May 14 - Circuit Session
Nice weather today for circuits, and after last time’s flap debacle, I sure needed a refresher, lol!
The circuit was quite busy, with lots of Porter planes arriving and a few other company planes in the circuit, but I didn’t mind that; helps me keep my radio skills fresh, and also I get to practise thinking “on the fly”, so to speak: A few times we had to do some things I have only done once or twice before, including “pull up and go around” (overshoot), and switch runways (from 08 to 06) at the last minute. To accommodate the comings and goings of the bigger planes in the circuit, we also had to extend crosswind and base a couple of times, and once, the controller was pushing tin so fast there was a plane exiting on foxtrot, another plane landing, and us on short final with clearance to land, following the plane ahead! Kind of exciting!
In terms of refining my actual aviation skills today, I felt like the improvements were negligible, however, I did learn about different approaches to approaches (no pun intended). Korkka always taught me I could put down 10 degree of flap on base, and then control my descent with a combination of airspeed and flap, however, Tatiana noticed that I seemed to be consistently too high, then would hurry up and drop myself fairly steeply with flap, resulting in a too shallow approach, which I would correct at the last minute by adding power, thus “dragging myself in”. This is problematic, because when I then reduce power in the flare, I end up dropping fairly heavily on the runway (I even kind of understood about the transfer of energy that causes this, when Tatiana explained it – impressive, for my feeble mind!)
Next time, I hope to remember to control my descent a little more with power, in the base and even on final, starting with 20 flap, and saving the rest until/if needed towards the end of final. If I can learn to make my descent more gradual, my landings could perhaps become a little more graceful!
One other thing I was reminded of was the difference in power between aircraft: We finally got out of HAZEL and into FDH last night, and as I rediscovered, the latter is a considerably more powerful plane, which of course impacts how one plays with the controls to make the aircraft do what you want!
The circuit was quite busy, with lots of Porter planes arriving and a few other company planes in the circuit, but I didn’t mind that; helps me keep my radio skills fresh, and also I get to practise thinking “on the fly”, so to speak: A few times we had to do some things I have only done once or twice before, including “pull up and go around” (overshoot), and switch runways (from 08 to 06) at the last minute. To accommodate the comings and goings of the bigger planes in the circuit, we also had to extend crosswind and base a couple of times, and once, the controller was pushing tin so fast there was a plane exiting on foxtrot, another plane landing, and us on short final with clearance to land, following the plane ahead! Kind of exciting!
In terms of refining my actual aviation skills today, I felt like the improvements were negligible, however, I did learn about different approaches to approaches (no pun intended). Korkka always taught me I could put down 10 degree of flap on base, and then control my descent with a combination of airspeed and flap, however, Tatiana noticed that I seemed to be consistently too high, then would hurry up and drop myself fairly steeply with flap, resulting in a too shallow approach, which I would correct at the last minute by adding power, thus “dragging myself in”. This is problematic, because when I then reduce power in the flare, I end up dropping fairly heavily on the runway (I even kind of understood about the transfer of energy that causes this, when Tatiana explained it – impressive, for my feeble mind!)
Next time, I hope to remember to control my descent a little more with power, in the base and even on final, starting with 20 flap, and saving the rest until/if needed towards the end of final. If I can learn to make my descent more gradual, my landings could perhaps become a little more graceful!
One other thing I was reminded of was the difference in power between aircraft: We finally got out of HAZEL and into FDH last night, and as I rediscovered, the latter is a considerably more powerful plane, which of course impacts how one plays with the controls to make the aircraft do what you want!