David's Flight Adventures

We had agreed that this week we had 3 options.  The first was to continue with circuits and to get me back doing them on my own to do some solo consolidation.  The second option was to go and do exercise 15, 'Unusual Attitudes and Recovery'.  The final was to start looking at navigation and cross country.  There was a cross wind on runway 2 5, so it was decided that it was too much for me to go solo, so we settled on the second option of unusual attitudes. We started by briefing the exercise and going through what the correct procedure was to recover from each of the 4 main unusual attitudes. Nose down - Set the power to idle and gently ease out of the dive.  Pull up and when the aircraft has settled at about 60/70 knots, re-apply power to maintain straight and level flight. Nose up - Set the power to full to maintain the climb and then lower the nose to get back to level flight.  Once level, reduce the power to maintain straight and level flight. Spiral ...

Following the euphoria of the first solo it has been a quiet 7 weeks.  I had 3 weeks where the weather was against me and then another 4 week of the UK being in another COVID-19 lockdown.  The week leading up to this had also been unsettled and it wasn't until the actual flying day that I could see that it was going to be possible to fly at all. As I hadn't flown for 7 weeks, we decided that we would start by going away from the airfield just to get back in to it again.  We did some straight and level, level turns, climbing and descending turns and a couple of practice forced landings (PFLs). We then got back in to the nitty gritty of circuits and landings.  All in all they were reasonable considering the time since I last did them.  There were a few notes: 1. One landing I was too high and fast and I really should have gone around but instead landed a bit too long.  I was thinking it, but should have acted on it.  There is no shame going around! 2. An...