Lesson 8

More pattern work. I'm getting the hang of preflighting the plane and filing the ADIZ flight plan. The weather briefing also seems routine now. No news there.

So this time we did 8 landings. This time I think I mostly made the radio calls at the right times, mostly turned when I was supposed to, and didn't overshoot the climb to pattern altitude too terribly often. So I feel like I've got the procedures down, and I'm mostly managing to do the right things at the right times.

But all hell breaks loose when I reach short final. Maybe that's too strong. But I was consistently high, requiring me to pull the throttle to idle and put in full flaps, then we would really sink and then I had a tough time judging the right time to add power back to avoid sinking right through the glide path. Over the runway threshold I had a terrible time trying to keep the airplane on the center line. And just like last time, I felt like we were screaming right down to the runway and I was pulling the yoke back too early, levelling off too high.

So clearly I need to figure out how to use the rudder for alignment and ailerons for left/right drift. And I have to let the plane descend more before I pull back on the yoke.

I tried my first soft field takeoff - it was weird. We lifted off, I didn't push forward on the yoke enough to keep it in ground effect, we even chirped a tire again before finally getting to climb speed.

We did 2 simulated engine-out landings. Those were strange, delaying the flap extension, having to pay really close attention to airspeed. And on a couple of landings, I was way too high, so the instructor did forward slips. Boy was that a sinking feeling, and it seemed like the bank angle was enormous.

Oh, I almost forgot. During one takeoff, at a couple hundred feet off the deck, there was a big bird right in our path. I didn't get a good look at it, but I'm guessing it was a hawk. The instructor grabbed the yoke and turned us before I could react (I had been glancing at the altimeter for a moment to see if we were high enough to retract takeoff flaps). I'm guessing a bird strike would not have been pretty.