Tuesday, July 8, 2008

With the traffic...

So ever since my first flight, I haven't gone up as much as I wanted, but that's okay I guess. My last flight I believe was my best one so far, I felt mostly in control of the aircraft and the situation. I think this is my situational awareness building :)

This flight was all about stalls and steep turns and man, you could really feel the G's in those steep turns. My instructor said I did it as well as he did and it was good enough because we had limited horizon.

What I was really proud of though, was spotting traffic. On all my previous flights, it took me forever to find traffic around me. This time I even spotted them before my instructor did, without any assistance from ATC. hehe.

On the way back to buttonville, I was calling up from the area of Preston Lake, and with just my initial call, tower told me to report over Victoria Square right away, I guess it wasn't busy yet! I love mornings.

So after that I was told to join the right base for RWY 21 and to follow a C150 just turning left base. I thought, okay traffic spotted and it shouldn't be hard to follow, but once I was close to my final, it was still mid left base, so my instructor asked tower if S turns were allowed. So we planned to extend our base and somewhat make a 180 to rejoin the left base behind the 150. I thought okay, things are good, focusing on the traffic to follow, then BAM! Instructor said, uh AIRSPEED. And I was like oh shoot, I was at 48 kts, and I had full flaps down. So close to the stall. I was focusing TOO much on the traffic that I forgot to maintain management inside the airplane. So I corrected that, and went to final and landed, it wasn't great because I tried to round out and flare to early but in time I will learn to hold off the flare.

And that has been my most interesting flight so far, other than the one before that in which I spotted a hangglider to my right which was pretty cool.

No comments: