Today was interesting. After I got to the airfield the wind got up. I watched a couple of challenging landings and pondered my chances.
Anyway, it was declared too gusty to give me a fair go at landings so we were going to do steep turns instead. Yikes! Obviously I hadn't prepared for that lesson.
So a crosswind TO that needed full aileron at first. It was my best one so far but there was a bit of bouncing around on the climbout due to the gusts, although I trimmed more efficiently despite that
Briefing was given mid-air then good demos but I felt a bit out of sorts during the demos. As soon as I had my turn that feeling passed.
I messed the first one up, too late with enough rudder, not enough back pressure, and the words spiral dive were muttered
. Oddly, because it was September when I practiced recovery from spiral dives, I remembered what to do if it happens, so power to idle, wings level, slowly raise nose. See? No drama...
I was impressed that my Instructor was very relaxed about it, assume because he knows if he gets shouty I'll get nervous and that's not gonna help?! There followed a quick lecture on AoA
Try again.....well turning left is easier with clockwise rotating prop, isn't it, so I went left and that was fine. In fact I enjoyed it.
My Instructor did another demo of right 45° bank but followed it through into 60°
. Cor, that felt really steep!
I took back control but asked for a minute to get my head back with it. Not queasy at all, just disconbobulated for a moment
After 2 more to the right and 1 left I felt much happier with the whole thing. I wanted to try 60° bank but unsurprisingly 'not this lesson, we'll save that for another day'
A quick revision of flying different climb / descent speeds and then an overhead join. Circuit was OK, approach wasn't as good as it could have been but my Instructor let me take it to the numbers, even though I was a bit high and it was gusty, but he assisted the landing. He later said I could have landed it from that approach but he'd thought the crosswind was a bit challenging. Tbh I've done much better approaches so I was happy for the help!
There were 2 big learning points on the ground, one off the back of someone else's mistake, the other was my mistake.
1) As I was doing my walk round another aircraft taxi'id nearby, towards Hold. It stopped short, the canopy opened, and the pilot shouted over to me. He pointed to his pitot tube COVER still in place and asked me to remove it. Blimey! I'm not saying anything to ID anyone but this was no run of the mill a/c.
2) I finished my checks, noting that the creep mark had moved a little on one tyre (apparently this had been checked and noted earlier, not yet an issue). I climbed in and pulled the seat forward
. My Instructor strolled over and pointed out that I'd left the inspection panel open after checking the oil!! I am meticulous with this, or rather I have been till now. After being interrupted I had failed to start that bit of the inspection again and had moved on. Uh huh. Won't do that again.
So that was 2 of us learning why we do checks and that we all make mistakes.
I was disappointed not to do circuits (who ever thought I'd say THAT???), but all in all an interesting and worthwhile day.
And like @bladerunner911 said, aren't we lucky to be doing this?!