Second First Solo

2009/07/10

Bright and clear this morning, virtually no wind, very little cloud, and 1.5 hours booked on the airplane. Today's objective is to work on landings - and if all is OK, fly solo in preparation for next week's cross-country solo.

Preflight, load up, taxi out, and try a short-field take-off. Did well getting off the ground and a lower speed, but we accelerated quite nicely and didn't stay in ground effect for the acceleration. I need to go through the motions even if the aircraft wants to go flying.

My airspeed on the climb-outs is still not quite stable - I need to pick an outside attitude and hold it, rather than chase the airspeed needle.

First landing OK but a bit long - the source of the problem is that I'm not getting slow quickly enough at the end of the downwind leg, which causes me to be high during base, and I just keep catching up throughout the circuit until I finally get it down on the ground.

We did a stop&go, backtracked, and I had the instructor demonstrate a short-field take-off. Yep, I'm doing the short-field the same as he does, I thought it was OK, now it is confirmed.

Flaps up, full power, carb heat in, rotate, and fly.

Mid-left downwind the instructor pulled the power and said "simulated engine fire". This is a from-memory checklist:

• Mixture to idle-cut-off (simulated, of course - touch the control but don't actually turn the engine off)
• Fuel selector off
• Master electrical off (but leave it on since this is simulated, and we need to communicate)
• Cabin heat and air off, leave overhead vents on
• Airspeed 100 kts to extinguish the fire. If not extinguished increase speed until it is out.
• Conduct a forced landing

By this point we were past the mid-left downwind, and ready to do a forced landing:

• Declare where you're going to land (the runway)
• Point the aircraft at the landing point
• Maintain straight and level flight, and slow to best glide speed (65kt in the C172 with no flaps)
• Communicate (radio intentions to traffic)
• Forward slip to get down, including a turn to runway heading. I could put in flaps, but it takes a while to deploy them, and more importantly, it takes a while to retract them - but a forward slip can be taken out very quickly if we need to preserve altitude to make the runway.
• On short final I put in 20 degrees of flaps, and did a pretty good landing just past the numbers.

Full power, carb heat off, flaps up, rotate, fly away.

On the third circuit I pulled the power from 2300rpm to 1700rpm earlier, rather from 2300rpm to 1500rpm later. Maintaining altitude by progressive nose-up and adding in 20 degrees of flaps, all on the latter stages of the downwind, meant I was starting to descend at my target airspeed as I turned to base. Reducing the power to idle on base, and starting the turn to final earlier (so it would be a nice gently-banked turn), meant I was in a much better setup during short final. Remember to keep the nose down to maintain airspeed, add a touch of power for distance, eyes to the end of the runway to get a better perspective for the flare and for yaw control, and the landing was much much better.

The instructor told me to exit at Bravo, he hopped out, and I flew two circuits solo. Both landings were quite good, though the second final approach was a bit low. My first solo was October 5 2008 in the Eclipse, this was my second "first solo", this time in the Cessna 172.

Next steps: Instrument instruction, in preparation for the cross-country solo. I've booked two 4-hour flights, next Friday (for dual cross-country) and next Sunday (for solo cross-country)

Dual flight: 0.3
Dual landings: 3 (1 forced)
Solo flight: 0.3
Solo landings: 2