Lesson 2: 13/3/11
Arrived at the airfield at 0930. Compared to the lovely sunny day we had yesterday I honestly believed we wouldn't be flying today as it was rather hazy with a cloudbase of around 3000ft. But I rang up and my instructor reckoned it would clear. Sure enough, at 0930 it had mostly cleared, the horizons still a little hazy, but the low fogs gone and the clouds up at 5000ft now.
I walked into the briefing area and he said, "Well, you've bought your checklist, what are you waiting for?" and he gave me the keys and I went outside. I went all the way around the outside of the aircraft, checked under the cowling, checked the electronics and lights but bottled it actually getting in the aircraft and doing the interior checks and I went back inside. All the checks were normal apart from the forward fuel drain, lots of clear little bubbles at the bottom of the tube, uh oh...but we'll come back to that later.
So inside a briefing on todays lesson, today we're setting the HI and learning to fly straight and level on heading at a constant altitude (+/- 20ft). Nice and quick but mostly words this time, but it was nice and simple and I understood straight away.
So we're outside now and heading for the aircraft and he asks me if anything was up with the checks and I tell him about the water bubbles on the forward fuel drain. So he went up and checked it again and asks me if it was raining when I checked it as well
So now we're getting into the aircraft and my hand pulled a bit of trim off the door and slid down behind the trim and scraped off the staples, that stung a bit. But we crack on through the interior checks and just before start up he asks me if I've checked myself
and points out that I'm dripping blood all over the seat from my finger
Bandaged up we start up and I taxi up the holding point for power checks, and I get to use another page from my shiny checklist for the power checks and pre-take off checks. Right now he's explaining to me that its a good idea to wait a minute after power checks to see if anyone calls downwind and have a good visual check.
Nothing, nothing at all, time for my first radio transmission:
"Golf tango delta, ready for departure" quickly followed by "Golf tango delta, backtracking"
About 400ft from the end of the runway "Golf *** *** on short final" and all I hear off my instructor is "Right rudder fully on....power up....75knots pull up" I'm away, my first take off! (For those interested the incoming pilot hadn't gone through the circuit, had just turned onto approach from .5nm away and called in)
So today is the same as yesterday nearly, close eyes, let my instructor play with the power, attitude, trim, heading and altitude, open eyes and fix. In comes PATH.
Power
Attitue
Trim
Heading
and then climb to correct attitude. We did this at differents speeds, altitude and heading, absolutely great. We also did a little bit of level turns and he introduced me properly to the local area and circuit layout. And balancing the aircraft by stepping on the ball, in the end had to turn the rudder control knob a fair bit to the left actually.
So this time I fly back to the circuit looking at the landmarks and remembering my rough back bearing from heading out, and I flew the circuit myself and the landing was pretty much the same as yesterday, except J was working the rudder quite a lot due to the crosswind.
In and I paid for the lesson and my membership fee, I'm sure this is the club for me now. Lesson 3 is booked for next Saturday and we're climbing and descending. Also I'm going to try and get my Air Law exam booked for next Sunday.
Ash