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Jerry's 41st Lesson: The CrevasseSome people talk about learning plateaus... Well, today's lesson was more like a learning valley. No, a learning canyon. Make that a "learning pit":-(. It had been five days since my last session of touch and goes. The last lesson had been just airwork, and the weekend got blown by family business and the Watsonville airshow. The lesson was at 1600 local time. Wind was 15 knots at PAO, but blowing almost straight down the runway, according to the windsock. During preflight, the wind blew the engine cowling shut, and conked me on the head. Ouch! Coming out of our parking space, I couldn't even seem to taxi the airplane right - I swung wayyy wide, thankful that there happened to be no airplanes parked on the facing row. I took off. On upwind, he asked: "Are we in line with the runway?" No, we'd gotten blown at least a hundred feet off. I uttered an expletive and aimed us back toward the extended centerline. At HWD, I couldn't do anything right. I couldn't see the traffic. And when I saw it, I couldn't gauge our separation properly. I couldn't judge the glideslope for beans, either. Yay for VASI! He had me crabbing on final, kicking out the crab and putting in a slip just before flaring. He said there was just too much wind to slip all the way down; we'd run out of rudder. So I'd still be experimenting with wind corrections down in the flare. And sliding around the runway :-(. There was one pretty good landing, and a bunch of mediocre ones. I managed "tailwheel first" maybe once... Going back to PAO, he read me a lecture on basic airwork: "You're changing too many things at the same time, just change one thing at a time. Change the power _gradually_, hold the nose where it is." I'd been climbing to pattern altitude, then lowering the power in one expeditious stroke, then giving the nose a little *jerk* to get it to fly level.... "Lower the power gra-a-adually at TPA, let the nose come down by itself, it's easier on the airplane" (Gee, it was good enough for the last 350 circuits). The worst landing of all was back at PAO. I nearly drilled the airplane into the mound of dirt in front of the threshold. See, at PAO, they not only have this little tiny runway, but there's this mound of dirt ( or rock? ) right in front of it, maybe three feet high. And in front of the mound of dirt, there's a slough. I came down on final, fighting the wind, all set up to land us in the slough. He said "power-power-power- power-POWER!!!!!!"... "MY PLANE!", popped us over the mound, landed the plane. Driving home from the airport nursing my mashed ego, I noticed that there was indeed quite a breeze; even my car noticed it. - Jerry "Waldo" Kaidor |