Rookie vs. rookie
Finaly some progress today. Weather was great so we decided with Terry to train landings at towered airport. Having Eastern Iowa Airport just 5 miles north comes handy in such situation. Although KCID being local hub can be problematic at afternoon rush hours, we decided to go anyway. And boy it was fun!
For starters I forgot to turn on the transponder. here we go – before I could do something about it ‘7717U stay clear of class Charlie’ came over from approach control causing us to do immediate 180 turn to not violate the airspace. We didn’t even make 90 degrees when our blip turned on his radar and we were cleared to proceed north and contact tower.
Tower… Well I’ve read and listened to tons of radio communication examples and knew what to expect but I can tell you – first time out there it was like first flying lesson – drinking from the fire hose again. Tons of information pouring down on from every possible direction. Lets say, first we had very variable winds, changing almost on every tower call, then evening rush hours so plenty of airliners coming in from all directions and the most important thing – rookie controller during her training session! Result – combination of left and right traffic, every possible combination of extended or short legs, requests to do short finals and denials of stop and go – just an expedited touch and go. And the most interesting part of this all – she had even bigger problems remembering things I did – you can’t imagine how many ‘17U correction on my part, make it….’ I’ve heard today. And the runways themselves – sea of concrete. Compared to KCID landing at Green Castle feels like trying to put this bird on taxi way 
Sometime during the lesson we stopped on the ground to look at the airport signs and ways of operating. After that we had to depart again. This was straight and easy, call ground, get taxi clearance and go as they said. Piece of cake. Terry even allowed me to request departure from A4 intersection. It shouldn’t surprise me considering that even from A4 I still had over 5000ft of it left. Up to fly patterns again. After another 5 rounds we headed back to Green Castle.
Later when we were finally done with it I was simply exhausted. But terry was pleased. He said that such ‘real life’ situations was almost best we could imagine – this way in short 10 circles around the pattern I experienced almost everything I could imagine when I’ll be there alone.
Outcome of this lesson – I’m now endorsed for flying into towered airports. Sweet!
1.5h/0.0h inst : 11 to/ldg logged
35.1h/0.8h inst : 214 to/ldg total
