Yesterday I finally got back in the air for PPL lesson 6: Slow Flight, after an 11 days absence from flying. This was due to a mixture of the weather being pretty awful and my instructor being away the last 2 weekends which is when I normally fly.
When we last left of we were doing stalling, however our normal plane Yankee Bravo was in use by another instructor and the other plane we fly in Alpha Charlie has just had a new engine fitted.
This meant that stalling was of the cards for today and we jumped ahead a bit and did steep turns.
Now today was a VERY windy and bumpy day, the worst I have had so far. My instructor did the take of for this reason. I took over the controls during the climb and we went up to around 2000ft and leveled off. We then tried to head to a less bumpy part where we started to learn the steep turns.
I got the hang of steep turns very quickly. The only real thing you need to remember is that you need to pull back on the column while doing the 45 degree turn to keep your height up.
You also need to check that there is no traffic around before starting a steep turn and then do a scan from outside to instruments while doing the turn. The two instruments you really pay attention to is the attitude indicator and the altimeter.
I must admit after doing around 8 turns I started to feel a bit sick. My instructor said that this is normal and even he still feels a bit sick while doing this. The fact that it was a really windy and bumpy day also did not help the situation however he said that I did a good job.
We then started to head back to the airport and while we was coming into land we got told to go around due to a vehicle being on the runway. We did a circuit and came back and landed.
Apart from the sickness I felt this was a pretty good lesson and another hour in the log book. I have another 2 booked for next Saturday and I plan to sit my first lot of exams.
