Lesson 4, More Slow Flight

Luckily for me there was a cancellation on Antonio's schedule today so he gave me a call and offered me a lunchtime slot, I naturally accepted and headed down to Blackbushe. Today the weather was fantastic, around 30c with clear blue skies and almost unlimited visibility, the wind was fairly calm although a slight crosswind was in effect accross the runway. I found out that sitting in the katana cockpit with the sun beating down feels like slowly being cooked, due to the wide canopy, so we taxied as quickly as possible to get to the runway and I attempted the take-off. Once in the air, the cockpit became alot cooler and it was once again a good place to be.

The take-off was an improvement from my last attempt but still was far from perfect, I need much more take-off practice! Once airborne I climbed through the beautiful skies and soon began the point of todays lesson, more slow flight with flaps and a stall. Today I felt much more confident than my previous lesson and everything seemed to fall into place, I was able to remember the correct sequence of events, such as carb heat to on, reduce power, raise the nose to slow the plane to 70knts, apply 1 stage of flap, maintain 70knts descent, apply 2nd stage of flap, maintain 60knts descent. I made a couple of small errors, mainly with trying to maintain the airspeed and managing to lose the heading by not paying enough attention. We practiced a few go-arounds and some standard ascending, descending which all went very well, on the return to Blackbushe I asked if Antonio would demonstrate a stall, so he did. The stall was, like everyone else mentions, nothing to worry about.

Today I felt as though I had made progress, and Antonio was very pleased with todays lesson. Next lesson is tomorrow morning, we are due to practice steep turns and more slow flight maintaining altitude.