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I flew a small airplane yesterday for the first time since December. It was my familiarization flight in a new aircraft, and flying in and out of a new airport.
The flight went superbly well. I made a few mistakes, but I corrected them with one exception without the instructor mentioning it, and alltogether without the instructor having to touch the controls. In fact, he signed me off, so now I can go flying in that airplane by myself. Whoo-hoo!
After the flight, I did something pretty bone-headed which I will talk about here in the fullness of time.
Lessons on the day:
* a question can be the most effective way to correct someone "What is your target speed for this part of the approach?"
* power down, then flaps down Landing an aircraft is a pratical (as opposed to theoretical) exercise in dynamic energy conservation. You want to bleed off your two forms of energy (speed and altitude) in a controlled fashion so that you end up minimum speed as you touch down on the runway. The procedure for doing this is the pilot has an approach speed that they maintain by adjusting the pitch of the aircraft. To start the approach, the pilot adjusts the engine and flaps such that the airplane will bleed altitude at a reasonable rate (say, 500 feet per minute). The flaps and engine are adjusted (while keeping speed constant) to make the decending glide path of the aircraft end up at the end of the runway.
The engine adds energy, flaps subtract it. As you adjust your approach, it makes more sense to first decrease throttle, and after its at idle, add flaps to continue to bleed energy faster. The wrong way to do it is to start adding lots of flaps when the engine is still running above idle, so you have the engine producing energy and the flaps subtractng it. One thing that's wrong with this is that it's easy to adjust throttle, up or down. Once you've added flaps, it's dangerous to retract them too fast because they change the pitch and stall characteristics of the airplane. So once you have the runway made, drop power to idle and then add flaps to make the approach right. [Of course, this is all within the context of following the established procedure. See my next post for more.]
* on a grass field, you want full flaps on every landing Full flaps means slower stall speed, which means less energy available as you touch down, which is easier on the airplane. I forgot to put on full flaps on my second landing, and fixing that for the third landing got me mixed up and I ended up dropping a bunch of flaps with the engine above idle. Which brings me to:
* if you think you need power, you do Historically, my approaches tend to be high and fast. I guess just a residual fear of trying not to pile into the ground, but when I go flying for the first time in a while, my first couple of approaches will be high and fast until I get into the rhythm of a proper approach. Yesterday was no exception (there were also mountains that I was trying not to hit). However, the third approach I made, having added full flaps too soon, I ended up too low and too slow. I realized the problem in time, and fixed the landing without the instructor having to intervene, but finding myself too low on approach with full flaps (meaning the engine is less effective in trying to climb) is something very firmly in the category of "something to not do". In this situation, don't be bashful about adding power. You can always remove it once you're high enough.
By the way, on a grass field, you always taxi with the yoke pulled back all the way, to relieve the nose gear and tire. You just sort of pretend that you're in a taildragger.
Hopefully more flying stories soon.