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Jerry's 44th LessonBefore my instructor and I got in the plane, I produced the tape from our last lesson. As you might remember, I'd gotten criticised for being too "casual" on the radio, and hadn't known what he really wanted. The tower had asked me: "Confirm that you wanted to work the pattern" I had answered: "Uh, yes Maam, I, uh, don't suppose we could get a left base one two-eight left?". His preferred phraseology is something more like "Affirmative, and we'd like a left base on two-eight-left". Just something short and crisp, with the official word "affirmative" in there. With the radio procedure question taken care of, we proceeded to the actual lesson. We shot over to Hayward for yet some more touch and goes. It was warm, the wind was "calm". Not only that, the airport was nearly deserted - apparently everybody was off at the Manteca airshow. Approaching Hayward, I was coming in a bit high for 28L, he said "You'll have to slip....". At that moment, the tower called us, switching us over to 28R for the first touch and go. All right! The extra distance to 28R got us down far enough to make it just right without slipping. The landings went very well. We mostly had the pattern all to ourselves, there wasn't much wind correction to do, nor much turbulence to speak of. I did all the radio work. In the past, I'd sometimes had to ask him if we were cleared before turning base... This time, he had to ask me :-). There's this "passenger thing": if you're not doing it, you don't pay attention to it. It's like driving somebody somewhere: the driver knows how to get there the next time, the passenger doesn't. The slide down on final that used to be so stressful was now automatic enough that I even chatted urbanely with him once as we flew over the blast fence. The worst landing was one where I dropped us out of the sky from a foot or so... tailwheel-mains thump-THUMP! Still not too bad. Fourteen T&G's later, we set out for home. The engine died after we left the pattern. I looked down and said "That field looks pretty good...". He said "You weren't checking the gas during your pattern work, were you? That's the same tank you were on for the whole lesson". "When you're flying around by yourself, make sure you check the gas" "Every time around?" "Umm, yeah, that's not a bad idea..." "How about just after levelling off on downwind? Level off on downwind, check the gas..." We got back to Palo Alto, it was the usual zoo. We were number three or four in the pattern, ATC departed three planes before us, called our base. I slowed us up to 70 on the extended downwind - no point racing away from the airport. He dinged me for slowing down too much on the runway. "Keep rolling, we need to get off the runway as fast as possible! There are people landing behind us!" - Jerry "62 hours" Kaidor |