First 2 commercial training flights

I had my first 2 flights totaling 3.9 hours this weekend. I'm using the 182RG for all my training since that's what I'll use for the checkride. Plus, I need to practice landing on a spot on the runway so I'll be ready to land on a colored dot at Oshkosh in July.

On Saturday we flew out to Brenham (11R) for some patten work and precision landing. I concentrated on landing on the same spot on the runway each time with different flap and power settings. We practiced landing engine out and had a simulated engine failure on liftoff. I'm always needing some instrument practice so I put on the Viban and headed back to Hooks where we shot the RNAV(GPS) 17R approach.

The next day my instructor had me compute heading, groundspeed, and eta for a short flight to the west. I must have remembered my stuff and did the math right because we hit the ETA's within 30 seconds. At the second checkpoint he said, "Ok, you have to divert for some reason. Take us to Navasota (60R)and give me an ETA." Well, that was some furious figuring! I glanced at my chart to pick out an approximate heading and turned the plane to it. Then I pulled out the plotter to get the correct heading off the chart. Oh yeah, did I tell you that for all this that the GPS was just a fancy com/nav that showed some satellite locations in the sky? Fortunately he told me he was going to make me do this, so I had everything close at hand. Anyway, after figuring out the wind correction and turning to my corrected heading I computed the ETA and we got within 30 seconds again. After passing Navasota we tuned the ADF to Brenham and headed over there for a little more landing work. I did a couple more power-off landings and then headed back to Hooks under the Viban for the LOC 17R.

At this point the most difficult aspect has just been getting used to the flight characteristics of the 182RG. Any type of training I've ever done before has been in the Warrior/Skyhawk class of airplane. Sure I've had checkouts in the bigger planes in the past, but checkouts haven't involved the same maneuvers or precision as training for the commercial. With the smaller planes you're always making adjustments during maneuvers such as feeding in some nose-up during turns, adding power to climb, etc. The RG, while more stable, requires smaller control inputs due to the larger tail surfaces and greater airspeeds, making the controls more powerful. The greater weight also adds to the momentum that you have to compensate for in maneuvers. The second flight was getting easier than the first, so I can only look forward to the energy maneuvers on my next flight.