Shaken, not stirred
Today’s lesson was like no other before, ever. I’ve never done so many “crazy” stuff in one hour ever before. Well maybe if you don’t count Sugar Bottom Scramble I raced last Sunday.
It started with nice and not so smooth two rounds in the pattern. Not so smooth because for some reason main gear in the Cherokee was almost fully extended and looked as it wasn’t working. it took me two rounds to get used to flare 6 inches higher. It came quite easy, surprisingly easy.
From then it was just uphill.
We were to try short and soft field landings. It all looks nice and easy on paper. You think you get the idea of soft field being, well.. soft. So ‘all you have to do is lift this baby up as soon as you can, keep it in ground effect to gain some speed and off we go’. Easy, isn’t it? Well no, it isn’t. Especially this part about keeping it within ground effect. For somebody who never done it before it was quite a challenge. Yet, very rewarding one. Boy I can tell you, if it wasn’t for the headset my head would have bin smiling all around.
But lets get back to the business. We departed, now we have to land. Soft field requires from you as slow approach as you can get, just on the edge of stall and nice, smooth touch down with nose as long in the air as you can keep it there. And this is I think the only one I was quite satisfied from the outcome. I was able to do make it pretty nice. I approached runway a little lower than usual, kept just a touch of power and greased it. I can tell you a secret. It’s much easier to grase laning if you actually do it on the soft, grass field. I like grass!
With maximum performance operations the case was exactly the opposite. Takeoff is easy. Two notches of flaps, full power while on brakes, keep it on the ground till 70 mph, than lift it off and keep it around 75 while clearing obstacle gradually releasing flaps and acquiring speed up to Vy later on. That really is easy if you have the knowledge and ability to keep the airspeed wherever you want. And due to my previous problems with landings I’m now quite good at lite (well… as good as 25h pilot can be).
The problem is with short field landing. First you have to come in high, than keep quite precise, yet steep approach without gaining airspeed and make pretty much regular landing with some additional emphasis put on braking after touchdown. One big land mine here – the part about steep approach without excessive airspeed and smooth touch down. Keep in mind that Cherokee sinks like a brick when you take away all the power so you have to be really carefull and keep just a bit of it during the approach to let you ease the flare. My first one was so steep and fast that I admit it was the hardest landing I’ve ever done. Second one was better, but still long way to go.
As usuall Terry kept the best for last. After about 2 tires of each soft and sort field landing he decided it’s time to introduce slip to landing. We climbed up to 1900ft (400ft above regular pattern) took all the power back abeam the numbers and tried to land it on the grass (which is before the numbers so I had to come down even steeper). Boy that was fun. I read about slip a lot, but wasn’t ever expecting it to be such a fun. Full right rudder (and I really mean full, like when I was turning the airplane around in the run up area) countered by correct amount of left aileron. About 90 mph and ride down like on roller coaster (not that I ever rode one). The VSI actually pegged down somewhere around 1500ft/min (I know, it’s nothing, but hey – it’s Cherokee) and we made it nicely, even without flaps. Of course it was one of the most sloppy slips to landing you can imagine but I got the idea, I got the sensations and I know how to nail it down. Practice is all what’s left.
The lesson ended with two very nice cherries on top of this cake, one being simulated emergency landing, the other one regular landing without even touch of flaps (simulated flaps failure). For one I can tell you – keep it on the best glide speed and as long as you are in the pattern you will have no problems landing. This one was much nicer than my first one. Actually it was a non brainer – I had enough time to do everything and I still had enough altitude left that I had to add flaps to slow this baby down. The no flaps approach was similar in outcome. I just remembered to keep it a little bit faster (stall speed without flaps is higher) and it was a non brainer too.
Well as for just 1h in air you can see that so many things happened I’ll have food for my thoughts for quite some time. Now following today’s lesson will be couple of solo practicing ones before we can go to cross country. I really can’t wait!
1.0h/0.0h inst : 9 to/ldg logged
27.5h/0.8h inst : 154 to/ldg total
