Lesson 14, Glide Approaches

This mornings lesson was a repeat of yesterdays lesson trying to improve on flapless approaches and also to try some glide approaches (as part of Engine Failure procedure).

Preflighting was quicker and took around 10 minutes to complete and before long we were in the air. I felt much more focussed today and felt that I could improve, I think feeling positive and confident can make a whole lot of difference to flying ability.

The first few circuits were flapless and each one improved on the last. Antonio noticed I was chasing my airspeed alot by watching the indicator rather than looking outside so he covered the instruments with his map and insisted I judge my approach solely by looking outside. This made alot of difference, I was able to obtain the correct speed and glide to make a decent landing just beyond the numbers. Another good lesson learnt. I did several circuits and landings without any instruments and this helped my technique enormously, it is also very important to learn because if I am flying and I lose my primary instruments due to a pitot problem then I can still achieve a safe landing.

Something new today, midway through downwind leg, antonio cut power and told me to land on the runway. This I have to tell you surprised me, I thought no way am I going to make the runway as I have quite some distance to go to even line up. My instant thought was to turn immediately towards the airfield, however Antonio told me to carry on and fly the base leg and approach normally and maintain 70knts best glide speed. I continued downwind and then turned base a little earlier and the aircraft gradually sank lower and lower, now turned final and all was looking ok.. landed just beyond the numbers. The katana has an awesome glide! The glide began at 800 AGL and gave me good time to still complete the circuit. Antonio mentioned you couldn't do that in a 4 seater or many 2 seaters as they sink much faster but what he was trying to show me was that characteristic of the katana, this baby always wants to fly!.

We also carried out another couple of engine failure simulations which all went fine. So total of eight circuits and eight take-offs/landings without flaps. Todays lesson went very well and I made progress and no mistakes.

Antonio mentioned that I should sit the Air Law exam asap as I am ready to solo and he feels that it would help my confidence to reach that landmark. He is leaving it up to me now to decide when I want to solo. So more studying tonight and hopefully I will try and sit this on either Thursday or Friday. I have another lesson booked in tomorrow where we plan to do more instrument-less circuits and to continue to improve approaches. My landings now are more good than bad, although sometimes I deviate from centreline which I need to work on as I won't always have the luxury of a wide runway. In fact that is one disadvantage of learning at Blackbushe Airport (EGLK), the runway is huge, 4403ft long and 150ft wide. I think in many respects a smaller runway would be beneficial to learn from as it would force me to concentrate more on the centreline and touching down on the numbers.