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February 12, 19, 23 & March 3, 2002- Landings are Hard
Now we get to landings. This part is hard. I had the approach
pretty good but I always seemed to either fly into the runway or flare too high
and bump pretty hard. Luckily by this time I had made the decision to
stick with the Warrior and the low wings. One help is that the Warriors
don't bounce on landing nearly as much as the Cessnas do - but it's more
important to make it soft because you can blow out the oleos or tires since the
gear do bottom out against a hard stop (unlike the leaf spring steel of the
Cessnas).
Two of these four days we went to Byron (C83). We had flown over this
little airport on virtually every training flight heading out to the nice, flat,
empty terrain out in the San Joaquin delta but we finally go to land here.
In hindsight my approaches weren't real smooth. I was still flying to
the runway - adding and removing power. I also had a common beginner's bug
- I was always high on my approach - it was a struggle to keep it low enough for
a smooth slow glide. After all that work to be in the air you were
terrified of the ground.
It was kind of a mix of a grind and a lot of fun. Landings were
challenging, which for me made it interesting - but I also felt like a month
slipped by without a lot of progress. This would actually continue for
almost another month before I'd kind of made a breakthrough.
Again, If I'd written this at the time I'd probably have more to say but looking
I mostly just remember struggling with the flare and touchdown. At the start of this
phase I was feeling good and thought I might see my solo by early March. I
even went out and got my medical done. I think I would have been pretty depressed if I had known it wouldn't come until
May 9th - but more on that later.
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