I was back up at the flying school today for PPL Lesson 10 & 11: Circuits.
I decided to have two lessons back to back due to the fact that the last few weeks weather has been messing with my progress and I really need to catch up.
My normal instructor was out again so I was back up with Damien, which is good as then there is some consistency with regards to my progress in the circuit.
On the way to the plane we saw a pretty cool plane sitting on the tarmac and decided to go have a look. When we got there, a dutch guy was sitting in it and we had a quick chat. Turns out he is a integrated student looking for his first airline job so we got talking about the struggles. I saw we, my struggles haven’t started yet.
I am not sure what the plane is (I really should have asked) but it’s the plane in the photo above so if anyone knows feel free to comment and tell me.
The first lesson went the same as the rest, I need to remember my checks before the next lesson so at the moment I am just calling out when the checks should be made.
Damien helped me with all my calls so I am pretty good on the radio now as I practiced it all over the last week or so.
I am perfectly fine all through the circuit until the flare.
The crosswind, downwind, base and final all go well but then when to flare was an issue for me, something my instructor said was normal.
On the first lesson again I had some heavy landings and it had started to seem like I would never get the hang of it.
My instructor and I had a debrief and we decided that to keep the picture for the flare I would start looking down the runway rather than at where I was trying to land on the runway.
This was like a light switch for me and on the second lesson, the first landing was actually pretty smooth with them getting consistently better throughout the lesson.
This was excellent however I am a little bit worried because now Damien is away and I am back to my original instructor Martin next week. I mean this isn’t an issue but every instructor teaches things differently so I hope we don’t then go backwards and have to start doing things again to make up for the different way people teach things.
I also decided that I needed to do some more exams while up at the school.
After failing principles of flight by one mark I sat it again and got 75% exactly. While this isn’t excellent it is a pass. I also sat aircraft general knowledge and again got 75%.
I don’t know why, but principles of flight seemed to be difficult for me. The fact that it was only 12 questions didn’t help either.
At least they are passed now an I can start studying towards communications and meteorology.
