Blog – Solo Handling Practice 19/03/2022
Today was a beautiful southerly of just 3kts. I took off from RWY16@NZPP climbed to 3000ft, and set course for Otaki training area to do a solo handling practice. Todays mission was to fly as accurately as possible and imagine the examiner is sitting in the right seat.
On arrival at the training area, I did my HASELLL checks (Height, Airframe, Security, Engine, Location, Lookout, Lights) before commencing with power on and power off stalls in both the clean (flaps up) and dirty (flaps down) configurations. I have not practices these for some time now but i was pleased to see that I hadn’t lost the technique and only lost about 50ft which is fairly good going.
Once that was ticked off I did some left and right level turns at 20, 30, and 45 degrees. All of these were ok and within the PPL standard as below:
- Straight and level ± 100 feet, ±5 degrees, trim
- Climbing ± 5 knots, trim, engine temperatures and pressures (T’s & P’s), lookout
- Descent ± 5 knots, trim, engine temperatures and pressures (T’s & P’s), lookout
- Medium turns ± 100 feet, coordinated, reference point
Steep turns ±100 feet , coordinated controls, power, reference point
Happy with all of that I then descended to 800ft and practiced precautionary landings (see blog xxxx for details of precautionary landings)
I was a little bit too tight again in the circuit first time round so gave myself more room second time round and simulated the procedure much better.
Climbing back up to 3000ft I levelled off, did another HASELLL check and simulated an engine failure by pulling the throttle to idle. I immediately set the aircraft to 70kts and trimmed “4 turns up” which set the aircraft at exactly 70kts. Awesome! (It pays to see how the B-Cats do it)
I then descended in the glide, selected my field and commenced the FLWOP (Forced Landing Without Power) procedure (see Blog – Overhead Join and Intro to Forced Landing Without Power 25/07/2021 for details on that)
All too soon it was time to climb back up to 1000ft and head back down the coast to NZPP.
I decided to practise 2 touch and goes before landing to get more climbing/descending turns, straight and level flight, and general co-ordination practice in. Circuits are great “bang for the bucks” in this respect.
First circuit was done without too much fuss with only one other aircraft in the circuit. The approach and landing was bang on the numbers (500ft on base descending on my aiming point at 65kts) The landing was right on the centreline and straight with the stall horn going off about 2 seconds before touchdown. Second circuit I had a slower Cessna 152 ahead so I decided to slow down to 80kts immediately upon entering downwind and then extend the downwind. This worked well and I managed to stay well clear of the 152. Turning onto final I set up the aircraft again for 65knots and just let it fly on in. The landing this time was just off centreline, a bit offline, and I floated a bit too. Oh well you cant have it all. It was still a good landing.
I then turned off on A2 exit, cleaned up the flaps and extra lights, and taxied back to the aeroclub.
I was very happy with my flying today. Not perfect by any means but getting consistently better and more accurate, which was the mission objective.
Happy days!
Aircraft: ZK-KAZ (Cessna 172SP Skyhawk)
Total Time: 1.0
Landings: 3
Go-arounds: 0
Visual Approaches: 3
Terrain Awareness: 0.0
Until next time….
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Blog – Solo Handling Practice 19/03/2022