Lesson 5, Spiral Ascent/Descent
I woke up this morning to a clear cloudless sky (CAVOK) and excitedly got myself down to Blackbushe for the morning lesson. After the briefing we headed out and preflighted the Katana. The sun was already warm but due to early hour the aircraft had not yet turned into a pressure cooker thankfully, so we taxied out and I took off, in fact carried out the take off without stall warning sounds blaring and my instructor assuming crash position, so that is progress! Taking off is starting to feel easy!
I executed a climbing turn to the west and headed for the training area, on the way we reviewed all the manoevers learnt up to this point, and again this went good, we where however a little distracted by the weather. My instructor commented that this is the best weather he has seen since coming to England, (being as he is Spanish), and it truly was fantastic. Visibility was unlimited, we could see the southern coast of England and the Isle of Wight from only around 3,000ft so around 50 miles visibility, off to the east we could see the tall landmarks of London. There was also virtually no wind, 2knts variable direction so very smooth for flying, just a few thermals to interrupt the smoothness.
We began to practice various maneouvers, including turns at 45 and 60 degrees of bank which were much fun, the pull of the g-forces was totally tolerable. I found it fairly hard to maintain my altitude whilst turning at 60 degrees but after a time managed to keep the nose up. At 60 degrees the world looms very large in the horizon and although initially a little strange quickly became entertaining. We also carried out some spiral climbs and descents at a constant speed at various degrees of bank, which once I learnt the position of the horizon became a fairly easy to maintain the airspeed.
The next thing to attempt was navigating with the compass, this was harder than expected! I understood the concepts from the briefing, however in practice I just couldn't think quickly enough and often turned the wrong direction to reach a heading. This I will need to practice more.
Finally we returned to land, I flew the circuit and lined up fairly well and Antonio took over to actually land.
This mornings lesson was alot of fun and I did not want it to come to an end, I am very much looking forward to my next lesson on Friday.
I executed a climbing turn to the west and headed for the training area, on the way we reviewed all the manoevers learnt up to this point, and again this went good, we where however a little distracted by the weather. My instructor commented that this is the best weather he has seen since coming to England, (being as he is Spanish), and it truly was fantastic. Visibility was unlimited, we could see the southern coast of England and the Isle of Wight from only around 3,000ft so around 50 miles visibility, off to the east we could see the tall landmarks of London. There was also virtually no wind, 2knts variable direction so very smooth for flying, just a few thermals to interrupt the smoothness.
We began to practice various maneouvers, including turns at 45 and 60 degrees of bank which were much fun, the pull of the g-forces was totally tolerable. I found it fairly hard to maintain my altitude whilst turning at 60 degrees but after a time managed to keep the nose up. At 60 degrees the world looms very large in the horizon and although initially a little strange quickly became entertaining. We also carried out some spiral climbs and descents at a constant speed at various degrees of bank, which once I learnt the position of the horizon became a fairly easy to maintain the airspeed.
The next thing to attempt was navigating with the compass, this was harder than expected! I understood the concepts from the briefing, however in practice I just couldn't think quickly enough and often turned the wrong direction to reach a heading. This I will need to practice more.
Finally we returned to land, I flew the circuit and lined up fairly well and Antonio took over to actually land.
This mornings lesson was alot of fun and I did not want it to come to an end, I am very much looking forward to my next lesson on Friday.
posted by Chris @ Tuesday, June 21, 2005
2 Comments:
At Thursday, June 23, 2005 1:34:00 am,
Oshawapilot said…
Congratuations on the beginning of your flight training! Reading your last few posts brings back alot of memories of my own beginnings last year.
I only wish I had the money to fly several times per week like you are doing. I would certainly have been completed my training by now if that had been an option! :-)
Keep up the posts, I too am a blog junkie, and just ran across yours when reading one of your comments on Clumpinglitters blog.
I have my own here at Blogger.com as well:
http://oshawapilot.blogspot.com
At Friday, June 24, 2005 5:22:00 pm,
Chris said…
Thanks Mark :-)
Aha! another blog to read! I will no doubt spend the next few days catching up by reading your archives!
Yeah the cost factor is a bit of a downer, but then the experience is justification enough. I considered selling a body part to raise the funds to support this adventure but came to realise that I could potentially fail my class 2 medical therefore that was a no-go ;-).
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