May 27, 2010
Matt and I crammed in a lot of things into today's lesson. We met early and went out to the Cessna. I had a million questions about airplane systems and aerodynamics. The more training I get, the more I realize how a pilot needs to be a mechanic, a meteorologist, and in a way a physicist combined. There's so many factors to take into consideration when flying, and sometimes it can definitely get overwhelming.
We departed from our airport and flew out to Alton, which is a Class D airport. I needed to gain some confidence working with ATC, so Matt and I did two landings together. He let me do all the of radio communications so that I could learn from my mistakes. At ten miles out, I contacted the tower and informed them of my location and that I was inbound to land. I received the clearance and made our first landing. Our second time around, Matt contacted the tower and asked if they would allow him to get out of the plane after landing, so that I could do my three solo full-stop landings that are required. They gave him the ok, and after touchdown I took him to the ramp where he got out and sent me on my way.
After receiving the clearance to taxi, then to takeoff, I was up at pattern altitude before I knew it. I was quickly on final for runway 11. The landing was surprisingly beautiful! I came to a full stop, configured the plane for takeoff, applied full power and began my climb. The second landing I fell into my bad habit of flaring the plane too soon, causing a semi hard (but safe) landing. The third time around, ATC told me that I needed to extend my downwind leg an extra half mile to allow time for the departing aircraft. I repeated the instructions back to ATC and did as I was told. The landing went no better than the second and I think it was in part because the runway width is greater than the runways at my airport, causing me to judge my distance slightly wrong. Afterward, I taxied back and picked up Matt.
Once back to our airport, Matt wanted me to make a crosswind landing onto runway 18. Instead of entering the pattern, we did a straight-in landing. Needless to say, I did horribly and I'm rather embarrassed about it. My altitude was way too high and didn't add full flaps until I was on short final. My airspeed was still too fast and I was continuously dealing with the crosswinds. I considered doing a slip, but I got mixed up on which direction to slip the plane, so I decided against it. I also had the nose down and was descending rapidly, causing the airspeed to increase. That was one of the last things I wanted to happen because it'll make for a rough landing or I may run right off the runway. Right before touching down, Matt had me do a go-around. When Matt tells me to do a go-around, I know I did something wrong, and this time I was aware of it.
He explained the problems and told me that this time I needed to keep the power at roughly 2200rpm instead of decreasing it to 1500 and to maintain pattern altitude. He would let me know when to decrease power and was setting me up for another really high final approach. Once we were on the final leg, he walked me through the process of adding flaps, airspeed management, helping me out with a slip, more attention to speed, correcting for the crosswind, and getting me onto the correct glide path. The landing went well but I was definitely flustered. We taxied back to the ramp and called it a day.
I have mixed emotions about today's lesson. I feel good about the tower work, but still completely ashamed of my bad decision making at the end. Don't get me wrong though, I know that landing provided a new situation that I had not dealt with yet, but I still know better as to when to call a go-around.
My next time in the air will be all solo work. I'm looking forward to it :)
Flight Log to Date
Hours flown: 56.2
Come on, don't take it too hard! You were coming home after some hard work and you probably let your guard down just a little bit. It happens, especially at familiar airports. Moreover, straight-ins are hard to judge, even more so when it's windy -- I'm sure that if you had flown the pattern your landing would've been great.
ReplyDeleteOh by the way, if you really want to do some interesting tower work, try transitioning through some busy bravo airspace -- the basics are the same of course, but you start getting all kind of requests from ATC and keeping up with them it's a funny game on its own :-)
Yeah I'm not sure what came over me. He told me to do a crosswind landing, but I was the one that asked to do it as a straight-in because I like the challenge, and then I completely blew it. It's alright though. I promised Matt I wouldn't be so hard on myself and I'm going to keep that promise. It was a really good learning experience and as much as I sometimes hate it, I appreciate that he let me make the mistakes so that I could learn from it.
ReplyDeleteTransitioning into Bravo sounds interesting. Hopefully we can do that sometime soon when I get better with the lingo.
P.S. Thanks for the encouragement, I needed that :)