David
I didn’t follow the thread about landing a Cessna because it didn’t particularly interest me. One of the comments on here provoked me into having a read - although I must admit I only got through the first five pages.
I have no doubt that you have a PPL. It is also quite clear you thoroughly enjoy your flying.
When I started flying I developed some very "set" ideas about what was right and wrong, what I thought worked and what didn’t. Many, if not most, of these ideas came from my instructors (I think I may have had half a dozen through my PPL). After all, they were instructors, they must be right.
Then I joined a small group. The guy who ran the group was a past RAF fast jet instructor and latterly commercial pilot. The aircraft was aerobatic and he loved aeros. Another chap in the group flew an air ambulance throughout Europe, summer and winter in all sorts of crap weather. The third guy spent his early days "aeroing" Chinocks for the RAF before becoming a BA training captain. One way or another I did 1,000 hours or so with that lot.
Of course as a newly minted PPL I though I knew how to fly an aircraft. I had also done an IMC rating so I thought I could fly through a CB chucking out water whilst the ADF receiver clicked in the background.
Fortunately one way or another these guys took me under their wing. I don’t think they ever “told” me what to do. There was the occasional - why don’t you try this, see how that works for you, or I see you usually do it that way, but I wonder what you would do if this happened, I got to know what the odd wince meant, and how they knew I was going to miss the vertical in the hammerhead before I did. Then I started flying with a few other pilots who hadn’t got that many hours. I watched the approach into a long wet runway with a quartering crosswind, a few extra knots creep onto the approach, a landing a bit to hard onto squidgy mud and a hurried attempt to retrieve us from disaster with the trees at the end of the runway having unbelievably become a lot closer than I ever thought possible. I listened to the fella tell me his instructor had always told him to carry a little more speed into a wet runway, land firmly and not worry with the final stage of flap. Yeah, I thought, that was me. I listened some more when he commented that he thought the runway was more than long enough and had never floated so far down the runway before.
There was nothing “wrong” with the instruction I had when I did my PPL. In fact it was very good. However, it only went so far. I could have continued flying much like I was taught but I consider I was very fortunate and privileged to join that first group. There have since been a few times when a situation has arisen and after wards I have found myself thinking what would John have done, and was that what I did - and I can tell you it has saved my skin on occasions. It did on the example above when there is no doubt we would have been in the trees if I had not been conscious of what was about to happen as we touched down on that wet and slippery runway that grey November day with just a bit too much speed, started to go sideways whilst the pilot applied power without any regard to what was at the end of the runway and what the wind was doing.
I am sorry for such a long post. However, please can I prevail on you to take the opportunity to fly with one or two of the guys on here - I am sure they would oblige, or hunt down someone with backgrounds of the sort I have outline above. You will have a lot of fun and you may find you change a belief or two about how this game works. If you only ever fly off long tarmac, on good days, with not too much wind you will enjoy your flying for a long time to come, but if you are persuaded to fly to a new strip one wet, windy and grey November day you might find they have something more to contribute.
Just a thought.
[Edited to correct terrible spelling - worse than usual!]