G-Foxtrot Oscar 69 & phnuff,
It just happens, even to those wth 1000's of hours
and
if you ever meet anyone who claims to have never ballooned/bounced, I would speculate that they are probably liars and are not worth talking to
Well said, Absolutely true!
I recently flew Mrs G to a meeting in a Warrior that I fly from time to time.
It was, fortunately, a large strip and there was a fairly healthy crosswind - just within limits – but my landing was SO bad that Mrs G (who is normally an extremely placid, calm and experienced passenger) turned to me and said “what the hell was that?”!!!
Afterwards, whilst licking my wounds, I realised that I had screwed it up, simply because I was far, far too fast on the approach (if I’m honest I was probably about 75 – 80 knots over the threshold). Luckily I recovered the landing without incident BUT I was reminded of two very valuable lessons:
1. I had done a ‘seat of the pants’ approach – I foolishly thought that the speed ‘felt’ right – it was slow compared to the 74 and I didn’t keep a close enough eye on the ASI.
2. I was in ‘Private Flying Committed to Land’ mode – i.e. a G/A didn’t enter my head until I thought “wwwwwwwwooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaoh shhhhhhh11111111111ttttttt, I’ve screwed this one up” – if I’d done the same thing at work I’d have gone around without even thinking about it – interestingly, even now I still don’t know why I was mentally so committed to landing the thing.
Whilst Mrs G was at the meeting. I climbed back into the a/c and did 6 circuits, this time at the CORRECT speed and each was OK.
When it was time to fly home, Mrs G (ever the school maam) said, “well, I hope that this landing will be better”, to which I replied, “it’s OK, I’ve been practising”. . . . .
