Flightblog

Lesson #8 - 5 in .5

Well, here I am at a point where I just have to practice. When I fly, it's to fly landing approaches and practice landings.

Today we got a late start. Got to the hangar a little early to preflight the plane and hey, the plane's not here. It didn't get back 'til 10-15 minutes into my lesson time. Add the preflight and it amounts to us not getting started until a half hour late. Bummer.

I guess that's part of exercising a pilot's greatest virtue: patience.

Being in kind of a hurry, we worked really efficiently and really everythign turned out great. I taxiied easily, talking to Fletch and maintaining a reasonable jogging taxi pace right on the centerline down to the runup area. Reminds me how much I used to struggle with the brakes to get the plane to drive straight.

Progress.

Runup was good. Got information Whiskey on ATIS: winds 040 at 15. Almost straight down RWY 5, perfect. Takeoff was great, then right at liftoff I got blown sideways hard, rolled a good 15° as we rotated and scared the crap out of me. Fletch reminded me to use ailerons when taking off into crossing wind (duh!).

Then we were cleared for touch and goes, left traffic on RWY 5.

My approaches are getting pretty good. I'm starting to fly really tight approaches, closer to the runway and using a lot less power on final. There's so much wind to correct for that you can fly a nice long final even if you make your base turn early. On the approaches where ATC called the base on an extended downwind, it seems like we took forever to fly the final back upwind to the runway.

My favorite is getting to be where ATC calls for a short final. You get to the numbers, pull carb heat, cut power to idle and dump as much flaps as you're willing to touch down with (20° when it's windy) then just point the nose at the water and maintain 75 KIAS throuhg a 180° turn into the runway. It's fun, everything happens really fast.

I did much better this morning at keeping the airplane on the centerline. The thing I am having trouble with anymore is managing pitch while in ground effect. After the round out, before touching down, is the critical time for having a good landing. The plane is still flying, and still has to be flown, but it's getting ready to settle down. It's tough, you have to use the rudder to keep the nose on the centerline of the runway, and also manage (with subtle elevator input) little gusts that want to pop the plane back up into the air.

It's pretty hard to do it all just right, very easy to make tiny little mistakes that result in a bad landing: dropping the nose, dropping in from too high, touching down prematurely and bouncing...all very common mistakes. Fletch is staying off the controls until about 1 second after I should have corrected, then he'll offer input just enough to spare us from pounding in.

It's starting to get a little frustrating. I know how to do it, I'm just taking my time to let my eyes, mind, hands and feet get used to what it feels like to actually do it.

So, more practice is in order. We may go practice in Hana Wednesday, may just work at Kahului. I kind of like Kahului for all the traffic and radio work, makes it all a lot more real and more challenging. Also, the wind at Kahului is more of an issue. I think that learning to land in tricky wind conditions is going far toward making me a better pilot than I would be if I were learning at a small, uncontrolled airport with 3kts blowing straight down the runway.

5 landings in .5 hours.

Posted by johnpeace at December 8, 2003 08:28 PM