What goes up... hopefully comes down!

Full throttle, airspeed increasing, lift-off... climb established... flaps up, climb power set, climb RPM set... nil runway remaining, tap the brakes, gear up... bzzzzzzzzzzz *THUD*... orange light...

And so began my foray into "suck-up wheels"... aka. retractable landing gear

The club recently got a Cessna 172 RG "Cutlass" ZK-EWP on the flightline, and I had been dying to try it out. I was supposed to start my type rating last weekend, but had to defect the aircraft during the pre-flight due to some misbehaving cowl flaps.

The defect was fixed earlier this week, so then it was a matter of waiting for the instructor... Today was not a bad day for aviating... a little bumpy, but nothing like the 30knot+ winds we've had recently! And besides... I needed an excuse for not studying for my Instrument Exams :P

So I duely pre-flighted EWP, strapped in the CFI and headed for the training area for the usual runthrough of maneuvers required for a type-rating... turns, stalls etc... only this time we also played with the gear, getting used to the pitch changes as it went up and down... what the "gear horn" sounds like etc.

After that we headed back to the airfield for an overhead join and some circuits which I thought were barely passable... the circuit gets very busy when instead of throttle, mixture and flaps, you now have throttle, mixture, flaps, pitch, cowl flaps and undercarriage to worry about... and an aircraft that will easily do 120+knots downwind if you let it!

As Rob had said during the briefing, if you get setup early, and slow down before you enter the circuit, you'll be fine... Apparently these old, gray-haired instructors know a thing or two about this flying malarky :P

A couple of circuits later and we taxiied back in as Rob had another booking... and I needed a cup of tea and a lie down!

1.0 hours of pure busyness :-/

Later in the afternoon, we rounded up some self-loading ballast (ie. a couple of CPL students lounging about the club) to get the aircraft to maximum all up weight (MAUW), so I could do the MAUW check as required by law...

A standard circuit (very average), a go-around (executed nicely), a flapless landing (not too shabby), another standard circuit (better, but still average) and then I surprised myself by making a very nice shortfield landing onto the grass to finish.

0.7 hours of pure busyness with onboard spectators :P

All in all, a fun day's flying... and I now have a 172RG Type Rating... (and an appreciation for why "cup" checks are important ;)



These Flights: 1.0 + 0.7 Dual
Total Hours: 278.6 (139.9/114.0 Day, 8.6/16.1 Night, 11.9 IFR)