West Palm Flyover (and 182 Test Flight #2)

Still not much flying time available, but I have been learning about my new plane, the Cessna Skylane 182Q, by Carenado. The Skylane is 2 feet longer than the Skyhawk, sits a little higher, but has about the same wingspan. It's a little heavier, but has a lot more horsepower (230 vs. 160), and thus a much better power to weight ratio. It also has a much higher operating ceiling at 18,100 feet compared to 13,500 feet for the Skyhawk.

Part of the extra power and higher maximum altitude comes from the plane having a Constant Speed Propeller, whereas the Skyhawk has a fixed propeller. The term, "Constant Speed" is a bit of a misnomer, as you can actually adjust the speed of the propeller. I'm still learning the basics and I'm not very good at using it in practice, but the best analogy is like a transmission on a car (or to me, an even better one is like gears on a bike).

With a fixed propeller, the blades spin faster as you give the engine more gas, but that's basically it. Imagine a car with one gear or your old dirt-bike as a kid. Pedal faster and you go faster, but you're limited to the one gear. Switch up to a 10-speed, or a modern road bike with as many as 21 gears, and you can go a lot faster with less effort.

With a constant speed propeller, you set the desired propeller RPM's as a target. Then, as you add or reduce throttle, change altitude, etc., the blade pitch angle automatically changes in an attempt to maintain the desired RPM's. At higher speeds and altitudes, the pitch angle increases so you're taking a bigger bight out of the air and thus develop more power. For takeoff and landing, you use a lower pitch angle for more low-speed power or torque.

Anyway, I managed to take-off, climb to about 1,200 feet and turn south-east to go check out West Palm Beach and see if I recognized anything. I fiddled with the prop control a little bit, but not much. It's amazing how much power this plane has. With the throttle at about 50% and the propeller pitch slightly increased I was cruising at 120 knots, which is the flat-out maximum for a Skyhawk at full throttle.

Anyway, here's me flying over the inland waterway at West Palm. The actual ocean is out of view to the right. My MegaScenery Earth purchase does not extend this far south, so this is default FSX scenery, which is not very good. The boat docks (not shown) where we used to leave to scuba dive from, are just inside the curve on the other side of that bridge.

I did my fly over, did a sharp u-turn and flew back over the same area, then headed back to the airport. On my way in, I announced my intention to land and selected a runway. As soon as I did, another airplane announced its intention to land on the same runway. We were both about 10 miles out, and I was on a direct approach whereas the other plane would have to go past the airport and turn around to land on the same runway, so I could have probably got in first, but I opted to fly a pattern around the airport and land second.

Hard to see in this image, but as I was flying the downwind leg, I looked back (with zoom) and spotted the other plane, a Beechcraft Baron 58, on final approach about to touch down. It's the little white spot in the water with the shadow below it.

This landing wasn't as good as the last one, but acceptable. I'm able to line up on the runway a lot better in this plane. It must be more responsive or agile or something. I got a little low at the end though and gave it some gas, then got too high and almost stalled like my one-and-only crash, but I got the nose back down and just had a slightly rougher than desired touch-down.

Once on the ground I taxied around a found the Beechcraft and parked next to it. I flew a Beechcraft to Huntsville back before I knew what I was doing and before I turned on crash detection and turned reality up to medium. Nice plane, but I'm not ready to go back to it yet. The Cessna's, with the high wing, are a lot more stable and forgiving for a new pilot.