Wednesday, 06 December 2006

The eagle has landed

Lesson: 12, 13 & 19
Flight Hours: 6.0 Dual

Finally on leave! The weather looking great this morning with a steady 8-10 knots on the deck. Heading into the flying school I met an Air Force pilot working on the Hawk programme - yup, even jet jocks fly trikes! Signed out the plane, did my pre-flight routine, and we headed out. We flew over to the neighbouring Bapsfontein airfield for circuits work and low-level flying.

It was fun flying approaches on a different field, and although my eyes were still widely stretched low over the ground, I managed ok and performed a few good low level runs. On my final low-level run over the Bapsfontein runway, Henk advised me go even lower on this run, and follow his instructions quickly when over the runway. I flew a good approach, and managed to fly a nice low run, when Henk advised me to take all the power off and hold the sink off with the bar. More bar, hold off, more, more, and we settled nicely on the ground. My first landing!! Full throttle and left out back to Microland.

By this time the wind was getting a bit nasty at stages, but the trike still remained very much comfortable. Lesson of the day: Relax! It is much easier to control the aircraft and to keep the bar neutral when relaxing the shoulders. Joining overhead, I descended to 5600ft into the downwind leg, and flew the circuit and overhead on this altitude. Hmm, more or less of course. My pattern work is good, I just have to work a bit on staying at the right altitude. On the next circuit, Henk demonstrated the approach and landing, and upon climbing out after the touch and go, I was my turn. Flew a relatively good pattern, and settled on the approach. Microland's runway is a but more narrow and shorter than the one at Bapsfontein, but using what I learned at that field I lined up for finals and settled into the approach. At 40 degrees numbers below the nose, power off, and bar in to keep the speed at 50MPh+.

Small quick adjustments to stay lined up on the runway, and at about 6ft I rounded off to break the descent. Bar slightly forward to hold off, hold off, and presto! Touchdown. On the power, bar forward on rotate, catch the pitch up with a bit of back pressure on the bar, until a neutral bar climbout. Now this felt good! Another two circuits and final full stop landing. Taxiing back to the hangars it felt really wonderful. Now the pieces of the puzzle came together at last, and the part that I envisaged to be the most difficult is really not.

I need to go for my flight medical soon and sort out my Student licence with CAA so I can be ready for my solo, hopefully sometime soon. Did I mention that I am on holiday at the moment?

Everybody have a good one!

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