Did some flying this weekend. Friday evening I flew circuits at YOW. I was hoping to head out to Carp but since the sun was setting so early, Andrew asked me to stick around the Ottawa airport. Not a big deal, it just meant that I spent most of the time practicing soft field landings rather than short field landings.
Most of the circuits I flew were on 04. There was another guy in the circuit with me at the time, and I was getting a bit annoyed at how large he was making his circuits so I decided to challenge myself a bit. I made a request to the tower for some stop and gos on runway 14. They suggested runway 07 instead. Cool, I had never landed on 07 before! Anyways, they told me to stay on the downwind for 07 and they’d call my base since there was a large airliner on final for 07 at the time. Well let me tell you, that was the longest downwind leg I’ve ever flown, followed by the longest final approach I’ve ever flown! When I finally did reach the runway, I put the plane down and stopped it as fast as I could (for some short field practice) and then took off again. The tower controller asked me if I wanted another one. I was thinking he was asking me if I wanted to do another circuit on 07 so I said no (remembering how long that last one was) and that I’d head back to 04. Not long after I said that I realized that he was probably asking me if I wanted to do another stop and go immediately on 07. D’oh! Oh well, next time I guess.
I think I did one more circuit on 04 and then called it a night. My soft field landings weren’t great, but they weren’t too bad so I was happy.
I got up early the next morning (Saturday) and headed to the club. I had an eight o’clock booking and didn’t want to waste any time. I was definitely heading out to Carp for some short field practice, but I needed to get signed out and I wasn’t sure if anyone would be around that early to sign me out. Luckily Brad had an early booking and was there to sign me out.
I headed out to Carp and practiced mostly short field landings. I had one that was fantastic, but the rest were just ok. There was nobody out in Carp which made things a lot easier. It’s a weird feeling to have an entire airport all to yourself.
Then today (Sunday) I headed to the club early to get ready for what was supposed to be my pre-flight test. Didn’t exactly work out that way though…I didn’t end up doing any flying today at all. Brad and I headed out to the Royal Oak and grabbed a bite to eat while he grilled me on what I was supposed to know for the flight test ground part. Turns out I have quite a bit to go over. he plan is to do the flight portion of the test for our next booking. That should be entertaining.