Hi All,
As many on PPRUNE I'm currently training towards PPL, about 5 1/2 hours solo so far.
I completed my first "solo land away" today - from Shoreham to Lydd and back. Obviously delighted to have done this trip successfully, but my landing back at SHM makes me want some input from you experienced PPRUNErs!
Lydd went well - 10 knot (ish) x wind on RWY 21 in a C152, got it down fine. Cup of tea and back I go. Coming back, SHM Approach gave me a "straight in" for RWY 25. To those not familiar with EGKA this is an 887m grass strip. Approach was fine, circuit quiet, wind was roughly 10-12 knot allout across from the right, but handled that at Lydd so felt OK. Decided not to select full flap aiming to achieve better control of the a/c all the way in. As I flared I touched down fairly firmly, but not "hard" as far as I remember (and you normally remember the really hard ones right?!). To my great surprise I "bounced", And this was immediately followed by a ballon. Stuck it on again and the same thing happened! 3rd time lucky as it were and she finally decided to stay on the ground. Parked up, and despite the previous 1.5 hour solo nav ex, guess what was the only thing I could think about!! After discussion with my flying school our assumption is that I hit an "upslope" and this caused my bouncing/ballooning issue. However, I'm always very hard on myself and there's that nagging question of "am I just making excuses?".
I'm going somewhere with this I promise...
Now I'm confident that given a 5kt headwind I could achieve those "greasers", nice and gentle touchdown 9 times out of 10, but given more moderate conditions like today I find it's a much more tricky job. Do others find this? What are the views on experiencing "character building" (one of my instructors has a way with words) landings like this solo? I truly see that experience is priceless in aviation, but are these kind of experiences totally healthy, or should you wait for near-calm conditions before strapping in without an instructor?
Anyway focus on the positive...first solo landaway complete!
All views welcome.