Forced cross country.
The plan was completely different but sometimes you have to play what card you get. Today it turned out that last time I flew I actually used the last bit of fuel we had at the airport. Since 100LL is a boutique fuel the wholesalers do not usually carry a lot of it. And our club is too small to actually order some just for us so usually we have to wait till one of our bigger neighbors orders some so it adds up to a bigger order and we can get some too. Long story short is was either me going to nearby airport to fill the plane up or it would be no flying neither tomorrow nor on Friday or during the weekend.
The decision was easy. I don’t mind flying cross country, and in Washington they have cheapest fuel around by far. So without much hesitation I grabbed bag, sectional and went there to fill it up.
Getting south and back ate about 40 minutes from my lesson so there wasn’t much left but I still was able to use it to train things I feel I’m not as good at to go comfortably for a checkride. Soft field landing being my weakest spot I tried them. I flattened approach, slowed down and I was trying to drag the plane by the prop keeping the RPMs around 1500 on final. And it actually worked. I was able to make much, much softer touch downs than I even thought were possible. I’m still not fully satisfied with them, but they are OK with the PTS. I will train them some more during next lessons though.
During the very last approach I decided to try something else. The slip. So far I’ve seen it only once presented to me by Terry and it felt like some kind of extreme maneuver. I was determined to try it at least once or twice before the checkride, yet I felt a little uncomfortable doing it on my own. I’ve spent some time discussing with Terry all aspects of slipping the airplane especially on the final approach. I made deep mental note that the very most important thing is to never let airspeed drop below 80mph during sleep. So back to my last approach. I decided that I’ll make it a little higher than usual and carefully try slipping the plane on final. I tightened the pattern so the base was on half mile mark from the numbers and I turned final still good 700 feet above the asphalt. Full flaps (like me it’s Cherokee), idle and slowly pushed the rudder and compensated with left aileron. Focused on the speed I noticed VSI dropping down in 1500ft/min area. I straightened the plane just before numbers and initiated the flare. Even though I wasn’t concentrating on that this time it still was quite smooth and soft touch down. Nice. Very nice I’d say. I really like the ‘crowbar approach’ 
.
I hope to get some dual tomorrow to finish off my simulated instrument requirements – the only one that is still hanging over my head. I keep fingers crossed for nice weather.
1.0h/0.0h inst : 4 to/ldg logged
56.3h/2.0h inst : 293 to/ldg total
