PPL Lesson 7: Ex 12 & 13

METAR EGCN 231250Z 20010KT CAVOK 09/05 Q1011

What goes up must come down, Take Off and Landings was the subject of today's lesson with an added and hopefully never will have to do again twist.

Firstly it has been a couple of weeks since the last lesson and during that time the idea was that I was going to study the rest of the PPL book, get the checks off to a tee and then revise air law. Unfortunately between a busy work schedule, having wisdom teeth pulled out and a bit of a crisis I never did get to pick the books up.

So starting off I thought that as we were doing circuits, they would be dead easy. My thought process being that repetition would be quite an easy thing. How wrong was I!

First we went through the usual brief which pulled all the other lessons into one. How to take off, power settings, rotation speed, climb speed, 300ft checks, 1000ft checks, downwind checks (bumpffpichhl [see below]), final checks, climbing turns, level turns, setting up for landing and finally how to get the flare right. Which to be honest, I never did nail the flare properly in the past. Fortunately I remembered everything from before and as it is nearly Christmas Matt changed the 300ft checks to Engine Lights Flaps ELF. How hard can it be to remember all that AND do the radio calls?.....

Well first of all we went to go cheer my business partner (Steve) up, earlier this week he had a heart attack and was now in the local hospital. We always joke about how one day I'll "buzz the tower" as in the movie Top Gun. So we set off towards town and flew towards the hospital waving the wings, Steve sent a text saying he saw us, so we circled around doing some tight turns, waving the wings etc until it was time to go as I got another text saying "stop showing off", which is where I took a moment to snap a pic of the hospital then changed back to Tower frequency and joined ready for circuits.

This time Matt demonstrated the entire circuit and all went well, until the moment when he did the downwind checks in what seemed a relaxed instant, but rather fast. We landed and as we were rolling Matt handed control and it was my time, and here's how it went.

Take Off went fine, rotated fine, trimmed in for the climb, got to 300ft, forgot the check, made a climbing turn left from the runway and levelled off at 1000ft. Within seconds it was time to turn onto the downwind leg, at this point I appreciated how quick you have to do all this in. Downwind is 2.5 miles, at a speed of 115mph or 100knots and in that time it was a call to tower for downwind, then the checks. By which time I had drifted off course slightly and took too long over the checks so it was time for a level turn onto base and immediately after rolling straight it was time to trim for descent. Carb heat on, engine down to 1500rpm, 2 stages of flaps when in the arc and trim. In less than a minute its a descending turn at 15 degrees angle of bank towards the runway and onto final.

By this time I am so stressed! everything happens so fast and its not like in other lessons where you can easily take a little longer. This time it HAS to be done at a certain pace and no less.

So final, I call final to tower, then read-back the response and put some power in as we are quite far away and too low. Back on course another stage of flap adds in some extra drag and I was a few hundred feet from the runway. Power off, over the numbers, pull her straight and wait for the sink, flare...... hold back...... hold back.... hold back, touchdown. Perfect! And relax..... oppps forgot the rudder and am now drifting right. Note to self, don't forget the rudder!

The rest of the lesson was the same but getting better and quicker, four take-offs and landings in daylight and two with the runway lights on. I finally got all the calls done and nailed the landing and Matt was right, I slept like a baby that night!

• Brakes
• Undercarriage
• Mixture
• Fuel
• Flaps
• Prop Pitch
• Instruments
• Carb Heat
• Hatches
• Harnesses
• Lights

PPL Lesson 5: Ex 10

How to fall gracefully from the sky at a rate of 1000ft per min and not realise it was the lesson learnt today!

Usual start to the lesson with a quick brief, running through HASELL checks.

• Height
• Airframe
• Security
• Engine
• Location
• Lookout

and the ins and outs of stalling. This does not mean switching the engine off as a few people have asked today, stalling in this case is the stalling of the wing when the resulting pressure stops providing lift and you drop out of the air.

This time round it was comms time with no cheat sheet and I felt more at ease with the radio calls, still a way to go but a mile better than earlier this week. Taking off with a steady 6kt wind was simple and a steady climb to 4000ft was done while turning out to the east towards Haxey and our lesson began. Firstly completing HASELL checks and then setting up for a clean stall (no flaps). I have to admit my first attempt on all of them went completely wrong, either incorrect recovery or just plain old wrong setup. The Final Stall was probably the worst, where I managed to hold the plane at such an angle that it had stalled, the stall warner didn't come on and we were plummeting at a rate of 1000ft per minute. Although there was a lot of buffeting which was an indicator of a stall but I was waiting for the stall warner still. Lesson learnt.... the stall warner doesn't always come on!