Check Flight
Today has been a milestone in my quest to recharge my flying mojo.
I took a punt and contacted a new trainer on our books who is helping our club to transition from microlights to LSA as our new Tecnam Sierra is registered under the LSA regulations.
This guy is very well qualified to teach me as he check rides the CFIs and trains commercial pilots. This guy is a fantastic tutor and mentor.
We started off on the ground chatting around what my ambitions were and what I thought were my issues training wise. Well we both seemed to think the same way as I identified pretty much what he had from the conversations with my current instructors.
These were mainly where I was looking when flying (I was looking over the spinner rather than straight ahead) and where I was placing the attitude of the aircraft during flight.
After three circuits I noticed immediately that I was straight and had no issues with shimmying all over the place like I had been doing on almost every landing (and that’s with a crosswind!). What a revelation and relief!
I still had not placed the aircraft in a correct attitude (usually too high) but hey at least I know what I am doing wrong. This guy is worth his weight in beer!
This was only a 30min flight, but I learnt more about my flying than I had done in a long, long time.
For many a past session I had just banged away at circuits, however that has not been a great plan
I plan to utilise his skills again as we plan on going out to the training area and work on that sight picture again for our next lesson. I will get that embedded in my mind so help me….
The lesson learnt here for me was this: No matter how much you appreciate your aero club instructors, they are part timers and try their best, but sometimes you need to go past that friendship and bring in the big guns. After all we are spending good money, so you want to get good value too.
Today was all about identifying root causes and concentrating on getting all the new learning lined up.
I had not been flying for a month due to weather and instructor availability. Weather wise it was a bit of a challenge today as Masterton put on another warm day at 25+ however we also had a 10kt cross wind which for a wee Tecnam made things interesting: bouncing around in both thermal and crosswind.
Again, my three circuits went much better with good take off, climb out, climbing turn to crosswind, and a great steady downwind even though I didn’t nail the height every time. The change from 100kt downwind to around 70kt base is still a work in progress. The final was pretty good too, straight and steady today with no shimmy! Awesome! I even kept the aircraft nicely on its mains and eased the nose down on all three landings.
Such a great day out and I am so happy that things are being identified and the fixes are not hard to achieve. Good progress was made.
Like I said last post, I am so happy that I am still training hard and didn’t give this passion to fly away. Yes, it is taking a long time, but it will be so worth it when I solo again. Bring it on!
Until next time….
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