This morning started with a pre-dawn pre-flight of 172R N24AF by headlamp. It was pretty nice, to tell the truth. Calm and quiet, except for the occasional Southwest jet takeoff.
Pre-dawn blur at Atlantic
Clearance (VFR to Lockhart, 2500). Taxi to spot 1. Ground. Taxi to run-up area at 17L. Wait for a few departures and arrivals. Go!
Sunrise at 17L
170 to Lockhart. Foggles. Maintain heading. Descents and vectors by Mark's simulated ATC instructions and before I knew it we were on the 45 for 18 at Lockhart.
The beginning of the pattern was good. On base I felt I was getting a little low so I added power. I felt good about the rest of my pattern, but that extra power came back to bite me because I didn't take it out until I had the runway, but by then I was probably 8-10 kts over ideal airspeed (65 kts). It wasn't anything awful, but I did balloon a bit when I pulled back to flare, which meant we floated for a long time, which ended with a firm (but respectable) and long landing, which meant we missed the mid-field turn off, which meant we rolled all the way to the end and had what felt like the neverending taxi back for takeoff. Before that run-on sentence, I had managed to look for towers, glance at the windsock, do a GUMPS check, and make the traffic pattern calls over CTAF.
It was fine, and good enough that I was confident to do another and plan for a touch-and-go. I have done maybe five touch-and-gos total, and it has so far been intimidating to be finalizing a landing while transitioning into a non-standard takeoff. However, by this point, I was feeling good about my patterns, approaches and landings and was willing to incorporate the next step. (Proficiency at touch-and-gos means more landings per outing.)
The second pattern was good, too. I was a little tighter to the runway on downwind, so I extended a little to compensate for the shorter base leg. GUMPS check, a little worse job staying on centerline than the first time around, but touchdown, throttle in, one notch of flaps retract, pop off the runway, accelerate, climb, retract, climb, retract, depart the pattern to the northeast.
Sometime after liftoff, probably before even 500' AGL, we got a nice, deep, tantalizing whiff of smoking BBQ; Lockhart is home to the famous Black's BBQ. Mmmmmmm. As I told Mark during our debrief, it's a good sign that I'm relaxing and re-acclimating to flying enough to use secondary senses in flight! He agreed, saying that my "bandwidth" while piloting is opening up.
Foggles on. Slow flight. Slow flight maneuvers. Surprisingly intense rudder pressure to turn -- I had forgotten how very unresponsive that control surface can be! Constant airspeed... climb? I forget which we did, but it's starting to feel more natural to find the pitch/power balance again and cross-check instruments to control airspeed and climb/descent rate. I was still working at it, but not working as hard as the last time we did this.
Before long Mark was talking to approach and we were vectoring in for landing. We were on a long base when the foggles came off and I had an eye-opening experience: I was disoriented now that I had visual flight back! I saw the airport, I saw our altitude, I had the picture, but somehow it felt like we were much farther away. It was a very odd feeling. Mark had to prompt me to start on my pattern descent and airspeed adjustments. With that prod, I got us on track, trying to deliberately keep speed here to not delay the waiting departure queue. It ended up being a pretty well-managed approach and nice landing, perhaps the nicest so far, and after a turnoff at Juliet and a call to ground, we taxied back and shut down.
Phew! A happy phew! It was a fun flight. Room for improvement, but satisfactory for this stage of training.
Good ol' training route to 50R and home again...
Things I did and will continue to do: "talk good" on the radio; keep an eye on the DG; GUMPS; stabilized landing approaches that start with a properly managed pattern; generally held altitude and heading in simulated instrument flight.
Things I will improve on: "talk better" on the radio; increase scan speed; hold altitude and heading closer; landing flare.
Next time:
- Stalls on instruments
- Unusual attitudes on instruments
Soon, I hope:
- Start using nav avionics
