Lesson # 17 The Circuit VIII

The weekend looked like a total writeoff (rain and more rain) so I tried to get a lesson in Friday evening. After a few phone calls and a visit to the airport things were booked for 7:00PM.

The plan was the do a few circuits with Dave and, "If you don't kill me then you can do some on your own," (Dave's words not mine.)

I arrived at the airport early and waited for Dave to get back with a site seeing group. They finally arrived and climbed out all giddy and happy, no one was sick. Eventually I got the preflight out of the way and we were off a few minutes later.

During my first takeoff from 03 Dave was peering out the window trying to see what was going on with a broken down commercial twin (not sure what type) that was parked just clear of the runway intersection on the inactive 28/10. Dave reported that all the parts were still attached and he didn't see any fluid or fire indications.

We did a couple of circuits, my landings were OK. On my second circuit tower asked us to extend our downwind to let a Jazz Dash-8 land, I confirmed that I'd extend and we got a quick thank-you from the Jazz pilot. During this time Dave talked about landing behind a larger aircraft, basically I need to come in at a slightly steeper approach on final and touchdown past the touchdown point on the runway of the larger aircraft, which is what I did. If I was not capable of doing this then I should wait a few minutes to ensure that the wake turbulence has subsided, the larger the aircraft the more the turbulence.

Then tower called and indicated that a tug was going out to get the stranded aircraft and it would be dragging it back. Dave said that this would prevent us from doing anymore circuits for about twenty minutes. Just about the time that I was suppose to go solo again, we decided that our third circuit would be our last for the night and that we'd give it another try next week.

Dave decided to practise an engine failure and a short field landing to spice things up a bit, at the end of the downwind he pulled the throttle back to idle and asked me what I'd do? The first thing I did (while he was asking the question) was to set Fern up for a 75 mph glide, with 20 degrees of flaps. It became apparent a few seconds later that we would not make the runway, had I turned immediately towards the runway we would have... a few precious seconds going the wrong way is all it took. Dave said that as soon as a engine failure occurs in the circuit it's important to turn directly for the runway.

Dave then asked me to go to 40 degrees of flaps and trim for 70 mph, which is what I did. Since I still had a good engine I used it to make a nice landing with full flaps, which was my first landing in this configuration. I have to say that a full flap landing is different than a normal landing with only 20 degrees of flaps, first of all the nose is much lower and the aircraft has alot more drag and tends to sink much faster, after touchdown we got on the brakes to reduce our rollout to take bravo back to our apron.

Aside from one landing where I flared bit high and then added a touch of power to bring us back up to flair again, everything went well and Dave seemed happy.

For my next lesson Dave will come up for a couple of circuits then I'll be let loose on my own to reek havoc. My next few lesson will be me going solo for one lesson and then going up with Dave for the next to do engine failures and different types of landing... should be fun.

All in all we got alot done in .4 hours on the hobbs.