Didn’t think I was going to actually get to fly today, since they were calling for thunderstorms in the afternoon all day. Luckily ‘they’ were wrong and it turned out to be a beautiful day!
I hadn’t been flying in almost 2 weeks so I was worried that I would be quite rusty. However, I have been dreaming about flying and that must have helped because I didn’t feel rusty at all!
I had been thinking about the difficulties I have been having with landing and I thought I had it figured out. When you take off, just before you actually take off, you have to roll the ailerons back to a neutral position…I was doing the same thing when coming into a landing. You don’t necessarily want to do that for landing. I figured I’d give my theory a try today.
As I mentioned, the weather was absolutely beautiful! And…as a bonus, the wind was pretty much coming right down the pipe, which was nice since I wanted to have a successful day today.
The circuit wasn’t that busy this afternoon, which meant that Brad took the opportunity to have a little fun. I heard him mumble something to the tower, and when I asked him what he said, he simply replied with, “Nothing.” Then he quickly changed the subject and pointed something out for me to look at. When I looked, he pulled the power back to idle and told me that we had just ‘lost the engine’ (we had to pretend). Turns out what he had said to the tower was that we would like ‘the option’. I’m still not 100% clear on what that actually means, but everytime he said that to the tower today he ended up pulling out the power and making me do a forced landing. It was kind of fun actually. Since it was supposedly a forced landing…overshooting was not an option.
Speaking of overshooting, got to do that once again. This time it was actually when I had 20 degrees of flaps down. Procedure is still pretty much the same, full power, carb heat cold, flaps up in stages, then climb when you get to the end of the runway.
I did ALL the flying and landing today. Talk about fantastic! What a feeling it is to land a plane on your own. My last landing of the day was definitely the best, and a perfect way to end the lesson.
Next time (tomorrow), more circuits or perhaps a briefing on emergency prodecures, etc, depending on what the weather is like. Good weather = flying, shitty weather = briefing. Here’s hoping it’s good weather.
From the A.I.P.
The “Cleared for the Option” procedure has been introduced to give a pilot the option to make a touch-and-go, low approach, missed approach, stop-and-go, or a full stop landing. This procedure will normally be used during light traffic conditions.
Oh and Andy, to answer your question, the first time Brad pulled the power on me was when I was turning onto Base, but he also did pull it about mid downwind one time, which was fun. :)