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Lesson 20: Flare-flare-flare!Today's lesson dawned bright and sunny. Saturday morning, 10 Oclock. He'd said "10-oclock, good! I can sleep in." Contrary to my now regular habit, I went to the lesson on an empty stomach... due to Suresh's restaurant. Suresh, he's this Indian guy where I work. Suresh likes hot food. Suresh's restaurant serves *blazing* hot food. No, Suresh doesn't own the restaurant. He just found it. Not only did I have the curry chicken, I had the extra-hot curry chicken. And ate way too much. All day, my stomach felt like somebody had sliced it with a knife. Even the next morning, I couldn't bring myself to eat. Found myself at the airport on an empty stomach. Would I get airsick? Coming down the freeway, I turned on the scanner. First thing I heard was my CFI's voice. So much for him sleeping in, he was already in the air :-). I watched him go around the pattern a couple of times, he came down, introduced me to his father, also a pilot. The wind was really calm, PAO's windsock drooped limply from its pole. We took off, went to HWD to do our touch and goes. We concentrated mostly on my approaches and flares, up to the very moment when the rubber met the road. I can't say that it was a breakthrough lesson, but things went about as well as the last one, and I didn't mess up anything too badly. Well, except maybe for that one time I didn't flare at all, and flew the airplane right into the runway. BOI-INNNNNG! And then there was the time we hit the runway going sideways, and felt the sudden *jerk* of the tarmac stopping it. My instructor tried to break me of my death grip on the yoke. He said "From now on, I want you to hold the yoke with just three fingers. That will help you handle it more delicately in the flare". The Hayward tower guy lost track of us once; he forgot that we were doing touch and goes, and gave us clearance to turn onto a taxiway and stop. By the time my instructor had it cleared up with him, there wasn't enough runway left to take off again. So we had to taxi back around. Right at the end, I did one flare that came out perfect. Then we came back to PAO. There I came in too high, he slipped us down. One problem today was that there wasn't enough wind. Yeah, I know that sounds funny. But when there's a definite wind, you know exactly what to do. Wind's from the left, you slip left. So if there's no wind, you go straight, right? Well, I can't say there was NO wind at all, there's always SOME wind, right? Well, whatever there was, was really small, and the wind correction had to be correspondingly small and delicate. I wasn't figuring it out. All in all, it was a satisfactory lesson. In fact, things improved enough during the lesson, specifically getting the sight picture during flare, that I decided it would be a good idea to get another one tomorrow, before the picture fades :-). - Jerry "27.8 hours" Kaidor |