Lesson 21 - landings landings \m/

Lesson: 21

17/X/2010

• Lesson time: 1.0h


• Total time: 16.4h


• Location: EGAD


• Aircraft: G-BNKR (C152)

Another new instructor I have never fly with before. Gary is from NZ, and as all kiwi's he is extremely friendly guy. You can tell the guy works out, so he is quite wide so to say. And that's probably was my only thought since yesterday (no pun intended). 'how are we going to fit in 152' :) But we made it.

Like all kiwis he was straight to the point. Just wanted to get up, so he went through the checks whilst I prepared my stuff.

Initially he wanted to fly very tight circuits himself, and leave me on approach and landing, but it turned out otherwise.

There was very little traffic Today in the air, and in the club for Sunday with fairly good weather.

The checks were so quick, I barely fixed my headphones before we lined up for 22. Than just a quick push of the power, and off we went.

Circuits as circuits. Every instructor has its own ways and Gary is no exception. He wanted landing/taxi lights when necessary, etc. Also when it came to good old bump-fich, he said to dump it, and instead go through knobs and gauges in the cockpit, maintaining lookout every few. That makes much more sense that remembering some abbreviations.

Than there was approaches. I usually pull power to about 1500 RPM once I turned on base, than hold the nose, let speed bleed, and put two stages of flaps. Gary noticed that this gets me into trouble, and instead suggested about 1700 RPM which indeed helped to keep me up high enough for the approach.

So because of the speed problem, I ended up too high on the second one, and Gary showed me side slip approach. It was pretty scary I gotta say, but got us down pretty quick.

I think I nailed it by the time we did like 4th, and Gary even asked what's my medical status ("Do you have our medical sorted?"), to which I affirmed, but said that I still need to do my airlaw. He later said, that he was considering sending me solo. Nice.

Second to last circuit was just prefect, in his own words. And I nailed landing spot on. So he decided to do another one. And so the last one was just the total opposite. I think because he reminded me when turning base, that I need to put my landing light on. That sort of threw me off the track. But still it wasn't too shabby.

During the debrief, he also mentioned that I still gotta do the flares much nicer. I keep flying nearly level above the runway, instead of getting it up notch more. Apparently that would cause even greater ground effect, and will slow us down even better and cushion the landing itself. Cos one thing I noticed so far, is that I don't get the stall warner on flare. And that's probably why.

All in all very nice day. Its been a while since I flew for an hour, but I am very happy with my progress now.

I have fortnight before the next one, so need to sit down on my air-law. For various reasons I doubt that the next instructor will be keen on sending me solo, even if I will get my air-law. But I keep my fingers crossed for that.

(think this is the shortest entry ever).

• Route: circuits, RWY22


• Milestones: even better landings.


• Exercises covered: ex12 and 13


• Weather: FEW017 SCT045, QNH 1024, wind all over the place.