Blade Edge

I was disappointed that I screwed up my departure time for my last flight and couldn’t take off with the sunrise so I decided to try again for this one. Sort of succeeded – I ended up getting a bit too caught up in playing Dragon Age 2 to get set up in time!! Figures.

Here’s the flight plan for this trip.

Easy flight this time, just from one airport to another. It’s been a while since I’ve flown down the Jersey Shore so I decided to take the long way from KLDJ to N81. To make things a bit more interesting though I threw in a DME arc around KACY Charlie airspace since I haven’t done one in a while and it would be coming from the opposite direction – not to mention in a totally different aircraft.

Still getting used to operating the V35B – the main issue I had to deal with this flight was trim. Ignoring the fact that I have an autopilot, because I enjoy the challenge of manually flying a plane as much as I prefer to manually drive a car, this aircraft requires throttle and trim control to get evenly trimmed. I’m talking tenths adjustment to the fuel flow since the trim increments are a bit large, so once I get near a stable trim I start playing with the throttle to keep the aircraft level. Then of course there’s the fact that I can only drain one fuel tank at a time – made even worse by the fact that this model sports wingtip tanks. Wonderful extra range but they are so far displaced from the center of gravity it doesn’t take much difference in fuel from one to make the aircraft start to bank. I have to remember to monitor the tanks and switch over every quarter to make trimming the ailerons easier. If I let my attention off the altimeter for even a minute, I can be 2-3 hundred feet higher than when I last looked!

Flying the DME arc went well. I once again stayed off 12nm from the KACY VOR and this time managed to remain within +/- 0.5nm. The only thing I forgot is that as I passed parallel to the VOR along my direction of travel the DME gauge would begin to read an increase in speed – away from the VOR. There’s really no way of telling whether the increased speed means you’re traveling to or from until you see the range update – although you can guess based on your direction of travel if you don’t get disoriented. I originally set the VOR to the HSI gauge, but before starting the arc I decided to just stick with the CDI needle on the NAV2 gauge since that’s what I used in the Cessna. One more gripe about this aircraft is that when I switch DMEs it doesn’t indicate to me which DME I’m set to, I have to guess based on the range or untune one of the NAV radios to see if the DME readout goes blank.

Pattern flying and landing went off way better when I finally reached Hammonton. Did a 45 entry into downwind after overflying the field to check the sock and brought her around on final almost perfectly lined up with the runway, but at least I was on slope. Put my flaps full down and kept my speed up at around 80kts as my cousin recommended to me and didn’t flare that much. I floated a bit still and bounced on the landing (gently!) but ultimately made it down in one piece and more importantly didn’t run out of runway 😛

I forgot to note departure and arrival times, so I modified my Before Takeoff and After Landing checklists to make sure I don’t have to remember next time.