More good weather! Lesson #5 today, and half way until the coveted solo flight. We already went over flying a good pattern while correcting for winds, so we jumped straight into the next topic: turns about a point. Very dull topic, but a lot more difficult in practice even with light winds, especially with the thermal turbulence bouncing us around. We found a good farmer's field to the south and picked out a four-way intersection. Because we were in a rural area, we went all the way down to maybe 600-700 feet above the ground. I'm sure that guy out in his John Deere must have been a little concerned why we were being so nosy. Round and round we went, making multiple passes. I did a real good job maintaining altitude and constantly adjusting the bank to keep the target point lined up with the center of the wing. Turns about a point is something I had never practiced in FS, so this was a new skill that took me 'a bit longer' to pick up. After running the Daytona 500, we left the farmer alone and found a long straight road to practice making S-turns. For S-turns, you try to cross the road on a perpindicular path each time and keep your arcs the same radius. Sort of like a sine wave for you math people. After going in circles for 10 minutes straight, the task of making good arcs was becoming second nature. With time still left on the clock, I request that I get to make some touch-and-goes before we make a full-stop landing. Its been a while since I last got the chance to bring a plane in. Not much traffic to contend with, I make two passes: the wheels touch down, flaps up, full throttle, and up again. Finally I let the tower know that this one "will be a full-stop"; he acknowledges, and we land. As we taxi off the runway and turn to the ramp, an Army AH-64 pops out of nowhere (he blended well with the treeline) and thud-thud-thuds his way over us, heading towards some auxillary field near Waco. After consulting some statistics, apparently 25% of College Station's air traffic is military.
Flight #5: 1.2 hrs (WOW A RECORD!)
Total Log Time: 5.6 hrs
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment