Wednesday Evening was clear and calm, I arrived at Riverside Airport just before 8pm and started the pre-flight inspection while there was still some light. Everything checked out ok, and we had plenty of fuel for the lesson, so I went back inside to find out the plan for the evening. Bob told me that we could either fly up to Tulsa International and practice pattern work, or stay at Riverside and practice pattern work. I figured we could probably get a landing done in the time it would take to get up to International, so I elected to stay at Riverside.
We got the plane started up, and taxxiied to the FBO before radioing our intentions to the Ground controller. There was a new student pilot trying to talk on the radio, I thought back to my first fumbling attempts, and felt a bit bad for him, while at the same time feeling happy that I was now a little more comfortable talking to Air Traffic Control.
We got clearance to taxi to runway 1 left, so we headed to the run-up area, performed the run-up checklist, got the clearance from the tower for takeoff, and headed out onto the runway.
I got the plane lined up on the runway center line, and gave it full throttle, we accelerated up to 50 knots on the airspeed indicator, I eased back on the controls and we gently lifted into the air. The tower gave us clearance for a right turn to make right traffic patterns as we would be working from the parallel runway, 1 right. At 1100 feet I started the first turn while continuing the climb up to pattern altitude.
We levelled off at 1700 feet, and performed the after takeoff checklist, Fuel on, Undercarriage check, Mixture rich, Power as required, Seats and Seatbelts adjusted. By the time we were done with that, we were almost "abeam the numbers" or parallel to the runway end markings, so I pulled on the carb heat, reduced throttle to 1500 rpm, dropped in the first notch of flaps, and put the nose down to maintain 80 knots. After about 200 feet of descent, I turned onto the base leg, dropping in the 2nd notch of flaps and pitching the nose to maintain 70 knots.
I turned onto final a little early, because I mistook some ground lights on the hangars for the runway as I was glancing out the side windows, once I started the turn I realized my mistake and extended the turn until we were pointed at the runway. I dropped in the last notch of flaps and pitched to maintain 60 knots. We were above the ideal approach slope at first, as indicated by the two white approach lights, but as we continued toward the runway the top one started to get a pinkish hue, so we were pretty close to where we needed to be. The ideal approach is to maintain one red and one white light all the way to the runway.
I managed a pretty good landing, reset the flaps and carb heat, pushed in full throttle and we went up and around again.
On the fourth takeoff, as we were climbing out off the runway, I saw a brief flicker in the darkness ahead of the plane, then WHAM, something hit the windshield right in front of my face, slid off to the left side, and disappeared under the wing. We had hit a bird. Bob told me that he had seen it a split second or so before it hit, and it was a good sized bird, not something small like a sparrow. I kept an eye on the engine temperature and oil pressure as we completed the pattern to make sure nothing had been damaged other than our nerves for a minute or so, but everything looked fine.
We got in another four laps around the airport before deciding to call it a night. We got the plane parked and tied down, and I looked for any damage, but I couldn't see anything obvious, as it was pretty dark by that time, and I was using the red-lensed flashlight that is part of my night flying equipment.
We had done Nine landings in 9/10ths of an hour for the logbook. Bob told me that if I can run the pattern that well on Saturday, that I would solo for sure.
Next Lesson: Solo? Hopefully!
-Gareth
0 comments:
Post a Comment