Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Pattern/Pre Solo work.

On  Saturday I wrote that I had some "good" and some "ok" landings, about 50/50.  After what I did on Tuesday...they were all crap I think. :P

Tuesday March 13th, Pre solo training and pattern work. 

     Mike had said I was doing good with the landings but wanted to smooth them out.  I wasn't sure how, but I knew I could do it.  The first couple I did I had squeaked the tires and dropped the nose when we touched down.  Unbeknownst to me...I had my toes pressing on the brakes when we were touching down.  NOT a good idea.  An easy fix for that...just keep my heals on the ground.  Yup, no more squeaky landings, and I held the nose up til it settled on its own.  I had a couple other things to work out to get my landings down smooth.

1)  Mike had noticed that I hadn't been using the elevator trim while landing, and I was fighting the controls every step of the way, which made any correction I made unsteady, and sudden.

2)  I was also having a little difficulty judging when to really start my flare.

     The first problem was a mental game of just forcing my self to use the trim....and when I did it made a HUGE difference in my landings, immediately they smoothed out...A LOT!!!!  The second problem was also pretty easy to fix.  Once I'm at flare height Mike said look all the way down the runway and use my peripheral vision to judge how much and when to really pull back on the yoke.  Once again, it helped so much!  The touch downs were getting even smoother AND the last 5 or 6 were almost right on the center line!

     Next we'll do a ground lesson on radio communication and then another flight lesson to put everything I've learned together.  I'll do every thing for the flight with Mike sitting right seat.  Then after that...my solo!

8.3 hours in and all I want to do is fly!

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