Solo Circuits - October 12

For my next flights, I'll first be doing a few circuits with an Instructor. This will verify that I'm not having a bad day, and that the conditions are within my limits. It also allows the instructors a chance to ensure I'm not getting into some bad habits. After a series of these ongoing check rides I'll blast off directly on my own. And, of course, when bring in a new skill (shorts, softs, precautionary, instrument, cross-country, etc) it will always be preceded with dual instruction.

Pre-flight the aircraft. 4.25 quarts, 3/8 tank. Before we take a lap, we make GPUP happy by filling her with fluids.

Two laps around the block with Instructor David. Both landings good, David gets out, I go flying.

Today it was all about adjusting to the lighter load. Even with a full tank of gas (24 gallons, or 144 pounds), when it was just me in the aircraft then I floated for what seemed like forever.

Today the wind favoured runway 10 - the last time I had flown 10 instead of 28 was over a month ago... so it was a chance to get out of the habit of following the usual ground cues, and position according to the runway.

Landing #1 - Never happened. I found myself on medium final, very high.

If forced to land I could use a forward slip, but the CFI wants students to set up the landings right, not using forward slips to escape mistakes (especially newbie solo students) - I'll practice routinely adding in, and taking out, forward slips when I have more hours under my belt.

Or I could just wait it out and land by the middle of the runway - but that would leave me with less than half the runway for the takeoff.

Fawgetabawtit, I called a low&over and flew down the runway at a few hundred feet, and practiced shuffling left/right using side slips.

Why the blazes could I not get down? I knew I turned from downwind to base a bit early, found myself high and idled the engine, but I should have managed to get down.

Then I noticed my heading - by now I was flying downwind for runway 10, so my heading should have been 280. It was 260. I had caught myself sneaking in closer to home. By the time I shave 10 or 20 degrees off each of crosswind, downwind and base, I'm really encroaching on the threshold. Resolution - fly a rectangle - no cheating.

Landings 2-8:

• Circuits on the correct headings
• Need to watch blasting through 1000' AGL at the end of the climb
• Did pre-landing checklist every time - while tracking altitude
• Caught myself being lazy - flying by adjusting trim, rather than flying using the stick and then trimming to relieve pressure
• Except for one approach, tended to be a touch high on final, resulting in a landing in the first third of the runway - barely (the other approach I was down nice and early).
• Radio is easy, takeoffs routine, lookouts good
• Final approach was on the centre line, and stable
• Landings were on the centre line (except for one)
• Yaw was well-managed at the landing (except for one)
• In the later landings a bit of a crosswind developed from the left... which I handled with no problem.

But on every landing, I floated, and had trouble getting the aircraft down. Once I was in ground effect, the aircraft handled very differently with the weight of only one person in the seats. It was outside my experience, and so this will be my new learning for the next while.

I bounced. I floated. My timing for the flare was all mucked up. Pulling the stick back to mediate the descent was ham-handed, often resulting in a balloon up (and requiring a touch of power to regain airspeed to regain lift to gently descend again - rather than dropping).

Time: 0.4 Dual, 0.7 solo
Landings: 2 dual, 7 solo, plus one low&over

Non-landing - need to work on:

• Precision flying... rotate at exactly 44kt, climb at exactly Vx and Vy, headings in the circuit right on the rectangle, tracking altitude +/- 20 feet.
• Fly the airplane, trim the pressure

Landing - Need to work on:

• When adding a touch of power in a landing, expect the nose to go left.... and stop it from doing so (this pulled me left of the centre line, and created some yaw, on one landing)
• Gently in the flare... pull back on the stick nice and slowly, do not go past cruise attitude
• In the landing, when the aircraft starts to descend to the runway then gently pull back to mediate the descent. I was pulling back on the stick the way I always had (with two people in the aircraft), from mechanical memory. With only one person it cause a balloon - I need to fly according to the way the aircraft is responding, not according to how I've always done it.