Day 4 - Wednesday 12 November
Today's flying was a mix of very good and very bad.
Once again I flew twice. The main emphasis of the first flight was navigation, with a bit of general handling, and then some more general handling and circuits in the second flight.
The VFR navigation was simple enough. The instructor asked me not to compensate for wind, because he wanted to demonstrate how to correct for an error in the wind forecast. For the CPL test, once I set my heading I won't be able to look at my chart until 2 minutes before I reach each of the four waypoints (1/4-way, 1/2-way, 3/4-way and the destination). This seems pretty stupid to me - if I have an excellent navigation feature which isn't near one of these points, but the point itself is in the middle of nowhere, then I have to fix my position when I'm in the middle of nowhere rather than near the useful feature. I suppose the reason it's done this way is to demonstrate that you know the principals of ded reckoning, but it's certainly not the most effective way of getting from A to B. Still, the navigtion itself was fine - we were right of track at the 1/4-way mark because we hadn't corrected for the wind, but we soon fixed that, and arrived overhead the destination well within the allowable time.
The IFR diversion which followed is also not done the way which I'd do it in real life. I'm expected to use a ruler to draw my diversion leg and measure it. I will then take regular VOR/DME readings, and use a ruler to plot these on the chart. I have never used a ruler in the cockpit before, I've always believed that your time is far better spent flying than plotting accurate VOR radials. But this is not the way it's done for the CPL test, where accuracy is key, and without an accurate distance to your destination you can't give an accurate ETA. Again, though, there was no problem with this leg (except that one of the DME's I was using was over-reading by several miles, as we confirmed visually).
So, onto the general handling. Stalls were fine today, as were steep turns. PFLs were far better than yesterday - I did forget to do my shut-down checks once, and forget to warm the engine twice, but after a few goes I was able to get everything done. A huge improvement all round, and I was feeling pretty good.
Then we went to do some circuits - mainly glide approaches. ATC at Fort Pierce were extremely busy, we had trouble finding a gap in which to call them. Eventually we managed to contact them, and were told to hold over one of the reporting points, expect a 5-minute delay. While we were holding, ATC told another aircraft that they were too busy to accept any more touch+goes. We decided to head a few miles north, to Vero Beach, instead.
The runway at Vero Beach had far more cross-wind than at Fort Pierce, and it was pretty gusty too. It should have been well within my capabilities - but it wasn't. I managed to get on the ground safely after glide approaches a few times, but it wasn't pretty. We decided to do one normal, powered approach and then head home. And that's when it all went wrong. The approach was pretty normal - a bit high, but no big deal. But my speed control was terrible, and I came over the numbers with about 10kts of extra speed. We floated on and on down the runway, and eventually touched down over half way along it. I was aware we were running out of runway. What I should have done was get on the brakes and abandon the touch+go. But what I did instead was push the throttle in. That's right... no raising the flaps, just add power and take off with full flaps. As soon as I realised my mistake I went to raise the flaps - which resulted in the instructor having to stop me before we sank back onto the runway, and also resulted in my getting a very well-deserved b0ll0cking.
We flew back to Fort Pierce, and I managed a pretty good landing to finish off with. The conclusion from the Vero Beach incident was that it was poor decision-making. When running out of runway, the best decision is to stop. My instructor told me not to worry about it, to learn from it and move on. Well, I have learnt from it, and I have moved on - but it's hard to not worry about it. I really should be beyond the point where I can make stupid mistakes like that.
Anyway, other than this incident, I'm now at pre-CPL standard. Tomorrow morning's flight is an extra flight - not something that's required, but something I'm looking forward to just the same. You can read all about it tomorrow! And then in the afternoon I start my CPL training for real.
FFF
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