Two lessons this week. Compare and contrast.
Monday's lesson was a dog's dinner! Only a couple of decent items. And asking me to fly a glide descent at a steady speed, watch the instruments, keep a good lookout, AND recite and perform the rejoin checklist, was frankly taking the micky!! It felt like an Olympic-standard contest of tummy rubbing and head patting, while dancing.
Instructor said I was not holding the datum attitude and we were going up and down like a nodding dog (could have been a worse simile, I suppose!).
I know it's not that hard but just adding one more thing to what I was supposed to do overfilled my capacity bucket and it all spilled out as a very messy lesson.
So I flew the chair at home yesterday to get my head round the various different speeds for different climbs (best angle, best rate and cruise), level flight and gliding or cruise descent. I imagined the pressure on the yoke, trimmed etc.
Today's lesson was much better.
I was a little hesitant putting the actions into a flow, only due to needing more thinking time to sort them into the right order but I did them all in time for desired altitudes and headings. There was a lot less 'nodding up and down' and more hitting the datum attitude
I know my lookout was much better.
Of course yet more things were thrown in, flaps at all stages, both adding and cleaning up. I found this fairly straight forward and correctly anticipated the potential balloon / sink by adjusting attitude as I moved the flaps.
So descending while adding flaps as we went worked OK, adding power to extend glide path also worked OK.
I get the principle that attitude = speed / power = rate of descent.
Turns are decent now, keeping level and rolling out on the given heading. Although I hate the clearing turns on climbs! Feels wrong to change direction like that while still doing a fairly steep climb.
I even performed the rejoin checklist from memory, levelling off so I could adjust the DI, then descending deadside without losing the plot. I suppose that was a big improvement compared to Monday!
Oh, and we had a good look at the M6 standing traffic from 1,500', maybe due to a wagon shedding its load? Miles of tailbacks. Should have gone by air...
I remembered the after-landing checks without referring to the checklist.
After taxying back to parking I summarised the lesson as 'better' but that I could be quicker changing from climb to level, level to descent, etc.
My instructor said he knew I was using the time to think, that I was doing the right things but needed to be more positive (ie, quicker!) and that I needed to improve take-off. He said he'd go through it next lesson.
He also said that I was 'coming along fine', which is as good as it gets!
Tbh, I think I am making slow progress - SLOW being the key word (sigh)