Runway 18

This post is a bit late.  I went up last Sunday morning and did some more landings, as well as touch & go’s and go-arounds.  I won’t lie.  It was a rough day for me.  On Saturday, my instructor handled most of the communications, as it was my first time outside of my training area.  This time, I handled most of the communications.  It’s amazing how much concentration it takes to stay one step ahead of the game.  One issue I have is when I make a mistake, I dwell on what I did wrong and what I should have done differently.  My instructor consistently tells me that pilots have to live “in the moment and one step ahead”.  We cannot afford to dwell. 

The first half of my day went extremely poorly.  I was consistently one step behind everything.  I was even making mistakes I normally don’t.  Additionally, I was consistently either too fast or slow on my downwind, base and final.  When I started to focus more on my airspeed (which by the way is extremely important when flaps are out!), I started to do much better.  I did about 6 landings and probably another 6-10 go-arounds, before heading back to Freeway Airport.

I have a video, which I will try to get together in the next few days.  Saturday morning is my next flight.  The focus of that flight will be equipment malfunctions, such as the flap motors.  We will go up and do a few stalls and some slow flight, before getting into what to do in case of flap failure.  Additionally, we will do some of the ‘death turns’.  Basically, an engine-out is simulated on takeoff.  Immediately after the engine-out, we will try to do a 180 degree turn to land back at the airport.  The exercise is to demonstrate how you should simply land straight ahead, because you are at such low altitudes and by making that steep turn, you bleed a lot of altitude, which you don’t have.  Of couse, we will do it at like 2,000 feet…not 700 feet.  Should be good times.  I’ll keep you posted!

~ Brian

Total hours: 15.3