Hi everyone,
It's been a while since I posted, so thought I'd give a quick update. Due to the boating season, which sees me "offshore" for 2 or 3 weeks at a time (got to use it, it cost too much money to leave idle!!), flying has been a bit sporadic lately. Still I'm pleased with my progress so far, and yesterday did my first solo "away". I took off from EMA, exited the zone as instructed by ATC via Long Eaton West and simply flew North to Mansfield, and then had fun flying over the Clipstone Forest area. After a few minutes, I turned back West, and discovered that into the (by now pretty low) sun (it was 17.30), the visability was pretty horrible. Nevertheless, I flew due West, climbed a bit, keeping Mansfield to the North, and easily picked up the M1. I then did the whole exercise again, before heading back South to the EMA reporting point (Trowell Services on the M1).
I was cleared straight into the zone, though had a medi vac helicopter pretty close accoring to FIS - I never saw it against the sun. I switched to Tower and was pretty surprised to be cleared straight to final as number 1 (usually a pretty busy time with a lot of commercial traffic).
There was a bit of a crosswind (230/13 kts) on runway 27, which caught me out turning onto final - it was 280/9 kts just 5 minutes beforehand, so where did that come from? This caused me to drift a bit off line as I turned onto final, which I quickly corrected. I have not had a crosswind landing for some time, and whilst it was not very pretty to watch for the BMI planeload of passengers waiting to take off, the actual touchdown was a real smoothie.
Did I enjoy it? Yes indeed I did, though I confess to feeling a bit nervous on the journey to the airport. However, once I walked across the tarmac and climbed aboard I felt great. Once again, I noticed that flying solo, I am much more conscientious, looking out constantly, more regular FREDA checks, remembering things like switching the fuel pump off at 1000' etc, and just feeling more in charge and on top of things. I find that having an instructor talking to me, it's more difficult to keep my concentration on doing these important things - I guess I'm not much good at multi - tasking!!
Next follows a solid lesson on PFL's (the one major weakness evidently in most students during their skill test), then a couple of solo navs, a couple of land aways and then all being well the QXC follows shortly.
Oh dear dreaded skill test is edging ever closer!!