Tying a Knot

Today was another flight that just barely fit through a hole in the weather. The primary purpose was to finish off my hood work, but I really wanted to brush up on the steep turns. My instructor said again that they are quite difficult in the DA-20 due to its tendency to oscillate up and down if you don't enter the turn just right and with the nose at just the right attitude.

That's all nice in theory, but it's beginning to really turn into a struggle. I do all right, but it's hard to keep the bank angle, nose pitch, and power just right so as not to wallow all over the sky. I suppose that's the whole point of the exercise...

So after some re-do of unusual attitudes, VOR navigation, and constant rate climbs and descents under the hood, we did a whole mess of steep turns, which truly must have looked from the ground like a literal aerobatic show. Nevertheless, by the end, I had a better feel for them, and with a few more tries, it shouldn't be a problem. At least I know what to focus on....

Then we did some pattern work, with some soft- and short-field landings. Since I had asked about power-off landings a while back, we decided to try one today...just like the commercial maneuver. We went to idle just abeam of the numbers, and I turned in just a bit closer than I usually do. I haven't practiced any of this, so I had to kind of guess at when to deploy the flaps. We were aiming for the 1000-foot mark on the runway. T.I. gave it just a touch of throttle as we were about 200 feet above the ground on final, but overall, I made a decent landing (and spot on at the mark). And that was even with a bit of float. Of course...there was no surface wind today, so I still wouldn't want to try a real-world version of this quite yet....but it was good to see that I could probably pull it off in an emergency...and it was also good to try something a bit different than the regular stuff.

With the hood work hurdle out of the way, I just need the weather to hold off long enough to get another long cross-country done. But so much for having it all done by the end of the year. My instructor wants to do at least one mock checkride (and maybe two) before the real thing, and unless the holidays and the weather somehow align between now and then, it probably won't quite get done. The only way to do it would be to be ready to fly on a moment's notice if the weather clears up. But then there's that job thing....