Circuits - July 7

My flying school's CFI is a busy person, and matching the gaps in her schedule and mine is difficult. At the conclusion of the July 2nd lesson we looked at the upcoming dates, and found an hour on July 7 when she was available, 8-9pm. The following lesson was toward someones Night Rating, and it wouldn't be dark enough at 9pm anyway, so we booked an aircraft for 30 minutes ahead of time, I would pre-flight and be ready to go, and CFI would do a quick turnaround.

The logistics all worked well, and we did an hour of circuits. We were alone most of the time so the use of time was very efficient.

Taxi was fine. Takeoffs were so-so, the biggest problem being that I was dodgy on the application of right rudder to counter-act the application of throttle. Flying the circuit was fine. Radio calls were fine.

I had trouble getting the aircraft down - the Diamond is slippery, so you need to chop power and get the flaps on plenty early.

Lining up the aircraft on the final was more like a waltz, with lots of bobbing and weaving, rather than riding down on rails. I usually got the aircraft settled in as we approached the runway, but it's a pretty crappy approach. She figured out that one of my problems was that I was using lots of stick to correct for mechanical turbulance, so she blocked the range of motion with her hands to force me to limit me to nudge the stick rather than swing it.

I usually had some yaw as I moved from descent to cruise to flare, and CFI often kicked in a bit of rudder to straighten it out. Among other things, I wasn't anticipating the releif of the yaw when I chopped power.

And I chopped power at the strangest times - too early during final, in the cruise, and once while in the flare. This is not good.

After this lesson I did lots of book and web reading, doing a diff between what I was supposed to do, and what I was doing. My eyes were generally looking in the wrong place for most of the descent. I was tunnel-vision on the numbers, but wasn't watching whether they were moving up/down the windscreen so I had no idea on whether I was high, low, or which way I was moving.

When I rotated from descent to cruise attitude I was usually too high (still afraid of the ground), and I wasn't looking at the far end of the runway, so judging cruise attitude was a random guess.

And as the aircraft started to settle I would move the stick back, but I was usually too timid and the drop would get ahead of me - timely application of back-elevator by CFI would take the whack out of the landing but it still wasn't pretty.

I always landed on the mains, but I could hear the nosewheel chattering back ond forth, so I'm sure I landed with yaw.

So I don't yet have a stabilized approach, I'm looking in the wrong place, rounding out too high, am afraid of the ground, am tentative with the stick because I'm imagining pulling back and ballooning up 50 feet into a stall - or else expecting a tail strike.

I'm told this is pretty much normal at this stage. The good news is that I've sliced and diced what's happening, talked it over with, and listened to, the instructor, and have a good idea on the bits that I need to work on.

The big upside is that my basic flying in the circuit is fine - I'm hitting and maintaining altitudes, can fly a straight line, under-speed (stall risk) is not an issue.

We are both eyes-outside during the circuit and we are chatting - about flying, about what we see, about the last attempt, and about the next attempt, and I can carry a conversation as well as fly, so all of those basic flying skills are getting internalized - it isn't requiring full brain.

And after the last landing I once again forgot the after-landing checklist.

I need to make these landings less exciting.

Another hour in the book, with 5 landings.