|
|
Today was a first: I was late for my lesson.You see, they changed the clocks on me! Moved 'em ahead, the bastards. I woke up, laid in bed for a while - no problem, lesson's at 10:00, it's 8:45... My wife came in and informed me that it was really 9:45...! Did my best imitation of a firefighter responding to an emergency call. Jumped out of bed, poured myself into my clothes and out the door. Luckily, my flying-student kit is always ready in the knapsack :-). Got to the airport bleary-eyed, coffee-less and empty-stomached. As PIC, I probably would have decided not to fly. But I _was_ up to being an idiot student :-). Today's lesson was more touch and goes, just like the past umpteen ones. More special concentration on the flare. He said "You just need the flare, you've got all the rest down." Too bad there's no time machine, so you could just do flares, over and over. Here in the real world, every 10-second flare costs ten minutes around the pattern. Two or three of those landings turned out really well - I finally freed up enough mental cycles to watch the runway out the side window with my peripheral vision. Once, I actually turned to look... Instructorial correction was quickly applied: "Don't look out the side! Keep looking right over the nose! Watch, look out the side now." I looked out the side, he started weaving the airplane back and forth. "Can you tell which way the airplane's going?" Point taken. Another thing that turned out well, was finally managing to get the control inputs small enough so we (sometimes) didn't balloon all over the runway. One of the landings was a real three-point "greaser".... YES!!! - Jerry "29.2 hours" Kaidor p.s. Didn't get sick... |