I Learn't About Flying From That - Clearly Not
Not long after being let loose in single-seat gliders, a cold and blustery winter's day at Bicester. I'm making a pretty good approach to land, standard approach speed when at about 50 feet the bottom drops out of the world and I make a very hard landing followed by a very short landing run. By the time I've closed the spoliers, unclipped the straps, opened the canopy and thought 'Oh deary me - windshear!' (or something like that!) the CFI (A*** G****) was ready to greet me with 'You - dual - now!'. I'll never do that again, I thought, and the need to add airspeed was reinforced.
Roll forward a couple of years, now with my PPL and another cold, blustery day, cross country and approaching to land at Dundee. Going well and getting ready to flare when ... sudden and uncommanded descent to a rather harder landing than planned. No CFI (or any other) comment this time as no-one was watching (I think!). The term 'idiot' followed by 'lucky' seemed appropriate. Even though the first incident was still fresh in my brain, as was the PPL training about windshear, I'd failed to connect it to the situation I was in. On reflection, I hink it was because I was focussing hard on my first landing at a new and exciting airfield, still inexperinced, and simply was not thinking!
And the title? The RAF air safety publication 'Air Clues' used to have fascinating, anonymous articles called'I Learn't About flying from That!. Gold dust!