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)
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]
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment