The Pilot’s Lounge: Enjoyment Immersion

The lights were off in the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport when I arrived this afternoon. It was
a gorgeous day so pilots who frequent the lounge were out flying. I had been hoping I might
have the place to myself. I wanted to sit in one of the big, ratty old recliners, look out the
window at the runway, and quietly replay the events of the last several hours without interruption.
A flight that I had just finished had put me in the best mood I’d had in weeks.

Today’s flight had finally come about after being ground-bound for nearly six weeks due to my
eighth knee surgery (tall, with long levers, isn’t always a good thing). The surgeon had signed off
my return to service and I immediately scheduled dual with Cali, a young instructor that I greatly
respect. Yeah, I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t have any problem flying, but there would be
some degree of rust in skills and judgment following the layoff plus, in the wake of a significant
medical procedure, I figured that I might look stupid in the NTSB report if I figuratively slipped
off the tightrope unexpectedly and there wasn’t someone there to catch me. I also decided that
since I was going to be taking some dual, it wouldn’t hurt to turn the session into a flight
review—I had over a year before I was due for one, but why not? There’s always something I
can learn.

The ground session with Cali started with the required review of Part 91 of the regs and,
unsurprisingly, she found areas where I was foggy, so I immediately started benefitting from the
bucks I would be paying for the lesson. She also caught my sour mood and told me to get with it
and get focused on what we were doing. At about the half-hour mark, we started discussing the short field operations that she had given to our EAA Chapter a while back, and we started talking about appropriate approach speeds.

In my 1966 Cessna 182, the Owner’s Manual (it’s a pre-POH airplane) calls for a short-field approach speed of 69 MPH (it’s also a pre-nautical miles per hour airplane) on final with full flaps. I told her that I’d always assumed that the speed was the standard 1.3 Vso (full-flap stall speed) normally used for landing, but I’d never checked. Plus, the airplane has a STOL kit and VGs, which lowered the stall speed, but I’d never done the 1.3 Vso calculation. We decided that during our flight we’d get the full flap indicated airspeed at the stall, correct it to calibrated airspeed, multiply it by 1.3 to get the appropriate CAS, and then convert that to IAS so we’d have a number to use for a short-field landing.

We wrapped up the ground session with a list of things we were going to do in flight, what
standard of precision Cali wanted to see for objective stuff like airspeed, altitude, and heading,
and went out to the airplane.

It was truly nice to be back in the left seat—I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. I was
pleased to find that I had no problem getting in and that I could get full travel on the rudders
without any discomfort.

There were no problems with taxiing, the runup, takeoff, or climb-out. Once at altitude, at Cali’s
direction, I started doing the assigned maneuvers and found that the rust flaked off quickly and I
could meet Cali’s demands for precision without too much work. No, it wasn’t work—it was
delightful. I was beginning to realize how much my sour mood during the recent weeks was due
to not flying.

The full-flap stall speed proved to be 41 MPH IAS on each of three different attempts. Cali did
the IAS to CAS conversion from the table in the manual, getting 58 MPH CAS—there’s a lot of
airspeed indicator error at low speeds on the airplane. Multiplying by 1.3 gave 75.4 CAS. Converting that to IAS to give us the appropriate approach speed generated 70 MPH IAS—one
MPH above the book short-field approach speed. That floored me, with two stall speed reducing mods, the short-field approach speed turned out to be the same for the unmodified airplane. OK, what is, is.

Suddenly I thought about a remark a Cessna test pilot made to me years ago as we were
discussing the early STOL kits: “Yeah, they just give pilots the courage to fly final at the
airspeed that’s in the book.” I have no idea if that’s true, but I like mods that reduce stall
speeds—they often make the difference between impact at a survivable versus unsurvivable
speed after an engine failure.

At 69 MPH IAS on approach, the 182 has plenty of energy to flare, power off, and
land—although when heavy, the flare has to be pretty aggressive. We then started discussing real
short-field ops and using 1.2 or 1.15 Vso as an approach speed. Naturally, we agreed that we’d
give slower speeds a try.

Back at the airport I started with a 69 MPH IAS on final. With just the two of us in the front
seats, we were near the forward end of the CG range and ran out of nose-up trim at 80 MPH
IAS, so holding speed meant constant pressure on the yoke, which increased the workload
somewhat. It also meant that with about half fuel, the airplane would float some with the power
at idle well before the flare started. Hmm, the STOL kit and VGs are the real thing if they cause
the airplane to float when approaching, power off, at 1.3 Vso.

We then tried 1.2 Vso on the approach. After Cali ran the numbers, that turned out to be 60 MPH
IAS. Holding the airspeed without being able to trim for it proved to be a challenge plus, at that
point in the drag curve the airplane came down quite steeply power off. There was enough
energy to flare, but only just.

Next, we tried 1.15 Vso, which worked out to be 55 MPH IAS. Power off, the 182 came down
final like a dropped sewer cover. Flaring and arresting the descent required power, and then
wiping it out about the time the mains touched down. We stopped in a hurry. This was proving to
be an interesting exercise in exploring the capabilities of the airplane.

As we continued to look at different airspeeds on landings—pushing up against the edges of the
performance envelope and concentrating on speed, hitting the landing spot, and dealing with
traffic in the pattern—I realized that I was totally focused on the here and now, something that
we humans don’t often do. Nothing mattered other than flying the airplane to the best of my
ability.

It was wonderful.

I did another landing and then asked Cali if she wanted to do some—she did and proceeded to do
so. As she flew, I sat in the happy glow of watching a sharp pilot handle an airplane with grace
and elan.

I hadn’t felt this good in weeks.

As we pushed the airplane into the hangar, I had the feeling that the grass was greener, the air
clearer, and the day brighter than before we took off. Cali endorsed my logbook for the FR; I paid
for the dual and headed for the pilot’s lounge. I’d just spent an hour and a half in total enjoyment
immersion, and I was going to take some time to myself to savor the feeling.

See you next month.