The Light Comes On

Just about every landing was good. I did everything right, with very little interaction necessary from my instructor. He (and I) was very happy to see that the progress we made during the last lesson was not lost.

I made a enough good landings that he said that I would be ready to solo if I had my medical certificate. So, because I cannot solo right now, we moved on and made landings tough again. We started practicing "short field landings". So, for the rest of the time, I get to pretend there's a 50' tall object at the end of the runway that I have to clear, then get the plane on the ground in a hurry so that I can stop within 1000'. It's important for the FAA Practical Exam (my private pilot checkride). Also, there may be a time when I have to clear something on a short runway and stop the plane fast to avoid hitting another object.

Adding this wrinkle to my landings was almost like starting over. I had to apply full flaps, and get the speed of the plane to 60 knots.... and keep it there, but carry power until I cleared the imaginary 50' object, then cut the power and start flaring immediately (when you cut the power at full flaps the plane drops like a rock) to prevent a hard landing.

We did several short field landings, then came in for a normal landing, but just for fun, my CFI decided to have me do it with no flaps. This means that in order to slow down to a good landing speed (65-70 knots), I had to pitch the nose up more than normal and deal with the plane wanting to glide a lot further than normal. And... just as I was about to touch down, a gust of wind hit the right wind and pushed the plane to the left of the centerline, so I had to immediately apply left rudder to straighten the nose out at the last second. After we got onto the ground my CFI paid me a compliment by telling me that he felt like I was reacting well and "piloting" the plane rather than just letting things happen and that I should keep that up. In other words, I was able to correct for the situation instead of getting into the habit of doing the same thing every time when I land, when I get thrown a curveball, I'm able to deal with the curveball.

Next lesson: Saturday, January 5.

Time logged this lesson: 1.3 hrs

Total Time: 11.5 hrs