The World Models T-34 Mentor would never win any beauty awards for scale looks or accurate renditions of the original airplane, but it was a hardy, reliable and very easy to fly craft. If not for some poor covering material that was shedding after years of faithful service it could have been one of the best planes ever built.

While it will never truly be replacable, I am sure there will be another plane to take its spot in the garage in the future.  Goodbye and farewell T-34, you will certainly be missed.

World Models T-34 Mentor

This trip included a flight in a rare (for renters) bird indeed:  the Beech Mentor T-34A/B.  The flying club happens to have one and my CFI is checked out in it so we took it for an hour around the Half Moon Bay area.  What makes it tricky for me is the amount of “new” stuff it has: constant speed prop, manifold pressure, retractable landing gear, flaps, fuel pumps, 250+ HP and all sorts of tricky on the ground handling.  It was fast and slippery in the air and I felt like I was behind the the airplane whenever we had to change the flight configuration.  But while it was flying it was silky smooth and the best handling plane I’ve yet flown.

If it weren’t so expensive to fly (over $230 per hour) it would be a great plan to check out in and have in the back pocket to impress visitors.  As it is, in today’s flight dollars, the T-34 is a rare treat to experience when you can afford the ability to do so.  Definitely recommended to fly.

53158 more photos in the album

Next on the list of things to be worried about is my flying or lack thereof.  I’m at a point in my training where I must complete a written test before I can get any closer to getting my pilot’s license.  It’s a bear, since it is an array of questions, numbers, arithmetic and other stuff that I have to know cold before I go in and take the test.  I’m getting better, but rote memorization has never been my strong point.

Finally, I’ve used my abundance of spare time to go around the house and fix just about everything that is doable by myself.  With that complete I’ve spent a lot of time visiting Liberty City (in GTA4) and Turkfrackistan (in BF: Bad Company).  Sadly, neither of these locations helps me either exercise, meet women or get a tan.  I do get to meet new and interesting people, then shoot them, so it does have some perks.

I now have to do a few more brush up flights to stay frosty, start figuring out my plan of attack on the written test, take one more check-ride with another instructor then it’s off to the final flight test and oral test.  Normally this would make people happy but I am going to take it easy and make sure everything goes smoothly.  It’s been a long road to get to this point and there is no reason to blow it at this last stage.

One down, two more and a bunch of little procedural stuff to go before that private ticket is mine.

What really made this flight tough (at 3 1/2 hours long) was not just the playing kids (and by playing I mean obnoxious running around, tearing papers and pulling things off trays) but the screaming kids that simply wouldn’t pipe down no matter what their mothers offered them. If ever there was a advertisement for why birth control is needed, this flight was it.

I must restate my request that some airline flights should really be reserved for business people, or at least give us the option to pay a bit more to keep the kids off some routes. By the end of the flight I wanted to see how much it would cost to fly myself home as I really didn’t like the torture that I received from this flight.

The downsides of this new plane are: it’s more expensive to rent and I am now “behind the airplane” a lot more than I used to be.  More things for me to learn and aware of on the flights around the area, I suppose.

Simulated instrument flying is flying around with a “hood” or view limiting device on your head so that you can only see the instruments in the cockpit.  That leaves me with no idea where I am and following the directions barked out by the CFI behind me.  It is a bit disorienting to fly this way as I feel lost and a bit off kilter the entire time, but it is to remind me not to ever fly into clouds or other instrument-like conditions.

Next up is night flying.  This is a bit similar to the instrument flying, but you can kind of see lights and the outlines of stuff on the ground.  The challenge is, at least in the Bay Area, that there are these pesky mountains that get in the way of your airplane.  So it is very easy to fly into one (or a cloud) at night.  And landing is a bit of a trip, also, since it involves heading for a dark spot in a town with only a few lights around the edges of the runway with no real depth perception.

Finally we have recoveries from unusual attitudes.  It is exactly what it sounds like:  the plane gets into some state where it is climbing, banking, stalling, or falling in a way that it shouldn’t, and then I have to do the right things to get it out of this condition.  But the way you get into this sad state is the kicker:  I am asked to close my eyes, take my hands and feet off the controls, and put my head down towards the floor.  The instructor puts the plane through some violent maneuvers  and then says “look up” and I have to fix it.  All the while, my brain and inner ears are telling me that things aren’t what they appear to be and I have to learn to trust the instruments in front of me and not just what I’m feeling.

This training, along with the cross country trips, supposedly moves me closer to the final testing and sign off for a private pilots license.  Let’s just see if I can make it through the next few recoveries without losing my lunch.

On Saturday and Sunday this week I flew solo.  Saturday was just laps around the pattern, landing, takeoffs, taxi backs, the normal stuff.  That is fine and I’m comfortable doing it for the most part.  Sunday my CFI pushed me to fly out to the coast and do some “air work.”  This is the stuff of stalls, slow flight, and controlling altitude and bank angles in turns.  I don’t really enjoy doing that stuff with the CFI in the plane with me, so it was really tough to be motivated to do it without him there.  Worse, there was mild turbulence on the way to and back from the practice area.  When you are all alone in the cockpit, the tower has released you with the “frequency change approved” kiss off, it can get a bit crazy there in the cockpit (or your head).

In my case, it was just a chunk of time with my brain alternating between moving the arms and hands to do the stuff they are supposed to do and the mind’s tendency to be freaking out with all of the rocking and rolling of the winds.  I eventually started talking to myself (cue the “wacko” tag here) to restore a since of calm and order in the plane.  Once over at the practice area, which today is a grand vista of the Pacific ocean and bits of Half Moon Bay visible, things smoothed out and a sense of purpose returned.  It wasn’t until the return to the airport that things went all to pieces again.

Once headed back in I got to see the real disaster in the making: at least 12 different planes in the pattern in various states of take off, landing, maneuvering, talking to the tower, and getting completely and utterly lost. I only did one more circuit around the pattern in this airplane soup, since the poor tower folks were just getting hammered.  In the end, on the ground, I realized that there was never really any danger to me, but when you are all alone surrounded by O2 and smog, bouncing around, you just don’t have a lot of common sense when facing the unknown.