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Saturday, 28 November 2009 00:00 |
Today was nice overcast day, with occasional drizzle. This meant very little thermal activity, so nice smooth flying.
The instructor & I flew just over 1/2 an hour, doing circuits. He cut the power on my while climbing out to see if I'd react accordingly, which I did... nose down, look for a place to land. After flying a circuit, just after the touch & go he did it again, this time I was still over the runway & did the same so he had me go around again. After the 3rd landing he got me to taxi over to the fuel bowser where we waited for a T28 Trojan to refuel & then taxi off.
After refueling, off I went on my own for solo circuits. I flew these for an hour, 7 landings in all. What an awesome experience! Once the hour was up I landed & taxied back to the aero club where I met up with the instructor who asked if I'd like to go up for another hour. What do you think my answer was? Yes, of course.
After a quick ground briefing on Glide Approaches, we went up & my instructor demonstrated a glide approach. This is basically where you fly closer to the runway than normal, then as you pass the threshold of the runway, throttle back to idle, turn on carburettor heat (which stops ice building up in the carby), then maintain 70 knots (in the Tomahawk) and fly her in, aiming to touch down about 1/3 of the way down the runway. Once the field is made, introduce flap & then touch down. He then had me fly 2 glide approaches, which in one I was too high & fast, so he showed me how to 'side slip'. This is cool, I've been waiting to side slip since I started. To side slip is where you hold full rudder (right in this case) and the use the ailerons to roll in the opposite direction to keep the aircraft level. This creates a large amount of drag, which slows the plane & causes it to decend rapidly, flying at about a 35 degree angle to the runway, but straight for it.
After the 2 glide approaches of my own, he got out & let me go again for the next hour. This hour was pretty much the same as the one before, except I got to do 2 glide approaches by myself. I needed to side slip one of them too! Before too long though I had company in the circuit, this mean't I couldn't continue to practise my glide approaches as he was in front of me. So I made the most of the situation & flew extended downwinds to give me practise at some nice long approaches. I flew a flapless landing, just for the practise, and even deliberately came in to high so I could practise the side slip a few times aswell.
All in all, I flew 3.1 hours today, 2 of which were solo & had 21 landings!
Next lesson is in 2 week, it'll be advanced stalls & incipient spins.
Oh yeah, one other thing. I was flying runway 29, same as last week... you know, the one that gave me all the trouble.
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