sean’s place

8.8

Another 2.4 loggable hours today!

All in all, a good day.

On the first flight, we practiced steep banks (45 degrees) in both directions and some turn stalls. I actually screwed up at the beginning of the flight and didn’t raise my seat up to an acceptable level, something I couldn’t correct when we started to taxi. I figured I could live with it (and I could), but I think it contributed heavily to my initial bout of motion sickness.

I had a lot of fun with the steep banks; at first, I thought they were ridiculous. You’re literally turning the airplane half-way towards being on end. Turns out that you can turn around really fast. It’s pretty sweet. I ended up favoring high bank angles for the rest of the day.

I struggled rather mightily (perhaps in part due to motion sickness) maintaining altitude, attitude, and heading. I simply got pushed around by the (relatively calm) air and wasn’t really able to handle it. I could really use practice in this area.

I also got more radio practice and that was excellent.

On this flight, I almost missed the wheels on my pre-flight check. I caught myself and checked them. On run-up, we missed the “knees and knuckles” test; simply put, you test the yoke at its extremes (all the way in left/right, all the way back left/right) for free movement. We caught it the second time around.

Also, a smooth landing (mostly me with direction). I overshot the final and we had to do a “S” approach, but I think if I did this in the real-world, I’d just reject the landing and go around again. I also was so distracted by the quickly approaching ground that I forgot to call final. Oh well. Live and learn

Then we had lunch, and that brings us to flight 2.

Mostly recovered from my motion sickness, we went back up. I taxied us back out to runway 9, radioed for both taxi and for departure, and got us back in the air. I ended up sliding way north, and when I looked back at the runway in the air, we were quite an angle from it.

On this flight, we practiced flying around a point. Craig made it look really easy, but I found it fairly challenging. I think though that there’s hope for me, I didn’t feel like I was too far off, I think I just lacked the “feel” for the airplane and the concomitant situational awareness. In time. We also did some S-turn maneuvers, which was fun.

The landing this time involved a bounce. Oops.

Can’t wait until next week.