Went to do some solo circuits the other day. FI came along for a ride before sending me off by myself. He wanted me to get 5 or 6 landings in. My first solo circuit was uneventful, and turning final I made my radio call with intentions to touch & go. My landing was okay and after applying full power, the engine spluttered for a moment.
As soon as I heard it, I decided to pull the power, braked, turned myself round and exited via the taxiway. A bag of nerves, I taxied back to the school and shut the engine down. Or at least I tried to!
I've only ever done this once before, (about lesson 4) but after setting the throttle to maintain 1000RPM, I pulled the mixture full lean to stop the engine. Obviously due to nerves, I didn't wait for the engine to cut out completely before pulling the throttle back to idle, so got into an embarrassing situation where the engine was close to cutting out then restarting again as I kept messing with the throttle!
Luckily someone came and helped me and stopped the engine. He was great about it all and discussed with me what had happened & why it happened. I do know what was happening after the event but at the time, being so rattled after an aborted touch & go, I just couldn't work it out.
Then like a fool I was in a rush to go and see my FI (who was surprised to see me back so soon!) to discuss my failed touch & go and my subsequent shutdown debacle, only for him to point out I'd left the master switch on; the beacons were still going.
I felt like a proper prat.
He was very patient & forgiving (as ever), and said I'd done the right thing on my touch & go. He explained to me the engine can gum up a little if it is idle for a while on finals but seemed happy I'd decided not to press on if I thought the engine sounded rough.
He said he was glad for me to go back out again and although nervous, I did want to get back on that horse. But by this time the wind had picked up and he said it was probably better I come back another day, so I've booked another go in a few days time where I bloody well want to get an hour of solo circuits in.
Somehow I feel like I've let both him & myself down... to this point I'd done my first solo and subsequent solo for just 0.5, then this happens and I didn't get any further than one frigging landing!
I'm sometimes a little timid and nervous before my flights but once we're moving I'm fairly confident with what I'm doing. However, this time I'd made three embarrassing errors.
I get narked when I make mistakes but some of these were absolute howlers, so I left pretty annoyed with myself and I'm still feeling pretty ashamed with my last performance.
