Circuit bashing and learning

Last Sunday, 17 April at 10:20 I flew a set of circuits with my new(ish) instructor Dan. Even though I wasn’t great, I felt the rust coming off and left feeling that I was improving albeit slowly and am starting to believe I will be able to get my PPL one day.

6 touch ‘n’ goes and a landing to a full stop. Take off on runway 26, left-hand circuit to the North just short of Radlett. Weather was sunny, very hazy with cloud base at 2,500ft. The downwind leg was done at 1,000ft.

Takeoff and initial climb and level off were all good and pretty consistent (still need to gain a better rudder feel though). Dan pointed out the way points which were pretty easy to monitor. I did much more of the radio work this time with no problems.

On the first 2 circuits I was a bit slow on the downwind checks and the base leg came up fast meaning that I was not in the best position for final approach. (A new acronym; every instructor seems to have their own favourite: BUMFRASIT: Brakes, Undercarriage, Mixture, Fuel, Radio, Security, Icing, Temperatures [& pressures]. In practice, we get the downwind radio call out of the way first to concentrate on the checks and positioning for coming down on the base leg).

The base leg check – power to 20%, 2 flap settings (25%), altitude and trim for 75 knots - all the time maintaining the ‘picture’ on the left re. the runway threshold.

Then the final flap setting, radio call and landing. Landings 1 and 2 were pretty ropey. The whole of circuit 3 was good but … I’m still not nailing it every time. In particular, I seem to be wayward on the final flare … practice, practice, practice.

One interesting moment: I was on finals at 400ft and just over 30 seconds from touchdown and airtraffic control cleared another aircraft onto the runway to backtrack in my direction to the takeoff hold. My instructor was VERY direct with air traffic who then instructed the other aircraft to do a 180 and exit the runway immediately. We landed without mishap.

I’ve had to cancel both my lessons for this coming weekend (going to Cornwall with Kirsty!) but I’m up again on Saturday 30^th April.