A Good Preflight

March 24, 2012

On my drive to the airport, I find myself slightly distracted by the large, towering cumulonimbus clouds that have developed above most of the city. I began preparing myself for the potentially bumpy flight caused by the unstable atmosphere.

During my preflight inspection, I watch the clouds as I inspect everything from the propeller to the rudder. I turn on the master switch from inside to check certain instruments and test the flaps. Testing the flaps is not a requirement listed on the checklist, but just good pilot practice. Today I found out why. As the flaps lower, I hear this horrendous sound of metal shredding. This is definitely not right. I raise the flaps and cringe as I hear the sound again. This needs to be brought to my instructors attention. I finish the preflight and go inside to get Mark, my CFII.

We arrive at the plane and I tell him to listen. The flaps go down, sounds normal. "Of course, now it works right," I say as I try to prove that I'm not crazy. Then there, that sound again. I look at Mark. His full attention has been diverted as he quickly tells me to leave the flap down. He looks underneath and says, "oh, yeah well that's why. Here come look." I race to the right side of the plane and look under the flap. There's a yellow piece of metal shredded into two pieces inside of the right flap by some of the linkage. It was mangled to the point that I had no idea what it even was to begin with. We knew it was not safe to fly. We looked around the ramp to see if any other Cessna 172s were available. After seeing just one airplane parked, we go inside to check the schedule. Lucky for us, it was available.

After what should've been an hour into the lesson, we begin another preflight on the alternate airplane. This one was the Traffic Watch plane, a180hp airplane that is only available to students on the weekend. We conclude that it's safe to fly. We depart runway 27 and head west. We're going to practice the Localizer at Spirit Airport. A localizer is as sensitive as an ILS, but doesn't provide the vertical guidance. We listen to the ATIS frequency to figure out which runway they're using and what their weather is. As we're flying, Mark makes a comment about the rain. I say, "Oh it's raining?" I look up and sure enough, we hit a small pocket of light rain, which didn't last. Now it's time to contact St. Louis Approach. I make the call, and to my benefit, he could actually hear me this time. The controller vectors us around to line us up for the approach. Once cleared for the approach and at the final approach fix, I can set up to land. Decrease speed, drop a notch of flaps and descend. We switch over to Spirit's tower frequency and notify them that we are inbound. I follow through with the approach by following the direction the needle on my instrument tells me. It it moves to the right, I turn to the right, if it moves to the left, I turn to the left. The goal is to get the needle to stay centered, as that will take us straight to the center of the runway.

I was a bit surprised that there wasn't as much turbulence as I expected. The clouds were still building just a 1000 feet above us. I stayed focus and didn't do too bad tracking the Localizer. When Mark told me to look up, I was fairly close. Not needing to land, we go around. The second try was a little embarrassing. When Mark had me look up to see the runway, I was pretty far off to the left. I wouldn't have made the landing without having to do some drastic measures. Not the safest thing to do if I were flying under instrument conditions, or even regular VFR (visually). We climb back up to altitude and call it a day. We thank Spirit for their assistance and begin flying northeast towards home.

I'm trying to learn to identify parts of the city from the air, so Mark told me I could take my foggles off again. We started off gawking at all the big houses underneath us. As we continued on our route, we flew right over my old apartment, my old college, my current home, then workplace. I feel like I'm getting pretty confident to fly the area solo or with passengers now. That's been a goal of mine for a while. Once back at the airport, I tell Mark he can do the landing. I usually can pick up some good information by watching a real professional do it. Naturally, his landing was perfect.

Up I go again tomorrow!