The heat wave has hit Southern Australia and is expected to last until Friday. As such, my flight on Monday was cancelled as by law you can't send a student for solo in temperatures 35'C and above. It was reading 35'C on the dot even at 1845hrs which was my flight time, and so I went home disappointed.
Tuesday started early for me and my mates with three mass briefs about our upcoming flying lessons. Steep turns, steep turning descends and forced landings. The first two was actually already done with flying, so the mass brief was more like a revision for me. Forced landings seems to be quite a handful. Lots of checks to do alongside the flying, plus the emergency of engine failure. I guess only flying the actual lesson will I have a better idea of the workload.
Wednesday, 1st-solo check Part 2
Another extremely hot day with temperatures hovering close to 40'C. My flight was planned at 1845hrs, and there was a heavy shower two hours before that. Lucky it stopped before my flight but the temperatures were climbing real fast once the sun emerged from the clouds again.
A quick check with the AWIS before I started taxiing showed 35'C. But it's fine, it should get cooler as the sun sets slowly. Off I went for my solo check. The conditions were very good but I was getting pretty strong crosswinds. The base leg had to be flown at 2000rpm instead of the usual 1700rpm or below to keep to airspeed of 75kts.
Final leg was better as I started descending further; I was able to control the aircraft fairly well. Then came the landing, the achilles heel of my flying. I have spent quite some time looking at other people's landing last week and I finally realised my mistake. I was rushing to land this whole time, that's why I ended up impacting the aircraft onto the runway most of the time. So this time, I took my time, holding the attitude for as long as I could. WALA~~~~ My landing was as smooth as butter, so good that my instructor was surprised and commented "that was a really good circuit mate".
One round done, second round was good, but the sun was starting to shine into my eyes as it got lower into the horizon. Sadly, the weather turned for the worse. An impending storm was coming and winds were getting erratic. My instructor decided to play safe and not send me for solo in such unpredictable conditions. I wasn't disappointed though as I got into the flight thinking about improving my landing more than going for solo.
We did two more rounds of circuit in flapless configuration for landing. The approach is a little shallower so it took me a while to get used to it. The sortie ended just shy of an hour with my instructor really glad about my flying. His words "I'm really happy about your flying. You know, you were from nehhhh about there in our previous flight to ready for solo today, that's very good improvement", it felt good to receive such compliments from an instructor that doesn't dish out praises easily.
Finally I've sorted out my crap landing and I can't wait for my next flight.
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| Only mother nature stopping me |
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| Dinner 150114. Nasi Lemak by my house mate! |
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| Brunch 170114 |
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| Dinner 170114. Oh how I miss prata |
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| The hot weather results in a yellow moon at night |
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| Breakfast 180114. Singapore style. |
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| The winds cancelled my flight at the airfield but it can't stop me from doing what I like to do at the backyard |
Disappointing week in terms of flying hours. Monday was cancelled due to high temperatures, Wednesday's good flight ended up with a storm which stopped me from going solo, Thursday Friday Saturday not planned, and Sunday's solo check flight got cancelled due to strong winds.
I only managed to clock 0.9hrs this whole week, which is very slow progression. I seriously hope the weather will be good and not throw such tantrums again. 11 weeks gone, I have 19hrs.
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