Another marginal weather day. We had hoped to do some upper-air work, but low ceilings meant low-altitude work. Precautionary landings are 1,000 and 500 feet AGL, so they were today's agenda.
I started with 10 minutes of questions, regarding techniques and suggestions that were not clear from the previous two flights. We briefed precautionary landings, and I headed to the apron.
Preflight is getting faster, taxi is smoother, and I was absolutely determined to not miss that same item on the checklist.
Take-off on 09, and rotation was at the correct speed. Just to do something different, I did a short-field takeoff.
Cleared to the west, we went and found a field in the practice area and performed a precautionary approach, aborting the landing at 500 feet AGL. I got most of the steps correct, but it didn't flow. Nothing that some study won't fix.
There was a good-sized rain-shower between ourselves and Rockcliffe, and no GPS in the aircraft, so SH called for a diversion to Rockcliffe. Out with the map, circle-circle-line etc, and I chose a course of 110 degrees and estimated 18nm, or 12 minutes. I still need to go back to the map with the protractor and ruler, and see if my estimates were accurate - they were close.
As we got to within 3-4 miles of the airport the rain shower was no longer between ourselves and the airport, we turned left 20 degrees so we would not fly over the Governor-General's house (even though we had enough altitude to clear the restricted airspace), and came in and landed on 27 (runway change while we were gone.
Done well:
- Checklists, taxi, short-field takeoff, climbs, descents, turns, level flight.
Done, but dodgy:
- Precautionary landing. The briefing was good, the airborne execution was so-so. I absolutely need to do better.
Getting better
- Landing. Angle of bank is now consistently less than 20 degrees, but I'm starting the turns too late. Ground proximity judgement is improving.
Dual: 1.3
Landings: 1
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