Saturday, July 29, 2006

Lesson #20 The Circuit

Crosswind Landings

I was finally was able to line the aircraft and my instructor up for a lesson, things have been really busy at the school. I had a couple of lessons booked previously but the weather did not play nice, no wind one time, and another my instructor didn't show up, some miss communication.

We were finally able to get out this afternoon and get the dual part of the lesson done. The weather actually cooperated for once as well, as we had a nice breeze for our crosswind landings. I arrived at the airport and went right out to the apron to get started on the preflight while Dave finished with another student, everything looked good and a few minutes later Dave showed up and we were off.

The winds were 290 @11 gusting 18, so runway 28 was the active. I made my call to the tower to get the airport advisory, they came back with an aircraft in the circuit that would be landing in about 5 minutes. Since it was going to take us a few minutes to taxi out to the active I called tower back and told them that I'd taxi Alpha, Charlie, Runway 03 to the hold short line for Runway 28 and wait for traffic. After the trafic passed we backtracked on 28 and a few minutes later we were off.

When I turned downwind for 28 I called tower to let them know that we were switching to runway 21 to do some crosswind landings. At midfield I made a left turn to join the downwind for 21. Dave had me set us up for our first landing with 10 degrees of flaps, on final he took over and demo'd a crosswind landing. As it was gusty he had to use full rudder most of the way in to keep us lined up with the runway, he also had the wings banked into the wind pretty good to keep us from blowing off the runway's center line. We touched down on our right main gear first and then the other main touched down, each with a nice chirp.

Dave handed control of the aircraft back over to me as we were rolling and I did the takeoff. With such a high crosswind component coming from our right, I had to keep the ailerons fully banked into the wind initially to keep us from wandering all over the runway. Then as our speed came up I relaxed them gradually until rotatation. Keeping the ailerons into the wind keeps the right wing down and makes it much easier to track straight on the runway.

I found my first crosswind landing alot of work, keeping the aircraft straight with the runway with the rudder, and also keeping us on the centre line with the ailerons was an unfamiliar juggling act. I managed to pull off my first "official" crosswind landing with some assistance from Dave.

I've done other crosswind landings before but I always used the crab method, which I find much easier. I'd basically crab all the way in until the flair and then as we are about to touch down on the mains I'd kick in some rudder to straighten us out.

As I climbed out for my next circuit Dave said that my landing was pretty good and that he did not have to provide alot of assistance, the next one would be all me. On final tower updated us with the winds and I did some quick mental math, our actual crosswind was going to be in the low double digits. I did a normal approach and then while we were still a couple hundred feet I fed in some rudder to straighten us out and then got on the ailerons to keep us on the centerline. I found myself pretty busy, but everything worked out fine and Dave seems happy that he didn't have to provide any assistance.

I did a few more landings, with each one it began to feel more familiar. On one landing things got a little ugly at flair height (balloned a little too much) so I fed in some power, got Fern settled down again and managed to pull off a nice landing. Dave didn't offer any help or advice so I guess he was happy with my recovery. We did a few more landing and Dave was satisfied that I'd be OK on my own. I finished the lesson with one of the best landings that I've done in my short time flying, crosswind and all... Dave even commented on how nice it was.

Since we didn't have alot of extra time today, I booked the aircraft for Tuesday morning to complete my solo component of this lesson. Let's hope the weather cooperates as I need between 5 and 9 kts of crosswind to practise in.

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