Lesson #14 The Circuit V

This is my fifth lesson in the circuit and it's starting to show!

Today was a great day for flying, as expected the wind was present but it played nice. It stayed within 20 degrees of our runway's heading, and was a constant 15-20 kts for the whole lesson.

I showed up for my lesson on time and chatted with Dave for a few minutes, then another couple of pilots showed up and we all chatted some more. About an hour after my lesson was suppose to start we finally wrapped things up and I headed out to preflight the aircraft. She needed oil and fuel. I managed to get oil on my hands so Dave pulled Fern over to the fuel pumps while I went back inside to wash up.

A few minutes later we were up and doing our first circuit, the wind made it choppy until 800 feet ASL where it smooth out. We made 6 circuits during our hour long lesson, and I did all the landings by myself - four were really nice, Dave never touch the yoke once during the lesson.

It turn out to be a great lesson, everything is starting to seem routine in the circuit and much less rushed. I never messed up anything, but I did miss a downwind call once. I'm starting to learn little "tricks" to make my time in the circuit easier.

I climb straight out until 900 feet then I make my crosswind turn, this lets me hit circuit height (1,200 ft) and trim the aircraft out for level flight with plenty of time to turn downwind. I'm also getting a feel for the proper trim, during this lesson I was pretty bang on everytime which makes life a whole lot easier. The windscreen had a good buildup of bug impacts, and I was able to use one of the impact marks as a great glide-slope indicator. I just lined the bug mark up with the runway numbers and I was bang on every time. I also find it much easier to leave just a touch of power on until I get about 20 feet above the runway, this little bit of power keeps my descent rates acceptable and lets me flair out nicely without making any major control corrections.

I've found myself high a couple of times on final and I've pulled the power back to idle which works well, but leaves me with a too high of a descent rate. By adding an extra couple hundred RPMs for the last hundred feet or so, I find that this slows my descent down to a rate that works nicely for me at this stage.

My first "great" day in the circuit...

Also a quick correction:
In my last post I incorrectly identified a sideslip as a forward slip... guess you can call this a "slip" of the tongue... ;")

Althought the control inputs are the same, the slid slip uses a small amount of rudder to keep the nose pointed at the runway and the ailerons are used to counteract the turning effect of the rudder. The side slip keeps the nose lined up with the runway in crosswind situations. The forward slip uses the same control inputs but full rudder is used, counteracted by the ailerons to generate more drag to increase your descent rate without any additional speed.

Thanks to Mark for pointing out this mistake.