Lesson #19 The Circuit (solo 3)

The weather looked great for flying so I decided to take the afternoon off and grab a lesson. During today's lesson Dave was going to show me how to do a short and soft field takeoffs and landings. This lesson as it turns out was going to be a blast!

Dave demo'd a short field takeoff and landing and then had me do a couple. The idea of a short field takeoff is to get off the ground in the shortest distance possible. To do this in a C-172 we added 10 degrees of flaps, then held the brakes and went to full power. Checked the rpms, the oil temp and pressure and then released the brakes, rotate at 65 mph and that's it. To setup for a short field landing we dropped the flaps down to 40 degrees and aimed for the start of the runway, we touched down at about 500 feet and were stopped before the thousand foot markers. Dave mentioned that although we could have shortened it a bit more, chances are that landing on the strip any shorter means that your not going have enough distance to get off.

I did a couple of short field takeoff and landings without any problems. The one thing that I did notice is that with the flaps down at 40 degrees, I often needed to leave a little power on as the flaps really create alot of drag. After Dave was satisfied with my short field work we moved on to soft field T&Ls.

With soft field takeoff basically you want to keep the weight off the front wheel and you need to be careful taxiing as the aircraft can sink in a get stuck, depending on what you've gotten yourself into. So basically you dial in 10 degrees of flaps and go to full power with the yoke fully back. The front wheel almost immediately goes into the air and you carefully "balance" the aircraft on the mains while you wheely down the runway, careful not to drag the tail. The aircraft, because of the extreme angle of attack lifts off much earlier than normal, this is when you need to quickly push forward on the yoke to ensure that you keep the aircraft in ground effect, while you wait for your speed to build, which it does quickly.

I found these soft field takeoff simply a blast, I had no problem balancing on the rear wheels at all. I was a little sloppy keeping her in ground effect as I had a tendancy to "float" around ten to twenty feet, still in ground effect but I'm going to practise this more in the future to get proficient at it. Landing on a soft field also requires 40 degrees of flaps, you want to ensure that your touchdown as softly as possible, keeping the weight off the nose wheel. The only difference is that with full flaps the nose is significantly lower. Keeping the nose up isn't much of a problem as that's the way Dave has taught me to land since day one. During a normal landing I usually stay on the mains until the elevators cannot hold the nose up anymore anyways, so it's a rather normal landing except for the additonal 20 degrees of flap. (Normal = 20 degrees, short and soft field = 40 degrees)

Dave was happy and requested that I drop him off at the apron, I was going back up for an hour to practise by myself what I had just learnt. On the way in (about 5 minutes taxi each way) Dave gave me a pep talk, the usual stuff, this time he said that if I somehow manage to get off the runway and onto the grass that I should just stop the aircraft and not to try to pilot it back onto the runway since I might snag a light! After he said this I gave him a strange look and asked him with a laugh what kind of students he had previously in Newfoundland and Cape Breton. He replied back that it has happened... For the record, I've never ever even came close to the grass once, so I don't know where that came from.

I reassured him that I'd be only using the runway today and that I thought that he was a glass half empty kind of guy, and that he was suppose to be saying things to instill confidence in me and my newly aquired abilities.... we laughed our asses off on the way in... I then asked him if I could call him goose and if he'd call me maverick... it seems that we both watched "Top Gun" on the TV this past week, he replied that since he was the instructor he call sign should be viper. I agreed... another good laugh ensued. Then I asked him when he'd be teaching me tactical ascents... he asked what I meant and then I explained to him that basically you stay in ground effect until the end of the runway with your speed building and then you pull back nice and hard and shoot up to circuit height. Dave gave me the same look I gave him a couple of minutes before when he brough up the running off the runway into the grass. He explained that a number of things could go wrong with my tactical ascent idea and suggested that none of them would have a happy ending. (This tonque-in-cheek conversation livened up a rather long, boring and hot taxi back to the apron).

I dropped Dave off and then it was another long, hot and lonely taxi back over to the active for some time in the circuit. I did a couple shorts and then three soft T&Ls, all went well and I'm starting to feel much less tense on final. The cross wind started coming up and it was beginning to push the aircraft around on the runway while I was doing soft field takeoffs, while in ground effect Fern would turn into the wind while 10 feet over the runway, exciting stuff for a student pilot.

All my landings were good and I was able to stop fern nearly every time by the thousand foot markers. Doing so left 4,000 feet of runway left for my takeoff so I didn't have to waste time backtracking which is a plus. One approach was a little high so I put her into a healthy forward slip, down I went carefully ensuring that I kept her above 70 MPH, talk about a nose down attitude. Came out of it about 100 feet above the runway and a decent landing ensued, stopped by the thousand foot markers.

Another great lesson on the book, next lesson we're doing crosswind landings, now where's that damn wind?