My update:-
I originally applied for my student license in October - it arrived in January whilst I was in Europe, so now I am trying to get the medical certificate processed. After 4 weeks of deliberations, I've been informed that I need to get a couple more tests done and that I should allow a further 3 weeks once the results of those have been submitted....which should see me through to mid-March before I can go solo. This is proving to be extremely tedious.
I've been doing a lot of travelling since my last update, so have not had much time to fly - I'm really holding on the paperwork before moving forwards again.
I went up for another round of circuit emergencies over the weekend in fairly challenging conditions - late afternoon, 32 deg, 12-15kts of x-wind.
My instructor and I are both of fairly stout construction, and the combination of our weights and the high temps did not make for great performance. Our Warrior was chasing a 152 around the circuit for most of the lesson, but not really catching it in the way that you might expect.
My judgement of different approaches seems to be gradually improving. I was caught short on one approach by the head wind on the base leg, and over-compensated on the next couple of glide approaches that more closely resembled stuka-stylee dive-bombing runs than landings - but the flare and touch downs were pretty consistent. Although on a couple of occasions I found myself being so relieved after touchdown that I prematurely released the backpressure on the stick and caused the nose wheel to judder fairly violently - but even with the engine randomly "failing" around the circuit I am reasonably confident of a good landing.
I am finding the mental side of it very interesting - I am repeatedly surprised at how easy it is let yourself become overloaded, focus on a single task and allow other tasks to slip. I have a number of other hobbies that require broad situational awareness, whilst multi-tasking but none of them manages to turn my brain to custard in quite the same way.
Hey-ho - onwards and upwards...
