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Lesson18: Just Plugging Away at those Landings....Today was another breezy,gusty day; we flew out to Tracy, in the California Central Valley, to practice landings. On the way out, at 3500 feet, I noticed 35 degrees F on the OAT gauge. Brr! ( Please, no smart remarks from Chicagoans or Minnisotans. Us Californians have thin blood. :-) ). First, we overflew the airport to figure out which runway to use. After a bit of "Where's the D****d windsock" trauma, I announced that runway 25 looked good. He agreed, and we proceeded to land there. I had asked him for some more high-speed-taxi practice, he agreed that would be a good idea. Note: Nosewheel pilots may not understand why one might spend, oh, 2 or 3 solid hours just learning to taxi. Suffice to say that tailwheel craft are said to be different from their nose-heavy cousins in this regard. The phrases "Negative stability in high-speed taxi" and "viciously unstable..." are quite appropriate. Anyway, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. So we zoomed up and down the runways of the nearly-deserted airport. I tried to regain the feel of the rudder and it's particular delays before corrections took effect. I figured out again how to hold it on track with varying engine inputs and crosswinds ( he was handling the engine ). "Not so heavy on the brakes!" "How do I know how heavy? They have no feel..." One thing I haven't learned to do yet, is to get it back on track with a healthy poke when it's started to weave. To do this, you need to know what your correction will do before it happens, because you (apparently) need to let off that healthy poke before the airplane responds to it! Otherwise, the craft will simply weave the other way. One thing at a time. Then we did a few touch and goes. We also did a couple "fly across the runway without touching it" things. He called out the turns, and handled the throttle, and had me concentrate on setting and holding my airspeeds by the sight picture at the nose. And on keeping the airplane centered on the runway centerline and pointed at the runway. This last was easier said than done; the wind was so strong that on the base leg I was crabbing - oh - must have been 15 degrees. The last two T&G's came out pretty good, and he complemented me on them. Bout time I did something right :-). I succeeded in holding the airplane lined up with the runway ( if not with the center line ) and in keeping it aligned straight with the aformentioned runway. This last is what really, REALLY needs to happen to avoid ground looping. So I feel like another piece of the landing puzzle fell into place today. Just one piece at a time. Right around the last touch & go, airsickness asserted itself. Damn! I'd thought it was gone for good! I felt ready to lose my cookies right there in the airplane. About half way home, I admitted it, gave him the plane. He put the pedal to the metal, and we came back at a blistering 115MPH. No, not knots. Knots are for newer, faster airplanes :-). - Jerry "25.1 hours" Kaidor |