After plenty of failed attempts to go flying over the last couple of weeks, this was the view that I was greeted with on Sunday morning. I had been hoping to go flying the day before but the cloudbase was just too low to do what I need to do - namely some upper airwork or cross country exercises.
Sunday was CAVOK and we headed out to the West to do some stalls and steep turns. I was very pleasantly surprised with my flying. The Grob is a new type to me but I was very comfortable handling it. It's a more sensitive aircraft than I'm used to but despite this I had no problems. It looks like then, that I'm actually learning some flying skills, not just flying by rote.
There were lots of cues indicating progress in my flying. I knew where I was 99% of the time and was aware of how to reticify errors all of the time. At the end of the stalls and turning, which were all wel executed and controlled, Brian, my instructor, told me to head back to the field. It wasn't a navigation exercise so I didn't have a flight plan to follow so I said to Brian that I was going to take up a southerly heading to intercept the motorway and I'd follow that back in. Flying skills, situational awareness and utterly comfortable throughout the lesson - I really am on my way to being a pilot.
I did some less than perfect touch-and-goes when I got back to the field but it was turbulent and I am new to the type, so I'm not really worried. Had I been solo, I would have quite happily aborted landings until I was happy that I had a fully stabilised approach and was ready to put the aircraft cleanly on the deck. All in all a really good day's flying.
Comments