Saturday, April 22, 2006

Lesson #12 The Circuit III

What a crazy week we had weather wise.

The last decent day we had here on the Island was a week ago today, which was the first day of the trout season. (Me and about another dozen or so firefighters got together and went fishing).

We all met at the fire hall at midnight, cooked up a huge scoff, then had a "few drinks". We headed out to the local fishing hole at around 3:00AM, then we sat around a rather large bonfire and drank some more until day break, at which time the fishing began. It was a great time, the weather was perfectly calm and +5c (40F) at daybreak, it turned out to be a great day. I caught quite a few tiny ones and threw nearly all of them back. A couple of the boys had a bit too much to drink, but nobody ended up in the lake... or the fire, so I can't wait to do it again next year!

Anyways... on to the flying.

I had hoped to get out flying on Sunday (16th), but the weather was terrible. The next week was also a wash out, as the weather took a turn for the worse. We had a low overcast and a constant wind for the whole week, with a couple days of heavy rain thrown in for good measure. This was all a courtesy of a stationary low, anchored off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Saturday the 22nd looked promising, it was suppose to be windy in the morning but the winds were forecasted to diminish in the afternoon, which was when I had my lesson booked for. The winds did come down but not very much, just enough to fly.

I did not find it a good day for circuits.

I arrived at the airport, chatted with Dave for a couple of minutes and then headed out to pretrip the aircraft. Dave came out, we finished with the pretrip and then I made the call to tower. A couple of minutes later we were flying. The winds at the beginning of the lesson were 10 degrees off the runway's heading @ 12 kts gusting 18.

To make long story short, we bounced around pretty good for the whole lesson, which made everything that much harder. It was tough to trim the aircraft because the nose and the wings refused to stop moving long enough for me to get an accurate fix on the aircraft's attitude.

We made six circuits, I made four of the landings all by myself, one of which I had to do some last minute manoeuvring to make it happen. We came over the threshold at about 50 feet. then we got a strong gust from our left that pretty much blew us right off the runway... OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit... but not much! Without any assistance or coaxing from Dave, I added a bit of power and "flew" us back over the centreline and then completed the landing at about the 1,500 - 2,000 foot markers. Dave commented that I had done a great job of salvaging it, he also told me that I always have the option of doing a go-around if things get really messed up.

After an hour or so of bouncing over all the sky, I was mentally drained. Flying the aircraft was alot of work. I saved my worse landing for the end. Everything was going well but during the last little bit I started to descend at too high of a rate, (damn winds) so I had to get on the power, stayed on it a bit too long, then we floated for what seemed like forever and finally I put her on the ground with Dave helping me all the way.

What a great way to top off a tough day.

Hopefully the weather will be better for my next lesson.

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