I posted this story about my son’s unsettling experience. I had to do some serious reassuring for my wife to let me continue teaching him to fly. Have to admit I was a little spooked too (as a Dad).
Long story short.
Cessna 310
Night + storms
St Louis to Tulsa
Blew the left engine near Springfield, MO.
Ice build up nixed going on to Tulsa
Instrument talk down as I had no approach plates for there.
No ability for a go around.
Lots of knee shaking after landing.
I just want to share this gorgeous 1956 Cessna 310. Unfortunately it’s an eBay link, so the photos won’t be there long. The only other picture of the aircraft is this one. More pics on the eBay page, while it lasts.
Packer fan?
From the description:
Beautiful.
Got 40 or 3 hours in a 57 model.
180 kts, even talking true, not indicated, not happenin on 23 gal/hr in level flight on a perfect day. :dubious:
Real good price if all the AD’s are done right.
Need lotto ticket win for fuel purchases … :rolleyes:
I have a real soft spot for the 310, and was fortunate to have a job flying one for 1500 hours or so (R model). Such a sexy airplane. That straight-tail is about the most pristine looking one I think I’ve ever seen. =)
Only two “oops” in 700 hours of flying. Neither was particularly scary.
One was just stupid. I misjudged my speed and overran the end of a runway into some briars. Plane wasn’t hurt but I had to have a local guy with a pickup truck pull me out.
Another time my vacuum pump gave up the ghost while I was in solid IMC over a 200’ ceiling. Luckily my autopilot is slaved to an electric turn coordinator so I just took my hands off the controls and let it keep the wings level. I knew there was an airport about 45 minutes ahead reporting VMC so I told ATC about the failure and that I wanted to divert to that airport. I let the autopilot fly the plane, broke out of the clouds after about 30 minutes, declined an offer from the tower at the new airport to roll the emergency equipment, and landed uneventfully. I think I was calm while flying the plane; however, while I was taxiing to the FBO, my legs started shaking like crazy and banging off the yoke.
Neither of these events made me consider giving up flying but there was one flight which wasn’t dangerous at all but had me seriously considering selling the plane. That flight consisted of 3 1/2 hours of constant light turbulence. After about the 10th time my head bounced off the ceiling I started thinking if maybe a 9 hour drive wasn’t all that bad.
I’ve got another “lesson” scheduled for this Saturday, assuming the weather holds. Since this will likely be the last time I’m able to go up this year (and possibly until March or April), I’m tempted to ask the instructor for a different plane than I had the last time, just for the hell of it (I went up in N19688 last time). But since they’re all Cessnas (and mostly 172s), I’m not sure there’s enough difference to warrant paying a higher rental fee even for an hour. I’d be curious about all of your thoughts. Here are my potential choices (pending availability, of course).
I’m disinclined to choose anything with glass, by the way, since I likely won’t be doing any serious training in a glass cockpit (unless I manage to win the lottery before next summer). But if anyone thinks there’s an advantage to trying it this one time, I’m open to the reasoning of those who have gone before me. 
Another potential factor: 688 is the oldest plane in the school’s fleet and has neither TCAS nor TIS. A friend who is a much-further-along student pilot says he’d be afraid to fly without it through the pass, which he’s described as being the 405 Freeway of the air. When I took my last flight, I did find myself startled by passing a couple of planes fairly nearby where I feel I didn’t see them until the last second. On the other hand, perhaps that’s just better practice for me to keep me eyes outside of the cockpit and scanning.
I’d recommend you stick with the same aeroplane, or at least the same type, if you can. Otherwise you’ll be distracted by the differences and won’t learn as much. Try different aeroplanes a bit later on. Same deal with the glass, at the moment you’re just learning to fly, you need stick and rudder and basic instruments. In my experience it is easier to transition from analogue instruments to glass than the other way around, so go with what is simple and cheap and build on that later. TCAS is nice to have but it has some big limitations. It is a backup collision avoidance system rather than a separation tool and is not meant to replace your eyes and ears.
If you had the chance to fly a low wing plane I’d go for that but I didn’t see any in your list. With that you could experience ground affect. It was a nice learning experience for me with the Piper Cherokees especially with the mechanical flaps. You could dump them upon landing in a crosswind and quickly bleed off lift.
You don’t get ground effect in a high-wing plane like a Cessna 172?
I had a rather dramatic demonstration once of ground effect, in a Schweizer 2-33 (high wing) sailplane.
[sup]Okay, maybe that’s different.[/sup]
You still get it in high wing aircraft, it’s just not as pronounced. You need to be within about half a wingspan from the ground to get ground effect.
Yes, you get ground effect in a C172 but it’s nowhere near a dramatic as the effect in a low-wing - I doubt a new student would pick up on it in a high wing but almost everyone notices the effect in a low wing.
Since I haven’t had occasion to read about it yet, will someone explain ground effect?
In just a few sentences …
Despite all the Bernoulli BS you read, by and large a wing makes lift by deflecting air downwards and the old *equal and opposite reaction *law of physics make the airplane go/stay up.
When very near the ground, the air deflected downwards by the wing encounters the ground. Which is more “resistant” to being deflected downwards in turn than is the free air at higher altitude. So in some sense, that air “pushes back” harder at the wing, holding it up more effectively than ordinary free-stream air would.
The net effect is the wing in ground effect develops more lift at any given airspeed & AOA than it does in free air. The effect becomes noticable when the altitude is about 1/2 the wingspan & increases the closer you get to the ground.
For a small airplane with a 30-ish foot wingspan, the difference between a high wing mounted at 6ft above the gear and a low wing mounted at 2 ft above the gear becomes very noticable.
On landing the big picture is that assuming a constant power setting, glide path & airspeed, passing about 15-10 ft AGL the rate of descent will reduce, the flightpath will shallow out & the flightpath will be as if airplane flared itself, but without raising the nose attitude. The effect is similar to what would happen if at 10-15 ft you started gradually adding power.
You can see this in a high wing light plane once you know what to look for and can reliably set up & hold that smooth constant parameter descent. In a low wing airplane the effect is vastly stronger in those last 5 ft. So much so that you need to add a much smaller flare or the airplane will balloon due to the combined effect of a too-big flare & the increasing ground effect at altitudes below, say, 5 ft.
Late edit: replace last paragraph with …
You can see this in a high wing light plane once you know what to look for and can reliably set up & hold that smooth constant parameter descent. But it’s pretty subtle. The effect just gets started and then the landing gear stops the descent from continuing.
In a low wing airplane the effect is vastly stronger in those last 5 ft. So much so that you need to add a much smaller flare or the airplane will balloon due to the combined effect of a too-big flare & the increasing ground effect at altitudes below, say, 5 ft.
Which is not to say that ground effect will prevent slamming a low-wing airplane into the ground. But for reasonable aispeeds & descent rates it softens most of the flared too late & hit anyway mistakes. And instead provokes more *flared too big & ballooned, followed by bouncing or worse *mistakes.
A beauty! This is the only GA aircraft other than the Beaver I’ve ever built a model of.
This feels like a thread I should have been following, if I had any semblance of currency. 
So, I’ve had a bit of a setback…
I’ve actually been a little ashamed to post about this. This happened on Saturday.
I was scheduled to go up Saturday morning with my instructor around 9. It had been very windy in the LA area over the last several days, and although the gusts were supposed to pick up again during the day on Saturday, they were calm when I woke up. Off I went for a lesson.
When I got there, the winds had picked up a little, but my CFI said we were good to go. We spent quite a while doing pre-flight checks (partially because of waiting a long time for a fuel truck), and at one point, we had to put the tie-downs back on the plane because it started walking on us with the gusts that were coming through. We watched some other folks struggle after take-off in the meantime, but it seemed more of an idle curiosity at the time. I asked my instructor about any concerns he had about flying in windy conditions, but he mentioned he normally flew out of Palm Springs, which is always windy, and thus it wasn’t a big deal.
Ultimately, we were ready to head out. ATIS was reporting variable winds at 5 knots gusting to 21. We were told to hold short of runway 12 for another Cessna coming in to land, but he then called in to say he needed to “work this out” – he was having some issues getting in to land. We were then cleared to take-off, but we were warned about hitting some wind shear at 100 ft off the ground. At which point my instructor said to me, “Well, looks like I’ll be handling take-off.” Which he did, and we began to get tossed around the second we got off the ground.
I was pretty unhappy from the get-go. Getting pushed to the side by the wind isn’t a big deal to me, but the sudden drops were really upsetting me. Not to mention the wind trying to flip us while we were in turns. When we turned downwind, he said that we would head over to the practice area, but I think my silence after that statement gave him pause. He said, “Are you up for this?” I had to swallow my pride and tell him that I just couldn’t see how I was going to enjoy the experience at all. What I didn’t say was that if I was this nervous and borderline scared while flying in the pattern, I thought I’d have been mortified with the turbulence we’d experience over the mountains to get the practice area, and I just didn’t think I could deal with it. He asked if I wanted to just land, and I said yes.
Landing was a bit of an adventure in and of itself. He really struggled to get us lined up with the runway, and eventually had to do a go-around on the first attempt (“Too much speed!”). He fought with it all the way down the second time around, too, and we’d been warned to get down before Charlie because there was a strong crosswind on the other end of the runway. We weren’t really near the centerline on our landing, either.
Afterward, I asked him if he’d ever encountered a condition where he’d gotten up in the air and then thought that maybe it was a bad idea to be flying at the time. He laughed and said, “Yeah, today!” I told him I was confused because he’d said he had no issues flying in the wind, particular in Palm Springs. He said that dealing with the wind while flying is no big deal, but trying to land in these circumstances was a lot harder than is desireable. He said the runway in Palm Springs is shielded by buildings, and the runway is a lot longer there, so it isn’t usually that difficult to get on the ground there.
Despite getting a little reassurance from knowing my CFI had struggled in these conditions, I ultimately walked away from the experience feeling like I’m not cut out to become a pilot, ready to give up on something I thought was going to be a fun challenge for me. While having a few days’ distance from the events makes me feel like things really weren’t all that bad, the reality is that when I was in the heat of the moment, I was too scared to go on with a lesson because of the turbulence. I didn’t trust myself to be in control of the plane while trying to suck back my discomfort.
I don’t think it means that I’d never go up for another lesson again. I do want to enjoy the opportunity to handle a plane again at some point. But I’m not sure I have what it takes to go all the way and get my license, and I find that incredibly depressing.
By the way, if anyone’s really curious, I went through LiveATC’s archives of the time I was in the plane to listen for some of the highlights. This link opens directly to a sound file: LINK.
09:13 - 09:41: KWHP tower talking to another pilot regarding variable winds and crosswinds
17:42 - 17:51: Cessna 31P “I’ve gotta work this out”
18:11 - 18:26: Tail end of my CFI’s readback of crosswind at 100ft and tower advisory to us about crosswind
21:37 - 21:58: Our request to come back and land
22:14 - 22:28: Tower warning to get down before Charlie due to crosswind