Hey guys, Its been a while since I've posted so I'll upated you all with what I've been doing.
But firstly, congrats to mydata on the solo, and to chequeredflag, seriously don't worry about it. One day it will just click and you'll be able to do it. Landing I've found is very much an art, people can tell you what they do all they want, imo it doesn't help that much. One thing however I think you DO need to do is relax, your letting your landings bother you and being tense about them will defintely not help. I know its easy for me to say that but its still true
As soon as you sort them out you'll have no idea why you found them so hard lol. Good luck and don't worry, it will come!
Right, I've had a couple of flights since I posted before but the weather up here has been pretty bad (but sayin that its been the same over most of the uk!) lots of rain/snow about.
Two weeks ago tho I say my RT written and practical, which I passed! Was very strange tho. The written was really easy, got 97% and only got one question wrong and that was a stupid mistake that I already knew, my own fault for reading the question too quickly. The practical on the other hand was very strange. First you go over the route with the examiner, he just shows you the route you will be 'flying' and a list of frequecies. There is also a completed plog that has all the headings/time/waypoints etc on it that you'll need for reports. The route I did went as follows.
I took off from a fully ATC airfield, but not in controlled airspace. The first thing on the route was a MATZ so I had to cross that, and also from the same RAF base I got a LARS, down to my first waypoint to give a position report, just after I had set course for my second way point I had to get permission to climb to FL40 to avoid some stuff. at the same time as this I was handed over from the LARS unit to the FIR FIS, then out the blue comes a mayday. Listened to that, hastiliy scribbling down all the info, then relayed it. Due to my poor hand writing I manged to get the callsign of the mayday a/c wrong lol, but other then that was ok. I then had to change freq to a station that could give me a VDF fix, then back to my fis. I then arrived at my second waypoint and gave another position report, on the third leg I had to decend to 2000ft and my engine then started coughing and spluttering, out goes the PAN call and luckily all is well. I then continued on towards a busy international airport that was in class A airpace, so had to get a SVFR clearence into the zone, I then had to get the weather from the airport for my destination and then decide if I was going tocontinue or divert. Luckily the weather was nice and I continued. The destination was a FISO controlled strip and so just enter the circuit and landed.
The whole test is quite sureal, I have to admit I didn't think it would be as hard as it was. The main problem I had was keeping a picture in my head about what was actually going on. In the air you just know whats happening as its, well happening lol. With this you just have a map and a plog to help you. Very strange. Also for those of you that are still to take it, the CAA have informed all the RTF examiners to slacken the standards abit since they were taking things to literally and now basically if you can get across the important info in vaguely the right way you should be ok
Since then I have had two flights to finished off my slow flight/stalling time, these are really good fun, especially after doing lots of nav. Its nice just to handle the a/c and not have to worry about time/drift etc. Yesturday I had my flight to get my circuit variations done. These were the flapless, glide and short-field stuff. All again were really good fun. The flapless landings I found very simple, its just a flatter approach then usual. The glides were interesting, my first was way too high as I totally misjudged how fast the a/c would come down(there was hardly any wind) and so had to do a go around, the other 3 tho were spot on
Also did 3 EFATO. The short field stuff was good fun, it basically involves taxing right to the end of the runway and then holding the a/c on the two brakes while you run up to full power with 2 stages of flaps. A quick check of the T&Ps and of you go. Rotated at 55knots then a climb out at 63 to 300ft when you retract the flaps and fly Vx untilk clear of any obsticles. Once back in ed I sat my navigation exam, which I found really hard! No calcs allowed so I had to scribble away trying to do all the calculations on paper, which would normally only take me 10secs! lol. managed to pass anyway with 80%
Have pretty much finished the syllabus now so my next flight is going to be a mock test and my cfi is going to call the examiner over the weekend and try and sort out a time for my GST
Need to try and get my head around exactly what the examiner is looking for in the test but other then that am looking forward to it! Hope you all fly soon, and mazzy you really ain't having much luck for your 1st solo xc!!!
Blue skies y'all and happy landings