no stall warner. The VSI showed we were stalled so we recovered after losing 500 feet, alot of height to lose but to be honest we were waiting for the stall horn. Peter asked me if I had checked the stall warner on the 'A' check, I had and it worked fine then, so we tried entering the stall a little faster. This worked and around 55mph the stall horn went off slightly. We went on to carry out stalls in landing configuration and simulated turns to base and final. All I can really say about the stall in the 172 is it is just a non-event, it doesn't appear to want to drop a wing and just letting go of the controls unstalls it immediately.

Flying back to blackbushe we noticed tiny rime ice forming on the windscreen and the leading edge of the wing, we descended a little and no further ice appeared. The scary thing about ice is it builds up very subtly, was a good opportunity to see that at first hand.

We had been flying for almost an hour so now to see if I can land, I chose to fly 70mph on base with 10deg of flap and 65mph on final with 20deg of flap, the crosswind meant a fairly pronounced crab angle. This brought us to a reasonable landing and we stopped quickly.

One of Peter's other students had cancelled so a further slot in his schedule opened up this afternoon, therefore I took that also. I went home in the mean time to catch up with some work.
Later on the weather looked a little improved with only occasional spots of rain rather than the constant rain this morning therefore I returned for some circuit practice. The circuits went very well, each landing and approach seemed to improve a bit as I got a feel for the aircraft. It seems virtually everytime I fly there is a crosswind and today was no exception, the 172 was easily handled through the wind gusts. My landings were not as good as the Katana landings I do but that was to be expected. On one circuit Peter asked for a glide to land on the numbers so after turning base he pulled the power back to idle and I trimmed for 80mph (best glide speed), Lima Sierras glide was better than I expected and once I knew I could make the runway I dropped full 40degree of flap. This is a great feature for losing lots of height as she drops like a brick. Over the threshold at 60mph she landed gently right on the numbers, impressing both Peter and me.. I had expected to make a balls-up of it. During the circuits we tried all landing configurations and therefore satisfied we called it a day after one hour.

I have another slot booked with Peter for tomorrow afternoon to complete the check-out process. This will be practiced forced landings, steep turns and go-arounds and anything else we didn't cover today.

Really enjoyed today's flying and getting myself familiar to Lima Sierra, she maybe old but she certainly handles beautifully.