Tue Oct 26, 2021 8:26 am
#1878575
I try to always do this with my late course LAPL students, it’s amazing how many find it hard to judge just how rubbish the weather is going to be at VFR minimum. They are never going to hold any sort of IR rating and being able to get back in to the airfield when things close in unexpectedly is a life saver. In the course of training we rarely encounter poor weather as we have training minimums way above VFR minimums. Solo cross country students aren’t sent out unless there is at least 10k vis so getting up in the air with a student who is near the end of the course and letting them experience even 6k vis on a 1200’ cloud base is a valuable experience. The low level navigation exercise is often only practiced in good weather conditions and many fail to understand the necessity of getting it right in real life. Tasks many will think simple, like joining mid downwind in a 500’ bad weather circuit at 70kts close in to the runway for a precautionary landing exercise can overload a student. Many will only have practiced the precautionary procedure from a take off or T&G in a circuit session and it’s the transition points which catch them out, forgetting to transition from slow flight configuration to approach configuration on base for example. I firmly believe the low level nav and precautionary landing exercise is one of the toughest a LAPL student will face but it gives them a great deal of satisfaction when they get it right and when carried out in less than perfect conditions, a very valuable lesson on not pushing the boundaries of your experience and training.
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