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| Jerry's 50th Lesson: Back in the Saddle....
Having almost completely recovered from Moscow jetlag, I called my instructor on Thursday, even though I was pretty sure he'd be out of town. Imagine my surprise when he answered the phone! As you all know, it's been a fairly ridiculous amount of hours behind the yoke for me. And I've really been considering getting another CFI, or at least a second opinion. But a couple of people have suggested that the three-week hiatus might have made a difference; so I decided to give it a try. Wasn't doing anything else today anyway. I did arrange to fly with his partner some time in the near future; this guy's also a tailwheel CFI, but has graduated to flying for United. Hopefully his CFI certificate is still valid.... Didn't get nearly enough sleep last night. Woke up every couple hours. I don't *think* it had anything to do with the upcoming lesson, but I definitely wasn't hitting on all three cylinders this morning. No matter, the lesson wasn't 'til 11:30; Thank goodness, the headache dissipated before then. Got my first shock of the day when I cranked on the scanner; ATIS temp was 22 degrees! Well, it didn't feel like below freezing - they must have changed it to Celsius while I was gone. Fifty years of Farenheit; and they go and change it to Celsius when I'm on vacation just to screw with my mind when I get back :-). The sun shone brightly as I preflighted the A/C. The plan for the day was to head out to nice easy Hayward, and see if I still knew how to fly. The takeoff from PAO set the tone for the lesson: Going across the Bay, I gained 200 feet :-(. Coming up on HWD, he asked me "Do you remember how to do this"? I stared at him in open-mouthed confusion: ( I responded with a list of every procedure, maxim, and saying I could think of that had anything to do with landing the airplane ) At HWD, the wind was steady, about 10 knots, and straight down the runway. Yum. My landings were.........pretty good. Mostly right down the centerline. Mostly with the airplane straight. Well, I _was_ tending to flare a bit high. He didn't say much. It was definitely NOT one of those lessons where the CFI is constantly telling you how to pitch, how fast to go, how much power to carry.... Well, he did remind me once to cut the power after the field was made.One of the landings was a perfect three-pointer. And one of them was a sad case, with the airplane five feet off center and sliding further. A couple of times, I was unsure of whether we had clearance. The first time, I asked for sequence, the tower cleared me. The other time, I was sliding down on downwind ( with a direct 10-knot tailwind, downwind went by _fast_). The tower hadn't given me my clearance. He started talking to some other guy I couldn't see about using the same runway. And he hadn't cleared me yet. So I extended my downwind. This got me another CFI lecture :-(. Mostly about how you only need clearance to _land_, that is, to actually touch the runway. And if you know the traffic situation ( we were alone in the pattern ), there's nothing wrong with turning base without clearance - maybe just telling the tower about it: "two-four-November is turning base". When we went back to PAO, it was an absolute circus. Airplanes converging on the field from all directions. Fast planes. Slow planes. High planes. Low planes. People asking the tower whom were they following. I lost track of whom _we_ were following. The guy behind us expressed doubt as to his ability to follow us ( the C120 is REALLY slow ). But somehow it all got straightened out, and we were coming in on final. The wind, as usuall, was a bit squirrely. I landed just a bit off center. He took the plane after we hit the ground because he wanted us off the runway ASAP. Taxiing back to parking, he gave me another lecture: "Your landings were pretty good today, but you need to concentrate more on flying the airplane, not messing with the radios or whatever....." |