So another curate's egg of a lesson and a couple of interesting side lessons on Comms.
Different aircraft, c152 with touring tanks.
I was warned the aircraft is hard to taxi but it wasn't too bad.
As we were waiting at the Hold we obviously checked to make sure no-one was on Downwind, listened to the radio (we have A/G but not operating weekdays) to hear if anyone was approaching to land, nothing. I had a final look at the approach and saw an aircraft that appeared to be heading our way but they had not radioed their intentions. Instructor radio'd to let them know we were Holding. They landed with no announcement.
As soon as they were clear I taxi'd onto the runway and took off (see below) but then the landing pilot made a general call for taxiing info. Quick as a flash my Instructor radioed to say his radio was fine now but we hadn't heard him on final. Ouch, zinger. Other pilot apologised. Instructor took his finger off the PTT button, called him a very rude word and said, " They just aren't trained properly, they should know to announce their intentions. It's vital".
My take-off was OK, but I flew to the right of the heading at first so I was disappointed with that. Never done that before. I am blaming the aircraft
. Even my Instructor said the aircraft was horrid. It is old, has a bigger prop, cruises at higher revs and is, according to my Instructor oversensitive on the climb (see my later use of this as an excuse), and has very lagging instruments. Given my struggles at the best of times this was not helpful. Hey ho.
Some of my general flying was OK and my turns onto given headings were back on form, thank goodness, but I found myself inadvertently climbing at times, esp in turns, which I haven't done since about lesson 2 (only gently, but still!).
I suppose I should be thankful that I was able to distinguish headings on the direction indicator today, esp 030, 300 and 330, after Monday's complete number blindness.
My salvation this lesson was that all variations of stall situations were recovered satisfactorily. I haven't a clue why but I found it perfectly natural to check the yoke forward (but not too much), put on full power and not let the nose pitch up. I really enjoyed doing all of them, even the turning ones.
Instructor demo'd 60° AoB turn, 2g. All good. Wouldn't let me do one today though
Then we heard another example of poor comms. While we were up in the training area an approaching aircraft called his position but failed to state his altitude. Again my Instructor jumped on it, asked what altitude please, because we are here too, at 2,500' to be precise. Other pilot responded with proper info (higher than us). "Oh that's OK, we won't bump into you then"
, followed by another off-air rant about poor piloting.
Good comms learning points but @Irv Lee had done a good job with his Zoom seminar last summer and I knew the correct calls (thanks Irv!). Experiencing it in action helps one realise just WHY it is all so crucial.
Oh, yes and while I'm distracting from my failings..... we later had a heli decide to hover-taxi off the RWY at a random place then hover at about 3', right in front of our live aircraft (beacon on, clearly engine running) on the apron. There is dedicated heli parking elsewhere on the field. This got another rant.
Towards the end of the lesson I was asked to head for the landmark lakes for rejoin announcement and FREDA checks.
Do you know where the lakes are?
Well no, of course not, we've been jigging around like we've got ants in our pants for about 35 mins!
*sigh*
They're behind you.
Ah yes. Off we go. This time we did an overhead join and I admit it threw me for orientation, even though I've been round the circuit loads of times now, we've only done a very few joining this particular way. I regained my bearings though and it wasn't too bad a circuit and I turned at the right places.
I was all sorted to do Base procedures when I was told I'd raised the nose instead of maintaining height as speed bled off to below Vfe. Now it wasn't my intention to do that. I must have been heavy handed on the yoke (remember my excuse about this aircraft having a climbing tendancy??). I was really annoyed with myself because it looked like I'd just forgotten what to do. *I know that doesn't excuse the poor control!*
The rest of Base sequence went fine, and deploying 2 stages of flaps 'at the same time' seemed to be satisfactory
- and I kept the airspeed and rate of descent tolerable.
I did end up high on the final approach because I'd been distracted at the beginning of the descent, but miraculously managed to loose height like I knew what I was doing
, had the speed bang on, lined up with centre line and did my best ever approach to land.
Anyhoo, all good learning experiences. I certainly surprised myself with the stall recovery, thankfully in a good way
Now I just hope I don't have to fly that aircraft again. Bet I do though!