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Jerry's 56th Lesson: Polishing That PatternToday's lesson really started a few days before - I talked to my CFI on the phone, and got him to read off the in-circuit prelanding checklist. I wrote it down on a file card, and set out seriously to memorize it, using every memory trick at my disposal. I chanted it. I chanted parts of it. I _sang_ it like opera music. I chanted it while visualizing the instruments and moving my hand to them in the air. I chanted the last four ones, then the first four ones.... In short, by the time I got to today's lesson, I could have mumbled "fuel-flaps-trim-power-carbheat-mixture-primer-mags" in my sleep. We had planned a lesson on Monday, but temps had been over a hundred degrees F at SJC, which would Not Have Been Fun. So we rescheduled. Today was much nicer. Temp was in the 70's, wind was a stable 4 knots right down the runway. A beautiful flying day, although there was quite a bit of haze around the bowl of the Bay Area. I had been having problems with rudder control at the moment of letting the flaps down after landing. So I practiced that, while taxiing to the runup area. Up and Down, up and down, keep the airplane centered... One pecularity of San Jose is that after your runup, you have to call Ground again to get from the runup area to the runway. Then on the way across to the runway, you flip to Tower. I messed up the call: Whereas I should have said: Gentle instructorial correction was applied. ( I bet all you CFI's hate it when your students embarrass you on the radio :-) ). We did six landings. On one of them I flared about ten feet too high, but came down nicely - tailwheel first. One of them was a perfect three-pointer. On another, a gust of wind caught me right over the threshold, knocked the plane over a bit. I fixed it, and three-pointed the airplane. He praised me all the way down the runway on that one. I also got the hang of letting the flaps down, once on the ground, without sending the airplane into the bushes. And successfully moderated my rudder flailing. The last landing was a dead-stick. He pulled the power on me abeam the tower. I immediately trimmed for best glide. I could see we had plenty of altitude, so I continued on downwind a bit. He said "No, no, your engine is gone, don't futz around, head straight for the field!" So I turned base. Would have gone straight for the numbers, except that there was another plane in front of us. So I flew a fairly normal base and final, except with no flaps. On final, it became obvious that we were WAY high, so I put in a notch, then two notches, then full flaps. Landed the airplane right on the numbers, same as usual. My teacher praised me all the way back to parking. Said it was an good, no excellent, lesson, and that solo would be coming up real soon. He noted "Excellent Landings!" in my logbook. We went down to the GA building and got me a gate badge... - Jerry "74.8 Hours" Kaidor |