Practice, practice

Last night the forecast for the Puget Sound area was not looking good for a flight this morning...ceilings were supposed to be around 2000', way below what I can fly in.

However, I was awakened this morning at about 6:30 by the sound of aviation in progress...one aircraft approaching KOLM from the northeast, right over the house...as well as a garden full of birds of various types. There was also the distinct hue of sunlight hitting the treetops out the window. As I stumbled to the coffee pot, I regretted canceling my reservation on 898 last night...but happily a quick call to the club reservation system told me that the ship was still available. I did a quick online weather briefing, convinced myself the clouds would stay away until afternoon, and by 7:30 I was out the door for the airport.

The tower opened as I was finishing up pre-flight (at 8 a.m.), and by about 8:15 I was in the air. The goal for today was to practice steep turns and ground reference maneuvers. I made a couple of circuits around the patch at KOLM...my standard practice on non-cross country flights. I did one takeoff as a soft field, and one as a short field. The landing in between was a short field as well. I did all of them just fine--on the soft field, 898 sure doesn't stay in ground effect very long before getting to Vx (60 kts)...maybe two seconds.

After the two circuits, I headed south and up to 3000' for steep turns. I did them fine both right and left, and all four times felt the tell-tale "bump" of crossing my own wake just prior to roll-out. Then down to 900' above ground level (AGL) to practice turns around a point and S-turns across a road. I think these still could get better, but I believe they were within checkride standards. Maybe one more practice session and I'll declare myself ready.

The marine push that's headed into our area, with stratus clouds chasing away the nice high pressure we've had for two days, was starting to inch closer from the southwest. Between that, and not wanting to disturb further the folks whose farm field I'd been circling, I decided to head north and practice a little more. I did some more turns around a point near Oyster Bay, between Olympia and Shelton, and then headed back in.

1.2 hours in the logbook, a good amount of fun, and some boosted confidence that I'm getting really close to the checkride.

Flight track in Google Earth is here. I'm still finding GPS Visualizer to be a very cool tool. Unfortunately, the GPS had a little hiccup in the pattern on one circuit--no, I really didn't make an abrupt turn like that!

I also played around with adding Lloyd Bailey's airspace layers for Google Earth, so I could see today's flight track in relation to the Olympia Class D. The cylinder around Olympia (approximately 5 nm radius and up to 2500' above the airport surface area) requires pilots to establish and maintain two-way radio communication with the tower prior to entry.



Here's the approximate area of the flight from the Seattle terminal area chart...the Class D is the blue dashed line around KOLM...