Loose Ends

Today was not originally scheduled as a flying day, but the weather this week is not supposed to be all that great. Since it turned into a sunny afternoon and there was a plane free for an hour, I took the opportunity to fly some pattern work and try to clean up my soft- and short-field takeoffs and landings.

I flew 10 approaches, with mixed results. I did a couple on the short crosswind runway, too, just to force the tighter tolerances. Since I have the majority of the required hours, my remaining work is solo cross-country and a bit of hood-work. Anything else is whatever I feel needs more refinement, which tends to be my landings.

Today, though, I was also getting a better mental picture of the airplane's movements through the air. The important thing is to "stay ahead of the airplane" and be able to anticipate what is going to happen next. This is done through a combination of watching the instruments, looking outside, listening to the wind and engine, and feeling the motion of the plane and the responsiveness of the controls. Early on, a lot of this is done by constantly cross-checking the airspeed indicator and the vertical speed indicator while watching the plane descend for landing. Today, I felt that I had to look at them less, while depending on the "muscle memory" of holding the right control pressures at the right times. This meant that I could spend a few extra seconds looking outside and judging my glide visually. It was an important shift toward trusting the plane to do what I've asked it to do and allowing it to continue with minimal prompting.

All was not perfect, however. As I made the first touch-and-go from the crosswind runway, I was busy watching my pattern and making the turns at different locations. This meant that I neglected to raise the flaps during the climbout. At the typical pattern speed and the amount of time between the climb, level off, and descent, there wasn't quite enough time to notice that my airspeed didn't quite get up to what it should have. So when it came time to lower the flaps again, I did so without looking, and ended up putting in full flaps too early. It took a few seconds to figure out why my speed and power settings didn't agree, but once I did, I managed to get the plane configured properly. Unfortunately, the turn toward the runway suffered a bit while I was doing this, and I came in a bit too steep. Since this short runway doesn't leave much for error, I touched down, but had to quickly get it back up into the air. Not pretty, but not a terrible go-around either. Although it was intended to be a touch-and-go, it would have really been better described as an aborted landing.

I should add also, that this incident did not go unnoticed. Coincidentally, a coworker who is also a pilot happened to be driving along the freeway under the pattern as I was performing this display. He mentioned the next day that he saw one of my school's "plastic airplanes" motoring around the pattern with full flaps in... So I 'fessed up that it was, indeed, yours truly. We had a good laugh...the dirty rat.

Coming up will be the solo cross-country, as soon as the weather allows.