Saturday 26 March 2011

Lesson 30 - never tired of the circuit bashing


Lesson: 30


25/III/2011

  • Lesson time: dual - 1.6h (in 0.8h instalments), solo - 0.0.

  • Total time: 26.2h (1.1h solo)

  • Location: EGAD

  • Aircraft: G-BNKR (C152)

Yet another circuit bashing lesson.

Not much to write about really (for change this won't be a long elaborate).

I booked two slots on the day. Morning 9:00 one, and 13:30 one in the afternoon.

Circuits, as usual - pretty much. In the morning the wind was rather calm, so circuits were rather uneventful. Rodger very patiently talked me through things I'm still doing wrong (and there's still a lot :/) which is pretty much setting up the aircraft on the base leg to be ready for finals. I tried my best to follow the instructions, but I believe the wind was spoiling my fun a lot.

One thing apparent about the rwy 34 is that you fly around the Scrabo hill and your finals are over the water and sea wall. The wind seems do be doing all sorts of weird things and conspire against the aircraft setup. So it was quite a laborious flying. To my amazement, I managed to retract flaps after applying full power once. Very bad mistake. Rodger obviously noted that, and said that if he is to send me solo, it will be in the afternoon - because of that mistake.

The afternoon lesson was to be much different. The wind was much violent, and we had a crosswind. Which would be fine, but it was alternating between left or right of the runway. This meant that I had to go around few times and it was quite unpleasant to fly in conditions like that on whole extent of the circuit. For instance the final approach leg required quite a bit of power and initially I would end up low because I didn't want to add too much too fast.

Speaking of go arounds. I was very confident in doing them, and Rodger said the same thing. I still have to be more patient about retracting flaps - but I am not trying to do them all at once - which should mean that I'll live a bit longer :) One go around was due to the fact that I ended up too fast, and wasn't still firmly on the ground before runway intersection. On second occasion wind changed direction as I was trying to flare. One wheel touched the ground, whilst the other was still up. And I think third one was due to me being generally too high.

In the beginning of part two I said to Rodger that there's no way that I would want to fly this on my own. His response was that this weren't conditions he would send even the best student (like myself) solo. I couldn't laugh, I was grateful that I didn't had to try in these conditions. Probably felt grateful I don't have to go solo for the first time in my life.

All in all, it was a great experience. I certainly had to sweat much more to keep the thing running. On top of that there was a lot of traffic. At some stage Rodger said that it feels like Heathrow. Seriously, I think I didn't make my downwind and finals calls for 3-4 circuits, because there was that much radio chatter.



As usual, here are the mandatory gps tracks:


[caption id="attachment_253" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="morning flying"][/caption]



afternoon flying



On Monday I'm starting the RT course. There's a guy doing RT courses in the club, and I think its worth spending some time (and money) on that.

Still need to do my Nav exam too.

Next flying next weekend, and then I'll probably take a month break to repair my finances.





  • Route: T/O RWY34 circuits, cross winds, wind-shears, and of course go arounds .

  • Milestones: rwy 34 circuits in wind that changes a lot.

  • Exercises covered: circuits.

  • Weather: quite a gust, bit cloudy but clearing up.

Saturday 19 March 2011

Lesson 29 - Going around twice, doesn't make you twice as good


Lesson: 29


19/III/2011

  • Lesson time: dual - 0.6h,solo - 0.4.

  • Total time: 24.6h (1.1h solo)

  • Location: EGAD

  • Aircraft: G-BNKR (C152)


I hate 9 o'clock flying. I always sleep in. Today's not exception. Got in the car 8:50, phoned the club. Some unexpected voice picked up. I said I'm running late.

About 20 minutes later, and few racers trying to catch me on the dual carriage way (speed limit is 70 mph, so stop blocking me silly people) I got to the club. And I was for the shock.

It's Rodger. Long time no flying togetha !. I said to him 'you do realise its saturday'. He _never_ works weekends, much to my unhappiness because he is one of the best guys there.





Preflight, usual stuff. Engine was a bit cold (it was below zero at night). Everything fine, off we go.

Rodger said - the deal is simple, you fly few circuits with me just being a 90+ kg ballast and then you do few solo ones.

Also, the deal was that the first one is uneventful. And so it was. Actually its two weeks since the last one and I hardly noticed.

On the second one (as expected), to add a bit of a cheer Rodger pull the power and crossed his hands :) Nice. Fortunately I got it nicely trimmed, aimed for the right field.

On the third one Rodger told me to do flap-less, which I did. Unfortunately some virtual cock decided to drive onto our runway and I had to do a go-around. Handled nicely, Rodger was happy.

Fourth one was a glide one, so I got the power pulled on downwind 'oops, what do we do'. It went well. I was a tad short of the numbers, lesson learned.

As we were doing these circuits, I noticed that the wind was starting to get stronger. On the go around there, we were tossed all over the place over the runway.

One more circuit, and Rodger let me out on my own.



Everything was fine until I got to the finals bit. Again, the wind started to toss me about. And I ended up - in my mind too high to continue. So I applied the power nicely. C152 is not very powerful, but I got nearly 1000ft climb rate there, with full flaps, and speed was around 70 knots. I turned the trim towards neutral because the amount of force I had to apply was just enormous.

And off I went. Over the downwind I wasn't quite happy, but took few deep breaths with yoga-like movements of my head and hands to calm myself down. It was quite windy.

Second approach was much better, but somehow I managed to bounce quite high. High enough to decide that it is time to go-around. Again. Now , only this time I knew that as I pushed the power I had to push the yoke quite hard to keep it level. Which I did, and Rodger later confirmed that my second go-around looked very good.

You can imagine my frustration on downwind on this one, but I said to myself - ok, that's it, time to land. I am getting over my comfort zone here, and not enjoying it properly.

I was ready to go around if something happens again, don't get me wrong. But this time I came down just nice.

Before you say that Rodger should not have sent me solo in first place, to be honest conditions were very good when we did the last circuit. I learned quite few lessons Today.

Let me share (and write it down for my own record). First, when you go around. The aircraft is trimmed to descend. You will have to apply quite a bit of force to keep it level. But it is important to do so.

(of course need to take the flaps off in stages goes without saying). Secondly, It is important to aim for the numbers, and refocus to the end of the runway as you round out. I don't think I did it right Today.

Rodger took quite a bit of time to talk me through that stuff Today. And also said he was happy to see that I took the decision to go around. There's nothing worse then pilot trying to salvage a landing.

And I'm glad I did it too. I would have learned nothing good if I did try to salvage landings and everything was okay.

The first approach apparently, from Rodger's perspective was looking good. But it was probably the wind that made me decide to go around. The bounce on the second one was high enough so I had the time to take that decision. I've seen some youtube videos with people bouncing on landing and ending up with bent prop. Don't like to repeat someone else's mistakes myself.

All in all. First time I went around myself, solo. And I'm proud of it :P



First go-around





Second:





Flap-less mini circuit ;) :





  • Route: T/O RWY22 circuits, flapless, EFATO, go arounds.

  • Milestones: solo go arounds.

  • Exercises covered: circuits.

  • Weather: quite a gust, but apart from that beautiful day.

Monday 7 March 2011

Lesson 28 - wheel up

Lesson: 28


06/III/2011

  • Lesson time: dual - 0.7h,solo - nope.

  • Total time: 23.6h (0.7h solo)

  • Location: EGAD

  • Aircraft: G-BNKR (C152)

  • Instructor: David P


 

Got in the club to the club early morning. DavidP was on the phone so with the Cesar's thumb up/down gesture I requested the go/no go info. Thumbs up.

Got the key, went for a preflight.

[gallery columns="1"]

David got soon after I sat down inside comfortably. Wind was favouring rwy 16 which I have never flew a circuit on so a bit new experience. There's a police station antennae mast to fly over when you approach the 16 for landing and I knew that (from other blog and also from looking at the vfr plate for EGAD ).

I managed to turn with the wind to do my power checks, clearly a stilly mistake. But David very calmly hinted me about it.

Off I went to backtrack 16, and got ready to roll. The day was murky, clouds were at around 1500 ft so David asked me to turn the landing or taxing light on so we're bit more visible.

Put the power in, and off we went. I managed to under turn first crosswind turn aiming for visual point that I would aim for if I flew rwy 22. I usually use DI and try to think about the wind at the same time, but after my last lesson I was so tensed up that I simply didn't. Nothing that I couldn't fix later on.

Few usual mistakes, like forgetting the downwind call. I was told to slap myself for making the downwind call too early on the next circuit. Clearly something that has to do with multiple instructors. David told me to make the call when I'm abeam the runway threshold. And so I will stick to that method.

I got so very fixated on trying to avoid the mast when turning from base to finals, that I started to fly very wide trying to keep the mast to the port side and only correcting the approach once I was clear of it. Obviously not a good idea. David nicely demonstrated how it can be done, basically trying to turn just before the mast and use it as sort of a pivot point. It worked very well (as you can see from the gps track at the end).

On one of the circuits I was so busy talking about something boring, that I forgot to put the 3rd stage of flaps on finals - monkey. Obviously had to self-slap myself for that.

Oh, one neat trick David taught me and he probably would not mind me sharing here. When turning base, I would pull the carb heat on, reduced the power, and as soon as ASI is over the white arc I would start setting the flaps. Well, there's just one problem with it. You get this bumpy sort of reaction from the aircraft when you do that. So the trick David showed me, was to slow the aircraft down quite a bit before applying flaps. Everything's much more relaxed and no bumps.

For the last one circuit David asked me if we could land it on the grass. On the left hand side of runway 16 there's a patch of grass that can be used for grass landing practice (dunno about t/o) . David thought I tried grass before at the Trim aerodrome (see that 'episode' for more info).

Strange experience landing on the grass. For one, that bit of grass is half the length of the runway 16 and right behind it is another hard surfaced runway. So if you don't stop on time, your wheels are going to stay on the grass :)

But all in all landing on the grass was quite nice. Certainly more gentle and cushioned. Weird thing tho was that I had to keep the yoke pretty much pulled towards me all the time. Felt like one wheel motorcycle stunt.

Obviously following my last lesson stunt, asking for a solo would be really rude, so in all honesty I didn't count on it at all. David's only remark was that I somehow don't feel as confident as I used to. Probably true, last lesson did show me that over confidence is not a really good idea.

As they say "Two steps forward, one step back".

If I had to summarise the whole lesson, it was a very relaxing experience. Pretty much a bliss. David does tolerate my jabbering much better then most instructors and hence why I probably prefer him over so many others. He is also very patient and doesn't rush things too much.

And at the end I was promised a solo next time. Well, I bloody hope I will get some solo time otherwise in that pace it will take another 10 hours to get required 3 hours solo circuit consolidation :)

 

Mandatory GPS track

 

  • Route: T/O RWY16 circuits, last landing on the 16 grass.

  • Milestones: Grass landing, regained a bit more confidence.

  • Exercises covered: circuits.

  • Weather: bit windy, lowish cloud base.