From Start to Finish, the PPL Diary
So, after posing the question whether people would be interested and searching for a diary myself before I started lessons, I think some people may find it useful to see a PPL diary with the ups, downs and the mistakes written in, but also as a nice diary for me to look back on. I'm not much of a writer, but here goes:
Lesson 1- 12/3/11
The point of this lessons was basically to teach the effects of controls, get used to the attitude needed and the basic checks, a little bit of taxiing and get used to the proper look-out.
So it all started in the briefing room, clear and concise with diagrams which was perfect for how I learn. Instead of writing everything up, my instructor just drew a quick diagram to explain everything to me and off we went out to check the aircraft with my shiny new PA-28 check-sheet.
We went through all the checksheet nice and slowly with him talking me through how to do every part and then did it all again with me on my own, him pointing out just a nice little extra way to do something.
So we taxiied off to the holding point, just following him through on the pedals, mostly a little bit overwhelmed by everything going on around me, and did the powechecks which he let me do off my shiny checklist. I actually found this really interesting, especially when I learnt its nearly at the same RPM as cruising RPM.
Whilst we were waiting to backtrack down the runway, a lightweight came into land, a weird one with the prop behind the cockpit "facing" backwards. Just as my instructor was commenting on the weird little lightweight it bounced about 4 foot up and landed on its nosewheel. Apparently his landings are always like that...
So now we're backtracking down the runway and he's explaining that we always try and use the full length of the runway, and take off at 75 knots, and we always try and get a nice good swing onto the centre line and.....bang we're off, the powers on full and before I know it the altimeters reading 500ft.
The lesson itself was really interesteing. To start off with I was just getting used to the attitude or "picture out the screen". I was really struggling until he said "Just picture a beer can on the cowling, the top is where the horizon should be" I was fine after that.
So, because I was getting comfortable, he told me to close my eyes, and he'd throw it around a bit, play with the trim wheel and tell me to take control. Wow, the second he let go of the controls the nose really dived/raised with more force than I'd ever have expected.
The other bits of the lesson that I thought was great was how much the nose dropped to the right when the power was down and how much it raised to the left on, its amazing that just the force of the pistons in the engine can do that. Also the effect of the rudder, I had to do it a few times to get it into my head that if you hold it just a bit too long you start to get some serious roll.
So now we're heading to the circuit and he explained the basic outlay of the righthand circuit at the airfield and before I know it he's talking me through getting us onto approach, with me completely in control, altimeters reading about 50ft...and his hands still aren't on the yoke...40ft I'm bricking it now....30ft...20ft and his hands finally go on but he's still talking, look towards the end of the runway, don't take your eyes off it....slowly help me raise the nose....this is really taking a long time to touch down...."John is it supposed to take this long?"
"Ash, we're already down"
So he let me taxi back down to the apron and we shut down.
Absolutely great instructor I had loads of fun and couldn't believe we'd been up an hour. I walked in and booked a lesson for Sunday.