Lesson 11, Circuits and Landings

I arrived at 8am this morning but the cloud base was clearly very low with alot of mist over the runway, so I didn't hold out much hope of getting some flying today. I saw Antonio and commented that the weather was looking crap and he replied "no, it's excellent for taxi practice" which made me laugh. The cloud was sitting at 700ft AGL and a dew point of 14/13 so hence alot of mist. I hung around for awhile but it was not improving so we called the lesson off.

However, this afternoon Antonio called me and told me the cloud has lifted enough to do circuits so I jumped in the car and headed back to Blackbushe. I preflighted much quicker this time and before long we were in the air. Todays lesson was to continue practicing circuits and also to focus on landings.

I did 8 circuits and carried out 8 landings, Antonio just sat back with his hands well away from the stick for the most part and mentioned that he was very pleased with the circuits and the landings. The landings were all ok, although one I bounced a small amount, the rest were smooth, on the centre line and good. I had one experience worth mentioning while on approach, I was at 300ft AGL, full flaps, descending at 60knts with an 8knt crosswind and a bump in the air caused the nose to pitch up suddenly and brought on a short wail from the stall horn, a wing dropped immediately and I surprised myself by taking corrective action with the rudder and power, without thinking. This was good, because it shows the training is sinking in and also it reminds me to stay focussed and to expect the unexpected.

Very pleased with todays lesson, landings are getting easier for me to judge now in terms of the flare and the approach. My next lesson is tomorrow morning, just hoping the weather behaves as forecast (the forecasters got it wrong today thats for sure).