Finally an update…
Hey all, I know it has been a while since I have given a write up. As it turns out, I’ll be flying for the next ten weeks or so, so it is practical for me to remeber what we have done since my last write up. It is good to remember as a student how fun it was to go through my first couple of flights and will help me see where to improve, and just look back, take time off to remember the good times. OK, so I’ll start where I left off, at my third hour.
Third lesson
As usual, scheduled a lesson for 1600 after my last lesson the week before. I got to the airport in time after school and waited till my instructor got there and when he did we headed out to 9801T this time. he watched on and showed me in more detail what to look for and helped me untie her. Plugged my headset in, starting checklist, CLEAR!, key to start, and the mighty 106 HP roared to life. We taxied over to the runup area and I felt more comfortable with taxiing and more comfortable in the airplane as a whole. Runup went well, taxied up to position and hold, “New Garden traffic Tomahawk 01T departing 24 New garden,” visual traffic check and a better take off, no skidding. So, back to those S-turns I was so axncious to try. We would be using Rt.1 as a perpendicular, as it is large, fairly straight, and a great ground refrence. We had a 16kt wind to, so it made them interesting and taught me more about winds affect on flight. They were sloppy and I had trouble maintaining altitude at 1,500. Airspeed was jumping around to. this is being an avaitor, coordination, I told myself. Rob would give me comments about how to do better, but let me learn my self, basically. I did those for a couple miles of Rt. 1 and for about 20 minutes, and I could feel them getting better. I then took her over some fields were there is another great ground refrence, a silo with a windsock. We would be doing truns about a point. At first they were difficult because of trying to tell myself to not bank as much when the wind was on the opposite side of the turn, pushing me towards the ref. I starting getting used to it again, and my throttle/pitch coordination felt a little bit better. after about another 15-20 minutes I went off course back to Rt. 1 and did what is called a rectangular course. Baiscally, you fly a rectangle using a ground refrence, again Rt. 1, and I kept my wing “on the strips” of the planes wing, which is about a quarter mile away from the ground looking out the doors window. I turned around with some easy 30 degree turns and followed Rt. 1 back to the airfield. It is pretty cool that I can fly over to another state and just turn around and go back. So, my instructor went over the pattern some more with me and he landed the plane, though he gave me a little bit of room to work the controls.
Pretty good lesson over all, I can remember it quite nicly. The scenery and weather were nice, and the winds wern’t really a problem. Partly cloudy skies made it look nice to (I like weather phenomina actually, while some people want it to be “perfect” and complain about lower ceilings, I think it adds to the scenery and looks beautiful).