Tying up loose ends
The weather wasn’t cooperating so we couldn’t go up high enough to train slow flight ans steep turns. Terry decided that we should go to Iowa City where I could show him soft and short field operations.
So we did. First curved ball – right traffic pattern for 12 there. But that’s good as I have similar chances to get right and left traffic pattern in Cedar Rapids for no apparent reason. First landing in KIOW was regular one just to make me lined up property with the runway. The second one was supposed to be nice soft field landing and it was. I have to say that it was the best soft field landing I’ve ever made. Obviously training pays. Then we backtaxied and I tried to make a soft field take off. And again it was one of the best I’ve ever made. Nice brand new runway definitely help.
Terry decided that there is no need for practicing the soft field operations anymore and we went to the short field ones. Here it didn’t went as well. Trying to make as steep approach as I could I made all three tries too close to the numbers so I was way to high. One of them was so high that I had to go around. The remaining to were just barely acceptable. Even though I was able to full stop the plane in less than 1600 feet from selected touch down point it’s not what PTS calls for and I have to train this more. Short field takeoffs went easy. I trained them a lot so those are checked off too.
To finish the lesson we tried some emergency landing procedures. And here came the biggest surprise of them all. I was able to do them so close and fast that I actually run out of runway both times and had to go around. That would be a real bummer if the engine really quit, I have made the airport just to crash on the overrun.
Bottom line – almost all of the landings have shown that I have procedures memorized and down to the point except spacing myself from the runway. I was consistently cutting down the corners so to speak placing myself way to close to the runway. I have to remember that the Cherokee can go down only so fast and there is no point in trying to make it. It simply won’t.
1.1h/0.0h inst : 7 to/ldg logged
57.4h/2.0h inst : 300 to/ldg total
