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Jerry's 31st Lesson: Variety is the Spice of LifeMy lesson was this morning at 0900. My instructor had given me a choice of 0900 or 1100; apparently he wanted to have some free time for himself in the afternoon. How dare he! :-) Unfortunately, I got VERY little sleep last night; the neighbors were having a party. At 0100 I went out and yelled at them to be quiet - I think I got to sleep at 0200. (They were still partying) And for some reason I woke up at the ungodly hour of 0630. Whatever, I poured three cups of coffee into myself and trundled out to the airport. Got there early, did a nice leisurely preflight and waited for my instructor. He arrived a few minutes after 0900, just as ragged out as me. We set out for HWD. The plan today was to do landings to a full stop, and practice braking. The skill of braking is a sine qua non for operations at PAO. It was the calmest day I ever saw at PAO; the windsock hung limp as a dishrag as we took off. HWD enjoyed the same lack of wind. This caused a curious problem; I was coming in high for every landing. So he had me fix'em with a forward slip. I got to do six or seven of these. One so extreme that the plane seemed to be going sideways. Our first few landings were to a full stop, with taxi-back. On the taxi-backs I practiced braking to a stop multiple times. Those little tiny airplane brakes have hardly any feel! He said "Keep your heels on the floor; you don't want to be shifting your feet up and down the rudder pedals when you're barrelling down the runway!" He taught me to brake by pointing my toes. "Put the balls of your feet on the shiny spots on the pedals." "Look at me, I'm a ballerina!" Once on downwind he gave me a lecture on fuel management: "When you're out alone, you need to check the gas each time around..." Could there be a solo in Jerry's future? Considering how little sleep I had, the lesson turned out amazingly well. I learned how to brake, had two or three really good landings, no really bad ones, and had my first experience of
- Jerry "44.7 Hours" Kaidor |