It was sad that I had to wait till the final day of the week to get back into the plane after I last flew last Friday, which was eight days ago. Two consecutive flights got cancelled due to two consecutive days of haze. My luck has been pretty rotten eh? When I wasn't planned for flight, the weather turns beautiful.
I eventually managed to get a successful flight on Sunday, which was my fifth solo circuit flight. I was assigned to an instructor which I only flew once before and he is also the Flight Safety Manager of the school. I've been hearing his reputation of putting safety as the utmost priority, so to be able to clear his solo check will not be an easy feat.
Flight time was scheduled at 1700hrs with the circuit being quite free of traffic. I made extra effort on the safety aspect to let him have a peace of mind. Haha, not that I'm usually dangerous, but with him I made more double checks to assure him. And up I went, back into the air after more than a week off it. The feeling was familiar right from the start especially with the strong headwind of above 20kts just like my last flight.
I made the corrections needed at different legs of the circuit due to crosswind, and my first landing was beautiful. Instructor was happy, so am I. Subsequent landings weren't as beautiful, but it was to standard and I was allowed to go solo after four rounds of circuit. Since I was the last user of the plane for the day, I was allowed to clock more solo hours and return before sunset.
It was a hot day with the sun shining into the cockpit in the absence of clouds. It gets very glaring especially when I was climbing into a setting sun. One of the landings I did while on solo was scary though. The aircraft wasn't stabilised well enough and had made quite a big bounce upon touching the tarmac. I added a wee bit of power during the bounce but was blown sideways and my wings went off-level. In that split second, I made a call to abort landing and did a go-around. After I was 200ft off the ground again, I was glad I made that decision. If I hadn't, I would have probably ended up on the grass. Phewwwww...
I lost count of the number of rounds I went, but I was in the circuit for almost two hours. Adding on to the solo check duration, I clocked a total of 2.7hrs, effectively my longest flight ever. It was tiring no doubt, but it was good training for me in terms of endurance as future flights will be 2-3hrs long after I'm finished with circuit flying.
I'm now left with my final solo circuit, requiring another 1.4hrs to finish clocking my full 6hrs of solo circuit. Lastly, I hope my luck with the weather turns for the better.
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| The car needed a new battery. Gotta spend money again. |
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| Smaller players in the Chinese market |
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| Valentine's Day dinner |
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| Mass car wash in the backyard |
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| Flew until the sun set |
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