I believe the word is...

Bugger!

So I was feeling really positive this morning. My medical was signed off on friday, so I should have my certificate on monday, which means the only thing stopping me from going solo is signoff from my instructor and a B-cat. However, after todays episode, that may take another week :(

I got out to the aerodrome early, the weather was good, the wind moderate and was I looking forward to circuits and some EFATO practise.

I preflighted JFY, plenty of fuel and everything in order. Walked through the EFATO briefing and covered all the important aspects. I have done them before, albeit a long time ago, so the basics are still in my head:

- Lower the nose
- Close the throttle
- Land straight ahead
- NEVER turn back for the airfield

However, as soon as I strapped in, it started going wrong. I kinda messed up the startup checks. Oddly enough my taxiing was pretty good today, I think I finally have the 152 steering sussed, but I forgot to do the turn checks (ie. left turn compass/DI decreasing, ball out to the right etc). Run-up was OK, but Pre-TakeOff checks were not. Forgot pretty much everything.

TakeOff was OK, until I got about 100ft in the air and it turned to custard. The 10-15kt wind, was at 040 which is almost straight down the runway, but once you got some altitude it seemed to veer a lot as before I knew it I had wandered into the takeoff path for the grass strip. A BIG no-no. Around into the circuit and things were going OK, but the base and final approach was a mess... Too High, Too Low, Too Fast, Too Slow... you name it, I did it.

The next couple were not much better and with the EFATO's thrown in, it was screwing up my rhythm. At one point, I even executed a go-around my approach was that bad. On reflection I probably could have gotten it down, but I was fighting the aircraft rather than flying it and when a crosswind pushed me sideways about 200ft from the ground I 'pulled the pin' on the landing.

Then I figured out what the problem was. I wasn't 'Flying the numbers' ie. I was not maintaining correct speeds on base and finals, and I wasn't 'Staying ahead of the aircraft' ie. I was being reactive, not proactive.

Once I made a concious effort to stay ahead of the aircraft and started to anticipate the speed (nose attitude) and height (power) changes required, I started nailing the landings. My first flapless was almost perfect. I rolled onto final at 70kts and just greased it right onto the runway. We tried a glide approach and did that fairly well too. And the final one of the session, which was on the grass, was really good. Only my 2nd grass landing and my instructor even commented saying that I had 'the numbers' spot on and my approach was almost flawless.

And then to cap off an ordinary day at the controls I made a total hash of the shutdown checks and almost fried the radio by attempting to do a deadcut check before turning the radio off. Looks like I'll be spending this week memorising checklists on my morning and evening commutes on the train!

Despite the issues, I believe today was probably my most valuable lesson to date. I learnt a lot and there was certainly a lot to take from the lesson given the list of 6 or 7 things my instructor covered in the de-brief!!

This flight: 1.2 Hours Dual
Total Hours: 40.3 (37.2 Dual, 3.1 Solo)