The Substitute

"Our minds are like our stomachs; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetites." Quintilian

This week was marked by the completion of my first 10 hours of flight time. Yeah, for me! I guess I can't claim to be 0 hours to CFI anymore, more like 10 hours to CFI. But that would be dumb, to change the title of this blog after every milestone. So I'll stick with 0 Hours to CFI, for now.

This week was also marked by my primary instructor being out of town on Monday. So I flew with a substitute. My substitute was the owner of 68F, an AP mechanic and all around good Englishmen. But aside from these apparent deficits he turned out to be a good substitute, he knows 68F really well as you would imagine.

After our first go around the pattern and the resultant sloppy landing he said.
"I know what your problem is, you're going to fast."
The next time around he slowed me down on the downwind leg, had me reduce power a bit before "abeam the numbers" and taught me to let the plane find it's own speed after you set flaps.

With these pearls of advice from the man who knows 68F better than any I made a nice smooth landing, touching down on both main gears at the same time. This was to be the only good landing that day. The rest were classic sloppy joe landings. We'll call them loose meat landings form here on out, just for fun, OK?

One of these loose meat landings was with my first forward slip, this could have been the cause. To go from totally uncoordinated flight (in fact a forward slip is not uncoordinated, it just feels like it) to a landing is hard to compute and result in a slick landing. Much more work (read practice) is needed.

Today my lovely primary instructor was back and we had good lesson. The temperature was 30 degrees F when I arrived at the airport, the wind was calm and you couldn't ask for better conditions. She was very excited to introduce me to her new puppy. In my opinion, it is a very cute puppy, but aren't they all?

For the first lap around the pattern I was able to make a decent landing into a touch and go.

The next lap I didn't hear her say "Engine out", so as I saw we were a little low I applied power. Oops! So we practiced a go around.

On the next lap I performed a power on full stop landing. Loose meat.

Back to start at "Go", don't collect $200 and try again. This time around it was another engine out simulation, this time I heard her. I got it this time. Carb heat, pitch for 65 kts and came in nice and high for an engine out loose meat landing. The loosest yet. Looser than any slot machine in this economy in our neighboring state or Nevada. Bounced her, then landed flat and hard on the nose gear. Then in the process of getting her back on the centerline I forgot to pull back on the stick all the way, and just like on our first flight (recall one of my earliest posts) my feet accidentally got on the brakes and set up a pronounced shimmy for the main gear.

In my inexperienced opinion I suggested we stop and inspect. So we did and that was the end of the session. Only .8 hours, but enough to get me at 10 hours and through my first paid 10 hours block of time. As far as we could tell there was nothing wrong with 68F. Just my hard touchdown. Sorry girl, didn't mean to hurt you.

I need to get you some more pictures. Next week my wife is home on October break and I am scheduled to fly five days in a row. Here's hoping the weather holds out for me.