Still In The 40's

A new year, and another flight in the books...I think my instructor is trying to make sure I stay humble. Today was (in my mind) to be one of the last lessons before my checkride, and indeed it is. But my instructor wants me to take another solo and then one more with him to get all of the maneuvers dialed in. By the time I take my checkride, I'll be at about 46 hours, which still puts me firmly in the low-time category. It never was my goal to do any better than average, so it's a pleasant feeling to beat that (by quite a bit).

Nevertheless, it gives both my instructor and myself the opportunity to really tighten up the tolerances and identify critical test tasks that can sometimes trip up the student. It's the really small details, too:
--Taking a few extra feet to make sure the nosewheel is straight before a short-field takeoff
--Sticking the best-rate-of-climb airspeed on climbout
--Making a smooth level-off, airspeed increase, and power reduction without altitude fluctuations
--Not hurrying through the procedures, but rather thinking them through beforehand
--Taking the "emergency" all the way to "touchdown" - including things like briefing passengers and securing the cockpit
--Mentally reducing the typical 100' altitude tolerances during maneuvers to 50'
--Getting the airspeed down to a stabilized approach speed a bit sooner on final
--Do those clearing turns

We did another combination of maneuvers today that included steep turns (much better this time), stalls, hood work, slow flight, and emergency descents. Most of it was "reruns", but we did do something new today. We overflew the field at about 4500' AGL, and performed an engine-out spiral descent to landing. This is a way to lose altitude when you have an ideal emergency landing site in reach, and you don't want to fly too far away. The trick here is to coordinate the turns and descent rate so that you end up close to the end of the field as you enter a typical base leg.

This was the maneuver that I didn't do last time, since I didn't know how the math would work out. Now, it was good to see that I could properly judge the distances and turn rates required to make it all come together into a fairly smooth landing (just a little bounce, thank you). Amazingly, even though much of this descent was in a downward spiral (still at best glide speed), the profile was nearly identical to last time's. Roughly 4500 vertical feet and just under 10 horizontal miles. I watched the altimeter tick off the drop, while I kept my turn rate and airspeed constant. As I turned about 180 degrees (in a bit of a rectangle), I had lost about 1000 feet. So I did a 360 to lose another 2000 or so, which put me just a bit high, but still workable on a bit of a wide pattern. I also could see that another circle would be trouble. So I kept it a bit wide and went ahead with flaps. As I turned final, the rest of the flaps came in, and it was a smooth descent. I had a touch too much speed, so there was a little hop, but the nose stayed up and it planted firmly as the main wheels touched down.

Then, we switched to the narrow intersecting runway to do a short-field landing. This also worked out well, although while my speed was good for a normal landing, it would have been a bit too much for a truly short field.

So, it's another couple of hours before I'll be released for a checkride, but there's not a whole lot else I can do than keep tightening the tolerances and working toward a perfect flight.