Well, I passed Air Law and Operational Procedures!
Finally got them done, waiting for the CAA to approve my account was the biggest challenge! After 2 weeks I gave them a call only for them to scold me for not reading the instructions properly and to look again as I had to send in my ID. Lo and behold, I look at instructions, find no mention of sending in ID at all, and a week later, I get an email telling me my account was all set up. Turns out I wasn't doing anything wrong at all!
Oh well, crash course in dealing with the CAA is part of the PPL right?
Aside from the exams I've had a fair few lessons since last, been terrible at keeping up with the log! I have yet to do any more solo flying, as weather has been from quite windy to "really shouldn't be flying right now holy f-k". But we have had a chance to catch up with all the remaining elements between getting the solo circuit time and navigation, so it has been a good use of time!
Lesson 19It's been a while now and I can't exactly remember why, but we chose not to do circuits on the first lesson after my first solo, instead we went out to do some steep turns. Frankly pretty standard stuff, not much to note. It was quite fun getting close to aerobatic maneuvers and you get a great view of the ground!
Lesson 20Ok, now this one was interesting. METAR was telling us it was 15kts cross wind with gust of 25kts, so my instructor thought it'd be a good day to practice crosswind circuits and he was keen to see how I'd do after my first solo.
Well, I did terrible.
Nothing worked, the crosswind was throwing me all over the place, the extra mental load from considering the wind and having my instructor hawking my every move to see if I was still solo worthy was distracting and frankly, I was just not up to the task.
My first approach to land was so bad I wasn't even close, was a go around probably about 300ft above the runway. Then the go around itself was terrible, I janked all the flaps out at once in a stressed mind fart which could've gone worse than it did (as we're still here).
Every circuit after that was so much work and my instructor was pretty hands on throughout. I think the amount of crosswind really took me by surprise and showed me I really need more practice there!
To be fair, when we were back on the ground, we overheard people reporting 32kts gusts and several instructors cancelling their following flights, so I try to cut myself some slack.
Lesson 21 & 22After that brutal beating, the next few lessons are a nice break for a change. Weather is still rough with fairly strong winds but clear (and COLD) days and my instructor suggested we try something different as solo circuits is probably not going to happen. I'm all for it!
So off we go to do practice forced landings, to the annoyance of all the nearby country towns
.
I find the whole process quite fun, although I do struggle with the amount of procedures to go through in the few minutes you have from engine "failure" until you're a few hundred feet above the field. Still, I soon get the hang of it, and I find myself picking fields a bit quicker with every attempt.
On one of the fields we spooked a whole herd of
reindeer! I think it must've been for some Christmas event or something, but both myself and my instructor saw it clear as day
.
I've got another lesson booked in next weekend, hopefully we can get back into the circuit if the winds calm down, otherwise we're preparing our foray into navigation. I'm excited either way!