After passing the knowledge test, I vowed to get back on my Monday schedule. This being a Monday, that meant it was flying day. I reported to the flight school and met with Josh. We discussed the test and what we would be doing today. He mentioned that we’d head out to the practice area and work up the ground reference maneuvers and then come back in and he’d hop out. After that what to do was at my discretion.
I preflighted the plane, started, got a clearance and we were ready to go. It was a little busy, but not too bad. ATC held us up and put us behind a Citation. It was a really nice jet, but piston drivers are people too! Josh and I discussed jets while we taxied. I mentioned that if I had 2.4 million dollars, I would buy a Citation Mustang and Josh furthered my jet lust by pointing me to the Embraer Phenom. Now I need another million dollars to meet the 3 million price tag on that one.
We took off, after another delay for a jet to take off. We turned out toward the practice area and I set the plane up for cruise. After a brief cruise, we were ready to start ground reference maneuvers. We started with turns around a point, which I performed decently. My major issue is that I go along and do really well and then all of a sudden I bust my altitude or end up losing my ground track. We did about 4 sets of turns (2 in each direction) and then moved on to s turns.
S turns are not exactly my best maneuver, I usually don’t do that well with them. I was hoping that Josh would be able to help me clear up some issues. Unfortunately, I proceeded to perform a bunch of excellent s turns. Either it has suddenly clicked or I just have no clue what a good s turn is. Josh mentioned how good my s turns were and then told me to let ATC know we wanted to come back in.
I pointed the plane toward the airport and keyed the radio. They immediately vectored us into a right base for 5R. I had the speeds and altitudes pegged and I made an absolutely beautiful landing. We taxied onto the ramp, Josh wrote his time down and sent me back out to the practice area for the rest of the lesson. I performed a short field takeoff, for fun not out of necessity. It is pretty funny to do short field stuff at McGhee Tyson with 9000 feet of runway at your disposal. I was a couple of hundred feet up before I had reached the mid-point of the runway.
Something I wanted to do was look for my grandparents’ house, because I knew that I was all over the top of it. I set up a little pattern that was basically a long oval with a 180 degree steep turn at either end and proceeded to look. It took about 2 circuits of this pattern before I found their house. The area looks a lot different from the air.
After seeing their house, I did a 720 degree steep in each direction, satisfied myself that I could maintain altitude and speed, and I set up for s-turns. I did one pass up and down 321 and decided to call it a day. Unfortunately, the radio chatter had picked up significantly since I had returned to the practice area.
The radio chatter was coming so quickly, that I was afraid I would never be able to break in and request to come back in for landing. I just flew along the ridge and kept turning around to try and maintain a decent proximity to the airport and practice area. I made about 3 circuits of this pseudo holding pattern before I got a chance to request permission to head back in. ATC issued me a heading that was basically parallel to the ridge and I complied. After about 5 minutes and upon noticing that I was nearly to Six Mile, the controller broke in and let me know that I didn’t have to stay on the heading and just to hold to the east of the field until further notice. I entered another long oval holding pattern and just flew circles for at least 3 or 4 minutes before I received vectors back in.
I had panned to ask for some touch and goes, but I thought better of it. Especially considering a lot of time had been eaten up waiting to get back in . The put me in another right base for 5R and I set up for landing. The landing was excellent right up to the part just after the mains touched down. That’s when I accidentally bumped the throttle forward and lost the centerline in the initial freak out. Thankfully, I pulled the throttle eased it back toward the centerline and let the nose wheel down gently. I taxied back slightly embarrassed and quite mad at myself for messing up a really good landing.