Now we’re talking!

Looks like chalkboard session worked very well.

I decided to start today’s lesson like I wasn’t flying at all yet. Well at least like I wasn’t landing at all yet. I tried to forget exactly everything I learned so far from turn to base on. That in my opinion was the best approach to handle approaches without repeating same mistakes I was making for last 5 or so hours.

At the beginning I was a little bit worried about crosswind (it was steady 10 knots @ 80 degrees to the runway) but it quickly turned out to be non brainer. And heaving direct headwind on base helped a lot too. But anyway let’s get back to the landings itself.

I won’t describe each and everyone of them as all were very similar. The only difference I did this time was that from mid base up until flying over the numbers I was focusing on one and only thing – keeping the pitch set. But this time I knew that “keep the pitch set” in Terry’s words mean keep the nose pointed down the runway in a matter that your designated touch down point is more or less on the windshield where the horizon is during level flight. How about the airspeed and sink rate then? It turns out that if everything is set as it’s supposed to be before turning final – which you can probably describe as stabilized approach situation – both airspeed and sink rate stay where they are supposed to stay. Small corrections are made by adding or removing just a little bit of power. And that bird lands almost itself.

By I can tell you – keeping in mind that those were the very first tries to land as I was supposed to do – they were almost perfect. For 10 I made only one was totally off (way to hide) which resulted in need to back taxi. All others were good enough for immediate departure. More – last two were done all by myself. Those were the worst of those ten as I flared to late and the plane touched down a little bit hard, but keep in mind that previous 8 were done with help from instructor so they were supposed to be almost perfect right?

Anyway, now I really feel that I know what’s going on. More – I finally feel that there is progress here. All the frustration is gone and I can’t wait to get up there again and finally nail this thing down.

1.0h/0.0h inst : 10 to/ldg logged
18.9h/0.8h inst : 78 to/ldg total