It’s Monday again and as is now usual I enjoyed the day because I knew it would culminate in flying. I have been instructed by my wife to wear my favorite polo to all lessons until I solo. On the off chance that I’m surprised with soloing and then they cut my shirt tail. I look forward to it. She just hopes that shirt finally dies. So this morning I left the house in my favorite shirt.
I got to the flight school and found the place stuffed full of people. Josh was finishing up what I assume was an introductory flight. Another instructor was finishing a lesson and there was some CAP guy there. It was pretty busy inside considering there wasn’t much traffic outside. After a brief conversation with some of the people I got the plane checked out to me and went down to do preflight. I thought I was going to have a bit of a wait but surprisingly Josh approached about half way through the preflight followed closely by Nathan. They discussed some aspect of the R182 and donuts in Evansville while I finished the preflight.
After finishing preflight and starting up, I rolled forward to the edge of the taxiway and radioed clearance. They cleared us to taxi to 5R via alpha and we proceeded to do so. We had assumed that since there was not a lot of traffic the run-up could be done at the end of the taxiway. Unfortunately, when we arrived at alpha2 I looked back and there were about 4 planes behind us. We expedited the run-up and radioed we were ready for takeoff. Just after we had completed run-up a business jet passed behind us and went to alpha1. They also radioed they were ready for takeoff. I expected ATC to send them ahead of us, but they didn’t. We were cleared to takeoff and we did so in a hurry because I looked over when taxiing out on the runway and saw a steady stream of planes coming down the taxiway.
We got into the air and ATC had us make right traffic. Once I got onto the downwind I slowed way down to give them time to clear traffic. We came back around and made a pretty good landing, retracted the flaps, and went around again. On that second time around Josh asked me if he had given me the pre-solo test. He hadn’t. At that point he said that it was too bad that I hadn’t because he would have gotten out the next time around. So he told me to make sure to remind him to give it to me before I left and gave me instructions for doing it. It gets a little boring when flying slow on downwind (especially when ATC extends the downwind indefinitely).
We made a couple of more passes and had a couple of more downwinds extended. Every single one got pushed out to 321 and Big Springs. It was good because I got to give Josh some directions for cutting across to 411 from 321. It turns out he has quite the commute. My landings all had good form right up to the point of the flare. What happens then is that I would flare too early leading to a bit of a rough landing. Something makes me think I’m lower than I really am.
The only real complaint I have is that if things are ever completely normal, I am afraid I won’t be able to cope. Every lesson since I started handling the radios something has been “abnormal.” Never anything big, but not standard procedures. I don’t think I’ve ever actually radioed ground control and I’ve done everything from extending downwind to a 360 between base and final. That said, it is good practice for abnormalities.
I gathered my recorder from my days of university classes and managed to capture some audio during this lesson. It was surprisingly good. It’s pretty easy to turn it on and record the lessons. The only problem is that my lessons are usually about an hour long. There is some really good audio, but it is mostly just engine noise and random chatter. I’ll probably just cut it up into interesting clips and post them.