Now today was an interesting day if I have ever seen one! Before I start, just to let you know I left the airfield with a massive grin that would not come off my face for a while (no I haven’t gone solo yet!) I was in for a very interesting circuit session. As you may know the weather on Sunday was dire – gale force winds, horrible rain and low cloud – I was so sure that the 1330 flight would be cancelled, but as it turned out, the weather perked up a bit and we were off. Took off on rw 27 and started the left hand circuit, with a tail wind. I was absolutely shocked as to how much runway we used to get airborne, the thing just wouldn’t get off the ground, and when it did, it just wouldn’t climb like normal, quite a bizarre feeling. So when we got round from base, onto 1 mile final, in full landing configuration, we hear this from Tower:
“G-## Immediate turn right, orbit Jaguar, incoming fast jet”
Bo**ocks! Full power, raise nose, reduce to one stage of flap, right turn straight over to the Jaguar mushroom (you’ll know what I mean if you have flown there) to start orbiting. Bearing in mind we were in a left hand circuit, and the jaguar mushroom is on the right, so we have now transited to a right hand circuit, downwind for base on rw 09. Ok so this is all new to me, but no rocket science here, I understood what was going on. So now at least we were going to land with a bit of headwind. By now the wind was up to about 11 kts from the right.
The first approach was going sweet all the way until touchdown – because I had not trim the aircraft properly and kept the back pressure on, when I released a bit of back pressure to let her touch down, the yoke shot forward and we were gonna eat tarmac, hadn’t it been for some lightning speed reactions! I don’t know about you people, but when I don’t get something right it makes me so determined to do it right the next time round, frustration isn’t the right word, just a sheer need to succeed. So on the next take-off no in a right hand circuit. The first difficulty I was coming across is that I could hardly see the runway because of my instructor who is on the right and in the turn, you cant see it at all, you have to remember points on the horizon, roll level then check and make corrections as necessary. This time the wind was up to 15-16kts which is the Tommy’s limit, I’m not sure on the crosswind component as I haven’t worked on that yet but it was bloody strong – certainly the most effective crosswind I have experienced so far, and there was some serious crabbing going on to keep center line with an early turn onto final as the wind was behind us. My approaches were going so nicely and I was so pleased at getting them right – even the crosswind landings were better than what I thought I was capable of doing – plenty of crab, use the rudder to keep the nose straight and the ailerons to keep center line. After 5 more of these getting it right I was on top of the world – but I had learned another valuable lesson today, GET IN TRIM!
As I have said a few times, crosswind landings were my original big fear. Don’t get me wrong, I find them tough and they need a lot of attention and it will take me millions of years (if you know what I mean) to ever get comfortable with them, but now they are not a FEAR, just a bigger challenge!
Happy (xwind) landings and keep up the fine posting!
Lee
