Getting Better!

March 25, 2012

It's a partly cloudy morning with the sun shining through the breaks in the clouds. A bit hazy but that's not to stop us. The preflight inspection today went well. I meet with my instructor and decide to do the same lesson as yesterday. We walk out to the plane and climb aboard. I turn the key and the engine comes to life. The goal today was for me to fully handle both the radio communication with ATC and carry out the approach alone. Mark taxis out to the runway while I set up the radios. For the first time, I knew exactly what frequencies to use, where to find them and what order I'll need them. I programmed the radio accordingly.

We depart the area and head southwest. I'm feeling pretty confident and looking forward to seeing how this lessons goes. I listen to Spirit Airport's ATIS frequency to get the weather and runway information (currently named Foxtrot). Now prepared to call up St. Louis Approach, I press the push-to-talk button. "St. Louis Approach, Skyhawk five-three-niner-four-four is about five miles to the north of the St. Louis VOR inbound for the Localizer approach for 26Left at Spirit." He gives me a set of directions then asks if I'm flying a Skyhawk (I guess he missed that part). "Affirmative, and I have Foxtrot." Mark, my CFII gives me a thumbs up. I smile. It appears that the sun is heating the ground quickly. We get knocked around quite a bit as the thermals develop.

The controller puts us on course for the approach, but the wind from the north is stronger than he expected. It blew us right through the approach course. He called us again and said sorry for the bad directions, he didn't know what the wind was doing up there because it was clear that the course he gave us didn't work. He asked if we would be ok to try again. We tell him that was alright with us. He has us fly south, then turn left to east, then do a 180 degree turn back west. "I'll get it right this time," the controller says. We laugh it off and continue flying inbound. We get the clearance to carry out the approach and to contact Spirit's tower. The wind is directly from our right, blowing us left. I'm still fighting the turbulence. I knew that once I was at the final approach fix (named Eaves intersection) I could set up to land. Problem was that I didn't remember how to find out when I was at Eaves. Mark races to program a GPS to help us identify where Eaves was. By time he got it set up, we were already passed it. I didn't know this, but Mark did since he was able to see outside. When we arrived at the missed approach point, I looked outside and saw that I was still too high. I called the tower and told them I was going missed (doing a go-around).

We switch back over to St. Louis Approach so that we can try again. This time, everything was looking good. I was keeping the needle centered, indicating that I was in line perfectly for the runway. I was making majority of the radio calls confidently. We're told to recontact Spirit's tower. About the time we reach Eaves, Spirit tells us that there's a Mooney airplane on final approach. I'm wearing foggles so Mark looks for it. Once he makes visual contact, the tower tells us to lower our speed and to not descend under 1500ft. Problem is that for this stage of the approach, I should be at around 1100ft. The Mooney finally lands, but it's too late for us. We're too high to have a successful approach.

We go missed again and contact St. Louis Approach. The poor controller is overworked right now. All of the airports were busy and he was apparently the only one working this frequency for all general aviation traffic. He tells us that we have to continue flying the runway heading for a while to allow for aircraft separation. What seemed like forever, we finally got the ok to turn north and head home. He kept us under his radar watch for traffic advisories. Mark and I got another laugh on our way back as we constantly hear an airplane from the Creve Coeur airport making radio calls on the wrong frequency. The controller was getting very agitated with the pilot and continuously tried telling him that he's on the wrong frequency. The pilot never responded but kept making his calls. From the time we left Spirit airport to the time we arrived at our home airport, the situation never got fixed. It was very amusing to us, but we knew the controller was beyond annoyed.

My landing wasn't bad. Once inside the building Mark and I discuss the days lesson. Even with the complications, he rated my performance as slightly above average. I was very pleased. We've now practiced Lesson 18 four times (which is normal). However, Mark said I'm ready to advance to Lesson 19 (there's 23 in this stage). Yay for new stuff!!