Originally Posted by
double_barrel
Yep, the difference is striking. There I am constantly fiddling with stuff and ending-up climbing or descending when I should be level or letting the speed drift off. He seems to do nothing - the plane just does exactly what he wants! I clearly still need to free-up some brain resources.
My last ****-up was failing to lower the flaps when I thought I had. I flipped the selector up to raise the flaps on the touch and go and failed to put it back to the centre position. So next circuit I reached out and put it down for a few seconds, and glanced at the indicator, but my brain was already onto the next thing so I failed to take-in the fact that I had done nothing with the flaps except move the selector from raise to off and back again! It's very strange, thinking back over it, my fingers felt the selector was wrong, my eyes saw the indicator had not moved, but I did not absorb and use the information! Ah well, I am getting more comfortable and getting more thinking time, but I sometimes think I am learning more about my strange brain than I am about flying!
It took me a few lessons more than I was expecting to get comfortable landing, although it is a much shorter and quieter circuit than yours - sounds awful! The crazy thing with all of this is your mind takes on board a trickle of information at a time and then files it away. So next time you won't think about what to say on the radio, you will just say it - your flare will be just right, or your glide path will be spot on. It doesn't all fall into place at once - each element will do slowly and then you will have the capacity to learn something else. As has been said, the thought of reading a map and flying seemed ridiculous to start with, never mind asking for a basic service and listening out constantly whilst scanning for traffic! Still a lot to do but not quite the mountain to climb as it used to be.