Lesson 14 – Ex. 12 & 13 – Take off, Circuit, Landing
My new best day
Today was my ‘NEW’ best day, it was not my first and I’m sure it will not be my last, I have plenty of flying ahead of me, but boy did I enjoy lesson 14 !
Lesson 14 – Exercise 12 & 13 – Take off, Circuit, Landing
Those of you looking for or thinking I have missed lesson 13, well there is a reason for that, it lasted all of 30 minutes as so I have decided to include it in this particular posting.
Today we move onto the next stage of my training, with stalls and recovery covered in my last two lessons of which accustomed me to how to handle and recognise the aircraft close to a stall it was time to move onto exercises 12 & 13 – Take off, Circuit, Landing, or to give them their full titles .. Take off and climb to down wind position & Circuit, approach and landing. I have been really looking forward to getting to this stage of training, for me it gives a sense of purpose to what you are doing / learning. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved my previous lessons but sometimes when you are up there and all you are doing is turning left, right, climb a bit etc you don’t get a sense of completion. Where-as with circuits, you take off, you fly the specified circuit and you land, or in these cases, touch and go and do it all over again, a kind of meaning to an end. It may just be me and the way my mind works but I like to do things that have a purpose and circuits match that. Airfields without Air Traffic Control have specified circuits you have to follow to ensure other people know where you are. A circuit is basically a rectangle box in which the runway forms one side of it, and consists of 4 90 degree turns and names such as crosswind, downwind, base leg & final. Each airfield circuit is different to comply with noise abatement notices and avoiding flying over local villages etc and will be referred to as left or right hand circuits.
So, last week I turned up for my lesson and the weather did not look too promising, quite high crosswinds and low cloud cover. If I was supposed to be doing anything over than circuits today the lesson would have been cancelled, but all we need is a 1000 feet for the circuit and so we decided to go up. A quick chat before we go and my FI explains what he will be looking to cover today, take off, keep it straight, flaps up at 300 feet, left turn when just crossing the A1 and continue the climb to 1000 feet. Pre Flight checks complete I call up the airfield tower for radio check and information and make my first error, nothing major but I have been so used to telling them we will be doing a local flight that is exactly what I say, only now we are not, we are staying in the circuit. My FI apologises with a smile and says he knew I was going to say that and he did intend to remind me we were staying the circuit this time. So off we go, again I am really concentrating on improving my take off procedure and today I am very positive and get that full power in quicker and keep the aircraft straight, I even manage to take my eye off the centre line and check my speed ! With an instruction from my FI the column comes back and we are up. Flaps away at 300 and we are soon in to the first left hand turn (crosswind leg) and climbing up to 1000 feet. Again we are soon onto the next left turn (downwind) and are now flying parallel to the runway at 1000 feet. My FI runs through the BUMFICH checks (more on that later) and he transmits we are ‘downwind’. At the set position for the Conington circuit we make our third left turn (base leg) and the work load really starts to build now… out of the turn, carb heat to hot, reduce power to 1700 revs, drop a stage of flap, then a second stage keep the nose down, trim and before I know it we need to make our 4th and (final) turn and get ourselves lined up for landing, keeping 75 knots on the decent and using power to adjust our rate of decent, NOT the attitude of the nose. Battling a crosswind I keep us lined up. Now, it’s not until you get to a certain height you begin to realise just how fast you are travelling ! or more importantly, how quickly the ground is starting to up at you ! But with great instruction and assistance from my FI ‘WE’ make our first flare and touchdown, ensuring we are still tracking central to the runway, a stage of flap gets put away and the throttle increased to full and we are very quickly building speed again and are soon taking off into another circuit. We manage another touch and go battling an ever increasing crosswind of which is creating too much work for me to concentrate on flaring the aircraft at the right stage for a smooth touchdown. On the third touchdown my FI calls it a day, ‘Sorry Paul but there is too much crosswind for you to be concentrating on and its affecting you getting the right feel for the flare, we may as well call it a day today’ and so with just 30 minutes on the clock, we park up and hope for better weather on the next session. Still, 3 take off and landings in the bag and yet another column in my logbook now gets an entry !
Today I turn up at the airfield and a quick look at the weather sock tells me there is little to no wind at all today, that means one thing for sure… my FI is going to be expecting me to get the forthcoming landings pretty damn close to good ! the pressure is on and I have not even got out of the car yet ! In the pre-flight briefing my FI talks about the circuit, where we should be turning and how the ‘picture’ should look when lined up with the runway.. a long grey line of runway means we are too high, a short stubby grey line means we are too low. With what’s in store and required for the next lesson