Finding my Feet

Slowly, I'm beginning to find my feet and more importantly I'm actually learning to use them in the Luscombe. Dispite the moans lately about all sorts, I've done a nice amount of flying. I've done about 5 hours in two weeks. It hasn't been quality hours of circuit bashing, more enjoying the freedom that having my own aeroplane has brought me.

My first trip was to Birr in advance of their breakfast flyin. I decided to wander down there primarily because I'd never been. I figured, it might be a good idea to get some flying and landings in before trying to do it in front of an audience. A good idea it was too. There was no-one there so I started by practicing a proper overhead join, decending dead-side and then joining the downwind, quite nicely if I say so myself. Onto final aproach for landing .... landing, ha! Landing? Could I get it within twenty feet of the the ground, nat-ta-tall. I think it took three attempts to get down. I just wasn't getting the speed right but once I got that speed under control the rest of it was okay. I'm still not what you'd call greasing them on. I think I may be a little too keen to get in contact with the ground once I'm close, rather than holding off and that desire is fueled probably by a fear of running out of runway. I'm getting there though, little by little.

The flight back to Trevet was a little better than down, I was getting better at holding heights and headings. Flying a heading on the compass is a bit of a pain. Apart from it bouncing around in the spirit, using it to command a turn just confused me. But with a bit of effort and a GPS I got back to Trevet's crosswind. It wasn't a huge crosswind but it was there. The wing down approach is still new to me and I'm not entirely comfortable with it but I know that its the right approach and while it is still feintly un-nerving to be rolling down the runway on one wheel, it is also very satisfying indeed. It certainly wasn't a tidy landing by any standards but me and HI were down in one piece.

The following weekend was about achieving some milestones. I headed west from Trevet heading for my home town to show my parents my proudest achievement. They didn't say but it must have been a little strange for them to be standing in the garden watching a circling aeroplane knowing that it was me that was up there and not down there tearing out the kitchen door at the slightest sound of an engine. I circled around a few times, wagged my wings and continued west. I was bound for a small private strip near Galway that some friends and future neighbours have set up. Overhead the nearest motorway exit, I could see the nearby church and a little beyond that, the hangar doors.
I did one slow flyby to get the feel of the circuit, to check the winds and to make sure there was someone there. Once more around and yet another crosswind landing, this one fully crosswind at 12 knots. I stopped for a cuppa, a few Jaffa cakes and a quick chat then I was off home again. 

By the time I was getting back to Trevet Dublin ATIS were giving 18knots at 280 degrees, yet another 12 knot crosswind. I shouldn't really have but I extended the downwind to give me plenty of time on final approach to get a feel for the wind and to get properly comfortable with the required correction for the crosswind. It wasn't as nice a landing as the one in Galway but it worked and now that most of my landings lately are crosswind I'm feeling a lot more comfortable in HI.

Apart from being a good exercise in crosswind landings the flight to helped me sort out how to use the compass. The trick I've found is not look at the compass as an indicator to which way to turn but rather, read off your current heading and visualise whether you need to turn left or right to pick up the new heading. Simpler, much simpler.

The following day was the Birr breakfast flyin. So HI got a quick early morning spruce up and off we flew. The winds were light and the visibility made navigating easy, as did my new found way of dealing with compass headings. I know it seems a bit odd to even bother with the compass since I have a GPS on board but I like the idea of being able to fly on HIs basic panel. What's the point in having the compass if I cant navigate with it ! As I approached Kilcormac Birrs frequency was busy with arriving traffic but by the time I made my first call there were just two of us left. I was told I could join the base leg but I opted to join downwind to give myself plenty of time to settle myself into the circuit and ready myself for landing.

With only a light breeze down the runway, the landing was much easier than of late and despite the undulations at the start of the runway it was quite a respectable landing. I parked up HI and had a cup of tea and caught up with a Cub owner who's first hand experiences of ownership switched me on to the idea that owning a aeroplane was a viable proposition. I couldn't stay long, as I had to meet my brother back in Dublin so a short 40min later, I was back in the cockpit and heading for Trevet.

The flight back was real "pinch me" experience. Here I was pootling over the Irish countryside; its bogs and roads drifting below me, its periphery mountains distant beacons directing me home. In my mid-thirties-ish in my own aeroplane, I am not only one of the small band fortunate enough to call themselves pilots, I'm also a member of an even more fortunate group: those that get to live their childhood dreams.

Clear skies.

Comments

[Geoffreymyers]

This sounds somewhat similar to my weekend. I did my short and long solo cross-country flights this weekend. There's nothing in the world quite like the thrill of taking to the skies in your own plane and going somewhere, just you and the sky.
Keep working those landings and you'll be smooth every time before you know it. I struggled with mine for a while until they just started coming together. I had a tendency to fly my landing pattern too close on the downwind, and turn too soon onto base. I kept ending up too high and too fast to get to the runway. Once I started being more consistent on downwind, the rest of the landing followed neatly.
Blue skies!

[David]

Ditto on the downwind. I'm finding that flying the stick AND rudder Luscombe isn't yet as instinctive as it flying modern aeroplanes. Once that comes to me in the Luscombe I'll be back to my usual smoothness.

[Leia]

That was beautiful -- we are soooo lucky aren't we!

[David]

We certainly are, Leia, we certainly are.

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