Frustration

Another frustration day spent in the pattern. Another 9 landings without one made entirely by myself.

Still many things to work on. Airspeed for starters – the needle was all over the place. Direct cross wind wasn’t helping at all too. Again and again – either you fly 80 mph or you won’t land nicely. It’s that simple.

Then, there is a sink rate. Cherokee without power sinks like dead stone. Keep that pitch and power correct otherwise you will either be way to low or you will eat half of the runway before you even touch down.

Correct flare timing follows closely. Do it too late – you will sink straight to the ground forcing your school to buy new landing gear. Do it too soon – you will slow down too high and without proper corrections mere seconds later you will sink straight to the ground forcing your school to buy new landing gear.

And last but not least – my beloved ground effect. When you get into it the plane flies and flies without any willingness to land. That wouldn’t be a problem unless you have short runway and can’t afford spending 2000 feet flying just 3 feet above it.

Rubbish. All those are poor excuses and I feel like fool who couldn’t handle simple tasks. On the other hand there are many things I got a little bit of improvement. I started to understand what the term “peripheral vision during landing” means. I started to handle the airspeed even though the plane itself didn’t want to slow down at all. I finally started to get familiar with the feeling that earth is going to fast at me and make those flares a little bit lower (yet still too high). By any means the lesson wasn’t wasted.

1.2h/0.0h inst : 9 to/ldg logged
14.2h/0.8h inst : 49 to/ldg total