Dialing It In

Today's flight was, again, all pattern work. Due to a minor repair being required, we got a late start, so we just stuck to flying the local field and working on approach and landing.

One of the oddball things that stuck out in my mind today actually had nothing to do with my own flying in fact. While taxiing to take off, a regional jet pilot was questioning the controller about some departure procedure or another (something that I am completely unfamiliar with, but which I would presume an airline pilot should know before getting in the plane). It sounded pretty innocuous, but then as we got to the end of the runway and I angled for the runup anticipating the jet coming up behind me, we heard the controller say, "...make a 180 and taxi to runway 12"....the professional jet pilot had made a wrong turn right at the ramp and was headed for the wrong runway.... Ha, that makes me feel better and worse at the same time. Better, that mistakes happen to everyone. Worse, that I can expect to make a mistake when I have a thousand hours and my bouncy, wandering landings are a distant memory.

So, back to the flying at hand....

My home field has a VASI, and I can already tell that I must use it as more of a crutch than I should, because my approaches today were dead-on. At the uncontrolled field, all my references were gone, and today I realized that the VASI is clearly a big help. This is fine if I only fly into a VASI-equipped field, but I need to get better at identifying the runway picture to be able to fly the lonely strips that make up most of the airports in the country.

We flew a total of 8 go-arounds, with a mix of touch-and-gos, low approach, simulated engine failure at takeoff, just a bit of crosswind, and a fairly light traffic. The entire exercise went very smoothly, and my landings are coming along. I still flare a bit high (a common error), but it's getting better, and I can adjust for it when it happens. Didn't even have a bounced landing like I did last time.

All in all, lessons are moving along quite well. It's hard to grasp that I technically have enough knowledge to fly solo at this point, although there are still a few things to cover. And knowledge isn't necessarily the same as skill.