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April 5, 2002 - Got It!
If you have been following along you know that I've now been working on
landings for almost two months after mastering the basic flight maneuvers.
Certainly my skills have improved across the board but the reason I'm still
pre-solo is my landings. Now don't get me wrong - some of this is colored
by hind sight. The whole time going through it I always felt I was just
another week or so from getting it down. I was having a blast the whole
time - I've always loved flying. I still want the window seat even
though I've logged a quarter million miles or so.
Also - you'll note it's April and I'm still flying. Nope - I'm still
unemployed. But I had to cancel last Saturday's lesson to go do some out
of town job interviews. I'm now quite sure I'm going to get an offer in
the next week or two and I consider this a "make up" for what I missed
last weekend. Ironically it is this trip out of town and my cancelled
lesson that solved my problem...
I had been struggling and had the kind of brain damaged improvement that
comes from near mind-numbing repetition. But I still didn't really
"get it". I knew at an academic level what needed to happen but
I just didn't have the feel.
But today was my breakthrough. When I went out of town last weekend to
do my interviews I picked up some reading material. On a whim I bought Stick
and Rudder by William Langewiesche (ISBN 0070362408).
This book was written in 1946 and has sold over 200,000 copies over the years -
not bad for a flying only text. I was at Barnes and Noble looking for
something flight focused. I had grabbed some magazines but I read too fast
for these to last me there and back.
But Wolfgang writes about flying - the actual art of making an airplane go
through the air. Reading that and visualizing things in my head a few
things clicked. He gives a great discussion about flight dynamics and how
the airplane behaves. One of the biggest ones was the visual trick to
judging your approach. Nobody had told that to me - I guess it was mainly
oversight but without that trick I was always struggling to manage my glide
slope and not having as much attention left to manage my speed and landing as I
should.
When I got back and we went up for the next lesson Michael was ready to do
some more pattern work. I told him that I wanted to go out and simulate
some real descents and approaches and do my flares up to a full stall (at
altitude) so I could really work on my feel. So we did that for a few
times and I felt I really got it for the first time. So we went back and
did several touch and goes and even Mike noticed that things were
different. I really got it.
When we got back Michael started talking actively about getting me ready for
solo. I got my written for my stage check and my stage 1 check ride list
to review. It turned out my solo was still a month away - but the last two
weeks of that was all scheduling delays. I suffered from putting off my
Stage 1 check-ride for a week because of work schedule. That ended up
costing me two weeks because of a bad combination of the first weather scratch I
had since January and a bad weekend for low wing planes. Ahart had five
low wing single engine aircraft and they _all_ went down for training purposes -
one was in an annual, one was overdue for it's 100 hours and the rest had
squawks that kept them out of the air for a few crucial days.
Finally I was on my way forward again...
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