Flight 25

February 26, 2011

Today's lesson with Matt was fun and challenging. I'm not even sure where to begin... I guess I should note that the airport had a lot of canceled flights today due to low clouds. I was fortunate enough to have a later flight, which gave time for the clouds to rise to about 2300ft. The challenging part was dealing with the intense haze. I have never flown in instrument conditions, and even though we were still legally flying under VFR (Visual), it felt like instrument. We couldn't see anything ahead, only below; which made it hard to know which direction we were going without using the GPS or compass. The haze was so thick that I thought we were flying through the clouds, but Matt told me if it were clouds, we wouldn't be able to see the ground. I remember at one point, I thought I was heading north when we were really heading west.

We spent half the lesson practicing steep turns, slow flight, power-off stalls and turns around a point. I'm definitely making improvements.

Afterward, Matt and I flew back to the airport and practiced short and soft field takeoff and landings. My landings haven't been going as well as I'd like, so Matt had me make some adjustments to my pattern procedures. This really seemed to help me out, and my landings gradually got better. Then he presented me with a new challenge. He asked me to use power and pitch only to make my landing, and he didn't want me to use flaps at all. This was a first, and it was certainly interesting. Flaps help you slow the airplane down, so without using them, you have to make adjustments in other ways. But I quickly learned that a flapless landing is possible.

One of the most memorable landings of the day was when I was doing a flapless landing, and I was coming in too high. Matt didn't seem phased that I was high, and he asked me to do a short field landing by landing on the painted "18" on the runway. I was running out of room and told him there was no way I was going to get the airplane down that fast! So he took the controls and did a pretty drastic forward slip. I had no idea you could make the airplane move like that. It was a bit nerve-wracking but impressive. Nonetheless, we landed on the "18."

After flying, we spent an hour inside going through the airplane logbooks. Part of the checkride requires that I make sure the airplane is airworthy and that all required maintenance has been performed.

Today was one of those days that I definitely felt like I got my moneys worth. I'm exhausted but pleased.

Flight Log to Date
Hours flown: 31.3