Thoughts On Landings And Patterns

Part of the lesson yesterday that I mentioned was that we did several go-arounds, where you abort a landing and take off again. This is an important skill -- if your landing's going badly, you probably want to go around instead of crashing into the field.

As I said, this was really hard. Kevin had me try to keep the plane over the runway, and fly over the runway for almost the whole length before adding power. Essentially, land (almost) then takeoff, over and over again. Of course these are the two times in a flight when there's a lot going on, so it was pretty exhausting. By the end, Kevin was yelling at me: Why are you going left? You're scaring the shit out of the tower! Climb, faster, you don't want to hit those power lines! Right rudder, you're totally ignoring it!

Of course he was right about all of this; it was still pretty overwhelming. By the last time I had improved significantly ("Good job, beautiful!" At least I know he's being honest!).

Knowing how to land is obviously very important. I wish this were the Matrix and I could just plug in a program. "I know landings." "Show me." But I will know soon enough. I've now logged a whole 6 hours of flying time, which means I'm probably almost 10% of the way there! An incredible thought. I can feel my progress; the little bumps, the being sideways, all that stuff doesn't freak me out any more. Heck, I think I mentioned this, but I even OVERbanked and UNDERpulled on one of my steep turns! Not that I want to get into a habit of it, but it shows that I'm getting comfortable up there.

Now to study for a few days!