Hello all!
Had another two lessons, circuits and the early stages of navigation!
The first lesson was circuits. Was hoping to go off solo, but the wind was a little too gusty, so my instructor came up with me, to make sure I could handle it! Was quite pleased when, on the first landing, I was told to drop him off, and I could do 2 or 3 T+G's, but was told very firmly "if you're not happy, come straight back". Fair enough I thought, but I didn't think that would actually happen!! Got a couple of circuits in, and apart from messing up my RT twice, it seemed to be going fine. Until I got onto final. Was replying to landing clearance, and my readability had suddenly become "awful". So I very quickly decided to call a full stop landing, which wasn't even understood by the controller. He heard enough to acknowledge a landing, but nothing more. Got back to base, and didn't have a clue as to what the problem was...just hoped I hadn't done anything wrong! Luckily, it seemed I hadn't. And the radio is now fine. Quite a scare at the time, but as mazzy told me - it doesn't harm to get experience in those sort of "scares" - builds confidence.
Anyway the second lesson. Had a nasty crosswind, wasn't too good for solo circuits, so it was decided to have a low level navigation lesson, with some instrument flying thrown in! So off I went with the whizzy wheel, and planned a simple route. I seem to be understanding the basics of the whizz wheel now, which is good! My instructor, for the first time, told me do to the externals AND internal start-up myself. Once I had it started he'd come out, and off we'd go. Was quite nice, up until then he'd always been with me for the start up! (Again - little things!) The low-level navigation itself was fantastic, went a little off route but found my point fairly quickly. Was great to be fairly low - especially over hills and lakes, quite hard though. So onto the instrument flying - had my external view totally blocked, and all I had was the instruments. More than once I tried to look outside, so hard not too, but my instructor stopped me rather quickly! At first I felt a little sick, not having something outside to focus on. But I got used to it, and seemed to be doing ok. Managing to do turns, and climbs/descents and a mixture of the two. Was such a relief to be able to see outside at the end of it though, as much as I enjoyed it! Seems strange to not be able to see outside, when I'd been told off many a time for looking at my instruments too much, in my first few lessons! After a little frantic searching through the building haze, we found the airfield and came in for a crosswind landing. I'd never done one totally independent, so was a little nervous. My instructor decided to keep his mouth shut, and see how I got on. All was fine until the last 5 seconds, when he had to speak up! I did get it down, using the wing-down method, and I'm quite looking forward to some more crosswind landings now. Need some practice in them, but hopefully it won’t take long to get them totally right.
Lesson cancelled today, and with the clock going back there'll be no after school flights I expect. So I'll be lucky to get two hours a week, if that! Can’t wait to finish solo consolidation, and start on the “heavy” navigation!
Thanks, hope everyone’s flying is going well!
John.