|
|
Jerry's 26th lesson: Pattern work on a Higher Level....This afternoon around 4:30 I went down to the airport for my lesson. I'd taken good care to be ready. Got 9 hours of sleep the night before. Had my two bagels for strength. Took a long walk over lunch so I wouldn't get a headache staring at CRTs all day. After preflightning the Cessna, I had twenty minutes to kill. I played a new game: "find the airplane". Hanging out near the runup area, I listened to the tower with my handheld radio and looked for the airplanes he was talking to. When I found an airplane, I'd look away and count to five. Then look back and find him again. Then look away and count to five again. Then find the plane again.... The trouble with this exercise is that it only teaches how to find planes against the backdrop of the sky. Whereas the real problem IMHO, is finding them from above, against the backdrop of buildings, roads and cars. My instructor arrived, we made tracks for HWD. There was a stiff 15-knot wind blowing, but it was straight down the runway; a perfect headwind. And it was steady, not gusting. So we were go! Today, the downwind leg lived up to its name, as the stiff breeze hurried us down it. We cooperated on solving the problems around the pattern, which we shared with two other airplanes. OK, we have to extend our downwind... is he clear yet? We're far down, so we make the turn to base without powering ( and coming ) down, hold off that until the turn to final.... Oops, we're low, add some power; eek, we're high, pull her down to idle. This last was no fun, pulling the power to idle way up in the air; not that it was scary or anything, just that it made it a harder to keep the airplane centered in the crosswind. I just about got the hang of figuring when to flare, and I kept the plane centered and straight until the flare started. But once well into the flare, the airplane would start drifting sideways around the runway. Still none of the landings were all that bad, and a couple of them were downright good. I was also doing a better job seeing other airplanes than in lessons past. He asked "If we had to land short, how short do you think this airplane could land in?" I was ready with the answer from the POH: just under 250 feet. Said he: "If we touched down right at the threshold, I could probably get the plane stopped by the numbers". Wow. After 14 touch & goes, we went back to PAO, and even it's tiny runway didn't look all that forbidding. And I almost made it, too: he took over after we touched down: that's one narrow runway! All in all, we were both satisfied with today's lesson. We tied down the Cessna, reviewed the lesson ( "You did good!" ), made arrangements for the next one, he drove off. I strolled back through the now-peaceful airport. The airplanes shone golden in the setting sun. - Jerry "36.9 Hours" Kaidor |