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Jerry's 30th lesson: Sixteen more LandingsToday's lesson was after work. They had record temperatures in San Francisco today. And it was plenty hot down at PAO, too. I had a white T-shirt and a pair of shorts with me. Now I carry a white T-shirt all the time, just in case. Don't want to have to ruin a good shirt :-). It was plenty breezy out there too. ATIS said 18 knots, I could feel the hot wind battering my truck as we trundled up the freeway. Would there be a lesson? I got there, preflighted the airplane, except that I didn't untie it. He arrived, I asked "Do we or don't we?". He answered "Sure we do. It's blowing right down the runway". I flew us to HWD, we did our touch and goes. Indeed, the wind wasn't that bad. The sun, on the other hand, was murderous. Runway 28 was maybe 10 degrees off from being straight into the low 6 PM sun. This time, there was no problem keeping the airplane centered right down the runway. And the turn to final was mostly right on, too. The flare, on the other hand, isn't quite there yet. Almost, though. I made several quite credible two-bounce landings :-). I even learned how to save them, by applying power in the middle of the bounce, then re-flaring. And there were a couple of near-perfect tailwheel-first landings. Around the sixth one, I had him do one as an example, so I could watch the sight picture. He took off, did the turn to crosswind.... I pointed at the turn coordinator. It was about a quarter inch off. He gave a sheepish grin, and said "yeah, I do that all the time". Well, at least I'm not the only one! He brought us around to final, I watched the flare carefully. The lesson was over too soon. It's so tantalizing! I have the feeling that just a couple more hours, and I'll have it. He says we'll do a couple more lessons at HWD, and then start doing them at PAO itself. Now, PAO may be an expensive place to practice landings, because it tends to be so busy that they make you do a full stop and taxi back every time. I did do the landing at PAO this time, though. Did the braking and everything :-). - Jerry "43.2 Hours" Kaidor |