My Flying

Well, the Twin has been grounded. Seems as if the previous hard landings have left their mark and a crack was identified on the side of the fuselage near the rear cockpit. It will hopefully be repaired during the course of next week.

So today it was me, the Falke and instructor F(2). He showed me through a complete pre-flight DI showing me things I'd never seen before. After this we executed three touch 'n go cross wind landings on 08L. They didn't go off too well as not only did I miss judge the turn to finals and thus fly too deep, having then to correct, I also had a hard time keeping the plane straight along the runway. This may sound silly, but when rolling along the ground, the runway and bush look the same to me as both are the same colour and the grass almost the same length.

After this be climbed out to 2000 ft for some stalls and 'incipient spins'. I say 'incipient' as they didn't feel very incipient to me, more like a mushy side slip fall out of the sky thing.

Our final landing was on 34L into wind and things went off much better and I was relieved when the instructor asked if I wanted to do a solo flight. I of course said yes and he said that I should also execute a touch 'n go if I felt comfortable.

The first circuit was, dare I say, almost prefect. I was very chuffed with myself. It was square, no engine was required and the flare and hold off were A-ok. The second circuit was more messy. During downwind I was distracted by all the radio traffic and a Yak on finals for 34L (I was aiming for 34R). So my downwind was too deep.

To correct I decided not to add power, but to glider 45˚ to the threshold. As it turns out I made it, just a little low, but well enough over the fence. As I turned finals very late the landing wasn't my best, but good enough I suppose.

A good days flying and I'm very happy with my performance, 55 minutes flying time a bit pricey at 242,50ZAR. Power flying tends to start getting expensive after the first ½ hour.