Checkride - Aug 10

I'm not ready for solo. But not too far off..

Last Wednesday I couldn't do anything wrong. Landings were smooth, approaches were on the rails, and so forth.

Today I had two fundamental problems.

1. I got myself flustered. I knew I had an opportunity to solo, and I was flying with the CFI for the first time in several flights. And I spun myself up a bit. The things you have lots of time to practice (radio, taxi, take-off, flying) went well. Most everything else was so-so to poor.
2. I've still not honed the skills for consistent, smooth approaches and landings.

After the second approach I knew I wasn't going to solo today. But I was going to achieve my second objective, which was to work with a different instructor and get a different view of what I needed to work on.

Active runway was 10, on which I've practiced once before. The air was really bumpy, with some minor sink off the end. It's a lot easier to fly in still air.

Landings were much closer to, or on, the centre line. Yaw at touchdown was minor. Good improvement.

My timing for the flare to cruise was FUBAR. The start of the problem was in power and speed management for the approach.. once again I was running out of energy before the runway, and often starting the flare too high. Things happen fast on a landing, and with the fluster I really wasn't on top of things. They weren't unsafe, but it sure wasn't slick. I was rather rushed and wanted to make things happen, and one thing you need to do when landing is be patient. I got nervous on one landing and pushed in some power... I needed to nudge in the power.... this caused an overshoot.

Afterwards we had a good debriefing. "Not quite there" was how it was described. I now know what needs to be done next, and have the skills to do it, but just have not yet put it all together. The CFI wants to book another session, but I'm out of town for the next week.

You need a humbling experience from time to time.

Time: 1.1
Landings: 6

Secrets to work on, and things I learned (benefits of a different set of eyes):

• Keep the speed at 60kt - exactly (didn't do tto bad, but wasn't surgically precise)
• Keep aligned with the centreline - exactly (though I'm a damn sight better than 4 lessons ago)
• When I nudge the stick to correct for drift I tend to not bring the stick back to centre, but more than centre - which then re-establishes the problem I tried to correct by moving the stick in the first place (new observation)
• When I flare I'm not coming to the cruise attitude, but passing right through to a slight nose up. With the speed we're carrying at this time this results in a minor balloon (this one change is going to save me all sorts of grief)
• When I do balloon I was putting the stick forward (almost always a bad idea). But on one landing I was just patient with the minor nose-up attitude and we settled down to the ground, applying more flare as we descended... didn't even bounce.

Done well:

• Basic flying
• Take-offs

Needs work:

• Approach needs work on the power management. No rapid throttle changes, including when cutting power.
• Flare to cruise attitude, not past to nose up.