A conga line similar to the one at DKX.
I had planned a new cross country to Cleveland Hardwick (HDI), but as I learned upon arrival at the flight center, I would not be making my cross country today. Josh assured me that we would get it done in short order, but that it wasn’t happening today. Instead we grabbed a plane and planned to head for Downtown (DKX). We would be accompanied by the other 172 as another flight instructor and his student would be traveling there. The other guy was going to solo and we were going to get out of the way and do some short and soft field landings. We all set out for preflight straight away. As usual everything was pretty well in order and I was ready to go. The other guy had beaten us by roughly 5 minutes, but he had a head start.
I radioed for a clearance and received one. Did the run up and taxied to the runway. Take off was normal and we were pointed to Downtown. I hadn’t ever flown into Downtown, but I had been there a number of times. The owner of my flight school also owns the flight school there so there is a great deal of mixing that goes on between the two. It doesn’t hurt that it only takes about 5 minutes to fly there either. As we were flying into the area, the controllers alerted us to some traffic that was nearby and also that there were “multiple contacts in the vicinity of Downtown.” We thanked them and they approved us to change frequencies.
The runways at Downtown are 8 and 26, which are similar in orientation to McGhee Tyson’s 5 and 23. We were pretty much set up for a straight entry into a down wind for 26. We entered the pattern. The radio calls were new to me, but I knew what to do even if I hadn’t done it before. We came around and Josh told me to just execute a normal landing to get acquainted with some of the characteristics of the approach. I did so and we were about a third of the way down the runway when I touched down. It wasn’t bad, but it meant we’d do a full stop and join the conga line.
It wasn’t until we were third in line behind Remote Area Medical’s Beech 18 and the guy doing his solo that we realized we’d be better off at McGhee Tyson. It wasn’t so much that we were having to wait as it was that there was a helicopter in bound somebody trying to do a straight in approach that just kept hammering the radios and at the last minute veered off onto an upwind leg to come all the way back around to 26. The phrase of the day – “We’ll be staying in the pattern.” Once we got ready to take 26 for takeoff, we radioed that we would not be staying the pattern and that we were going home (something to that effect anyway). We did just that too. After clearing the area, we switched back to Knoxville Approach and told them we were in bound and that we’d like to do some touch and goes if possible.
They had no objections and set us up for a straight in approach to 23R behind the Beech 18 from DKX. This shouldn’t have been an issue, but he was a little slow in clearing the runway. I thought we would have to go around until at the last moment he cleared the runway. The first landing which was meant to be a soft field landing. I say it was meant to be a soft field landing because if we had actually be on a soft field our plane would had been buried up to the struts. In trying to perform all the necessary elements of setting up the landing, and upon Josh’s urging to set it down on the numbers, I absolutely planted it on the numbers. It wasn’t hard enough to damage anything, but it was far from a soft field landing. I retracted the flaps and firewalled the throttle and we were on our way back around. We had noticed some birds lingering around and so we kept our eyes on them. This time I was just doing a short field landing. Abeam the numbers I reduced power and dropped in 10 degrees of flaps. I turned base, dropped in the second notch and then the third just after turning final. Everything was looking good except the birds. They were now flying about between the runways. We let the tower know that they were there. They acknowledged and began warning other aircraft. I put it down and everything worked out this time.
We took to the sky for one more trip to try that soft field again. Like last time we flew a full pattern and we were back around again in short order. Unfortunately the birds (big vultures I might add) were now quite agitated. The end result being that just as we were reaching the edge of the pavement, the birds began flying right were we wanted to go. I reacted quickly and I think I surprised Josh when I went full throttle, called a go around and added full power. It was a good go around. Once we were back around they gave us the left side for our full stop landing, which was safe and uneventful.
In the end, I was glad we hadn’t done the cross country because this lesson was full of those learning experiences. At the end of the lesson Josh asked me if I could do the cross country on Sunday afternoon. As I am always happy to fly, I quickly agreed. I left with a smile and vowed to talk to the operations guys about the birds on Monday. Also, I thought I’d better make sure that my wife was OK with me flying on Sunday.