Palpa

Track of 4th September Flight (steep turns)

Today’s lesson was the first I’ve done for over three months so I was a little apprehensive I might have forgotten everything. But having mentally run through everything the night before, I found things came easily.. e.g. FREDA checks I’ve not done for quite a while.

The briefing covered entry, during, and exiting ‘advanced turning’ i.e. turns with greater than 30 degree of bank – we did 45 degrees (which provides about 1.4g and increases the stall speed from 40kts to 48kts.)

At the airfield I watched a spitfire take off in formation with another (unknown?) aircraft for a display at duxford. Then i got aboard CE and we did the checks etc before takiing to take off on 06L. This is the runway I feel least familiar with (well apart from 17 which I’ve never ever used…). I’ve soloed on 24 and 35 so those I am more secure with. Anyway, we briefed the departure and it all made sense. Soon enough I found myself doing everything and clearly I’d not forgotten how things all work – even found RT was quite easy except i kept leaving off my call sign and corrected without saying correction.

As we flew up towards Prince Risborough we started looking at the map and I began to familiarise myself with the road, train lines (including disused), the stokenchurch mast and the white cross on the ridge near Princes Ris.

Soon enough we were onto the turns begginning with turns to the left, which I picked up pretty quickly, followed with turns to the right, which are much more fun from the left hand seat as the view is much better! The only note I need to make is to put back pressure in earlier and to turn out of the turn about 25 degrees early.(and not use the AI)

After we’d done enough turns for the day, we were back to nav, and I was asked where Princes Risborough was. I pointed it out and was asked ‘are you sure?’ – so I had to establish that I was happy with it. I identified Aylesbury (much easier to spot) and headed towards the west side, then turned to 180 which would have put P.Ris. infront of me. It worked, then we spotted the Stokenchurch mast and I turned us towards it.

As we were quite low (AGL) when we reached the mast, I had to turn clear, and also avoid a town – so I went between the two. We radioed, joined extended left base for 06, and made the approach.

My landing wasn’t the greatest, we started high so I cut the power, but then didn’t give it enough when we were back on slope so we ended up with 2 red PAPI. I then ballooned the flare and also was told I am quite jerky on the flare. The instructor also told me to wheelie the plane to stop me pushing the nose down, so I’ll try and remember this next time… but I got us back safe.

Next lessons will be forced landings i.e. engine failures above 3000′ – I have a lot of checklists to memorise…

Charlie Echo is a pain to turn when taxiing.

In the lessons I used Google Tracks to make a track of the lesson. The Google Earth view shows altitude, this map shows the track… MAP OF THIS LESSON

0.8 hours in g-wace with Gibbs. We did ex 15 and some basic map reading. Total hours flown so far = 21