Date: 4/2/2007
Time: 14:00 - 15:00 (PUT) & 16:05 - 16:55 (PUT)
Aircraft: Ikarus C42 - G-CDHR
Exercise: General revision and Circuits - Ex 12 & 13
I can't believe it - once again, it has been 12 weeks since I have flown. All the lessons in the rest of November and December were cancelled due to bad weather. Illness stopped me even booking lessons in January. So here I am again - these breaks can't be good for my progress.
On arrival, I am rather surprised to find that I have been assigned a different instructor for this lesson - Andy Jones. He is a nice chap and it will be interesting to see what it is like being tutored by someone else.
Fortunately I turned up early (totally out of character for me normally) as the trial flight before me had gone to the wrong address, so I could do my first slot early and my second slot after the trial flight.
As it has been a while we decide to do some general revision. We take off from runway 03 and climb off towards the north. We do the normal general stuff like climbing/descending turns etc. OK. After some HASSELL checks we then do medium banked turns and stall practice. We also do some power-fail landing practice. Basically I think everything went well apart from occasionally not understanding what Andy wanted me to do. We land and I have a break whilst Andy does his trial flight appointment.
Second session is circuit practice . . . . and I'm still fairly crap. It has become a bit hazy and especially when flying into the low sun, the visibility is awful. However my real problem is that I am still tensing up just above the ground. I am still rounding-out too much and leaving the plane climbing slightly but shedding speed rapidly, this results in being too high and nearly stalling.
Once again, my upper air work seems to be fine; it's just the landing that I need to get nailed.