I've been stuck on landings for several lessons now, as all of my faithful readers are now painfully aware. There are, oh, half a dozen things you have to do all at once when you land and if you mess up one element, your landing goes in the crapper pronto. Each bad landing was unique, in that I would correct something I'd messed up on a previous landing, but then something else would escape from me. It was very frustrating, but then...it came to me.
Eventually I figured out the magic formula. In the last lesson I did a bunch of bad landings...then, the last one was good. Today I confirmed that it wasn't a fluke and I did 3 good landings and 1 "OK" landing. There wasn't any intervention from Jimmy (although on the "OK" landing he touched the yoke to make sure I didn't flare too high...I didn't).
Jimmy was satisfied that my landings are acceptable and he scheduled for me a Stage Check on Friday - which is a pre-solo check consisting of an hour of oral knowledge testing and a 1 hour flight to demonstrate basic flight maneuvers (and landing LOL). So, with luck I'll solo next week.
13 comments:
Seems like we're at just about the same spot - isn't it nice when landings suddenly feel like you aren't trying to do 65 things with 2 hands at once?
Glad everyone's enjoying the Google Earth tracks, too. They really are fun and I do get some value out of them checking out my flight paths after each lesson. It's cool to see when I'm consistent... and, uh, when I'm not. For a relatively cheap little device (the GPS logger) I've gotten a solid amount of enjoyment from it already.
Yes, it's great. BTW your pattern is very consistent! I suppose it's familiarity with the landmarks around the airport. Either way, good luck. I would imagine we're going to solo around the same time - should be interesting.
Don't for get your SPACE PANTS!
-Space Pants 2000
Thanks for reminding me! I almost forgot my SPACE PANTS! One time I did a bad landing and I realized it was because of a serious lack of SPACE PANTS!
You should rename this blog to "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while Dutchman".
I'd like to ask the normal people to please ignore the abnormal people who are commenting here. Thanks!
Nice language, Pee Pants.
You are such a good moderator Keith. I am happy to see that you are running a clean blog comment section.
Sounds like you might be able to take up passengers soon, now that you have those landings down. I would nominate Tigger as your first co-pilot, but I don't think a single engine plane exists to do that job. Therefore, I nominate Mert to be your first cat co-pilot.
A guy would need a 747 to get tigger off the ground.
Also you should get Mert some neat WWI aviator goggles and leather helmet and one of them awesome scarfs.
Sorry for the deleted post but people I know of all ages read this blog so we need to keep G rated.
Tigger shall be my co-pilot indeed. We'll have to offload some fuel, though, to stay inside the weight envelope...
Took me forever to reply, but yea I have been surprised at my consistent-ness of the pattern. But I agree with you completely on the landmarks. It shall be interesting to see my patterns once we start on the x-c portion of training!
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