Flew again yesterday afternoon.

[Guest Crash Lander]

Flew again yesterday. Was hoping to do advanced stalls, but my installer decided to cover the short field take off and landings instead, dues to encroaching weather.

 

(Plus I don't think she likes stalls too much! ;-))

 

I covered STOL last week, but didn't really get the idea of them, as they all seemed pretty much the same as normal t/o and landings. Well, this week, I found the difference. That's the advantage of having two instructors. What you might not pick up from one, you can pick up from the other.

 

My forst short field take off didn't work, as I took off, but touched down again. I eased off on the stick too much, allowing the a/c to land again. We did a circuit, and came around for a ful stop. Short field landing style.

 

Nailed the landing, coming to a complete stop in an estimated 100m distance. (estimated by the instructor).

 

We backtracked down the runway, (rwy 26 has no taxiway access), and tried another short field take off. This time, I got it pretty much perfect. Eased back on the stick at 45knots indicated, and up she went. No second touch down this time.

 

This time, we did a circuit, and treated it as a short field landing, only we were going to make it a touch and go, rather than land on the brakes. We did that another 2 times, before the approaching showers got too close, and we had to bring her in. Just as we locked the hanga, the rain started quite heavily, so we got it away just in time.

 

Total time was 0.6 hours, with 4 landings.

 

Comments from the flight, by my instructor are that she can tell I don't like getting the a/c slow, which is true. She said it's not such a bad thing, but sometimes slow is necessary, which I can understand. Normally, if I see the indicated airspeed getting down to 60kia, I lower the nose for more speed. I treat 60kia as my absolute slowest allowable speed. It's just what I feel comfortable at. Unfortunately, it's too fast for short field landings. Only by about 5 knots or so, but that could make all the difference I guess. I guess I'm just not comfortable getting onto the back side of the power band.

 

Anyway, next lesson will be in a few weeks, and then we'll do the advanced stalling stuff, then it's a mock flight test (possibly in the same session), and then 2 hours solo (that's all I need now for my passenger endorsement), then the actual flight test.

 

Total time now is 20.9hours.