Lesson 11 – Takeoffs and Landings 2

Adventures

In lesson 11, we practiced more takeoffs and landings.  This is what you do leading up to your solo, so I’m just a touch nervous about that. I thought I would be overconfident leading up to my solo, but after two sessions of touching and going, I realize I need a lot of practice.  Because the winds were from 330 at 12 knots, we took off from runway 36.  It was my first time using that runway for a takeoff.  We practiced three stop and go patterns and then one simulated power failure on takeoff.  Even though you know it’s just practice and you have plenty of runway left (KOSH 18-36 is 8000 feet long) it sure gets your heart pumping.  Because we were then at the North end of 18-36, we asked the tower for permission to use 31 for further touch-and-gos.  We practiced several of these on 31, which was a little easier to use, being more directly into the wind, but a bit of a different challenge since you couldn’t use the roads as a reference to fly a rectangular pattern.  I think I did a fair job of that.

T mentioned again that my radio work was good.  I guess talking well on the radio doesn’t make you a good pilot — although maybe it indicates a healthy lack of tension — but I mention it because I did have an interesting thing happen during one of the patterns on 31.  I announced my position to the tower at midfield downwind and I heard a crackle or two from the tower but then no answer.  I figured her mic button got stuck, so I waited maybe 20 seconds, and then called again and she gave clearance to land.  No worries.

My landings were just about as wild as during the first session but towards the end of the session, I started to figure out when to begin to slow the descent of the plane and how quickly to slow the rate of descent.  I am going to have to practice not staring at one spot on the runway.  They say that helps your depth perception.

The artificial horizon was fixed and from the last lesson I realized I could fly just as well without it so I didn’t check it as much.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *