Bad luck mazzy, but like you say its good to fly!
The weather up here is great at the moment so i feel bad posting about all my flights lol.
Today managed two flights. First this morning was across to glasgow and into the there zone for a low approach and go around. There have strange lanes and it was just to practice going into a strange zone. After that we left the zone to the north over loch lomond and then did some unplanned diversions back to edinburgh.
On the way back my instructor turns to me and says 'its a gorgeous day, fancy a solo?'
as if there is more then one answer to that question lol.
Got back to ed, nipped to the club house, had a pretty rush briefing. Basically to go out the zone to the north and fly about and practice abit of nav and diversion stuff. So off I went to the a/c. checks done and I'm off. About half way out of the zone I realise that I actually don't have any of the frequencies I need since they are all for glasgow
so I bug the edinburgh ATC for em and they kindly ablige. I decide to head out the east to crail, near to RAF leuchars. Give fife a quick call to let them know I'm about (RT calls all spot on
) After that I changed to Leuchars to get a fis, and for once I actaully understood them lol.
I then bumbled up to newborugh on the banks of the tay, I then planned to go up to crieff but I realised that if I did i would be about half an hour late on the rejoin time that I had given EDI when I left the zone. So instead I went down to Balado bridge (near to portmoak, where I used to glide so know the area well) Changed back to ED to get a fis off them and let them know that I'm alive. I wasn't quite ready to go home yet tho so I went up to Stirling to do some diversions, it was pretty rough near the hills I can tell you
Mushed about up there then decided to heard for home. Had to hold abit waiting to land but ATC give code red peopel (i.e solo students) quite a high priotity so I didn't have to wait long (unlike my instructor who was flying another a/c
) Did a steep approach to keep out the way of the vortexs from the airbus ahead of me, nice approach, flared nicely and then BLIND. Bloody sun right on the horizon and literally couldn't see anything. To make matters worse it turns out that I had flared slightly on the high side. Now in normal circumstances this ain't a problem, a quick adjustment of the flare and u can touch down nicely, however doing this with no refernece isn't going to happen. So there I was flared, blind, sinking....still no ground....hand on the throttle....just as I was about to push on the power for a go around...THUMP. The ground, probably my hardest landing yet in a powered plane.......so slightly annoyed about it.
Overall the solo flight was good, and also learnt a valuable lesson of PLANNING. No matter what you are doing go through first on the ground and make sure you have all u need. As such the solo flight felt sligltly scrappy, since I was trying to acheive something but not really managing it. I really enjoyed it tho and thats the main thing
