Lesson Ten, Touch and Go's Galore!

Wednesday lunch time I went home from work with an upset stomach, I dosed myself up with the usual anti-nausea stuff and went to sleep, figuring I would see how it went, and cancel my lesson if necessary. By the time I was supposed to be hitting the road for the airport I decided I was well enough to go flying.

I got to the airport a few minutes early, but the 152 was still out flying, so I sat on the couch and went over my checklists. It turned out that the previous lesson had started a few minutes late, so when they got back out to the airport, instead of taxiing to the tie-downs, they just parked right in front of the flight school building so I could start the pre-flight inspection for my lesson.

As I was checking the fuel level in the tanks, the plane started slowly rolling across the concrete, so I hopped down, opened the door, and with my leg braced against the landing gear, pulled the knob marked "Parking Brake" which promptly came off in my hand. Fortunately Bob came out of the flight school building at that point, and got a wheel chock from the hangar. I put the knob back on, completed the pre-flight, got the weather information, and we headed to Tulsa International Airport for traffic pattern work.

Bob told me that part of the lesson was also how to deal with strange requests from air traffic controllers, most of the time they won't give you anything weird, but not to worry, he would just request something for me when the time came.

We flew into the traffic pattern at Tulsa International, and were cleared for landing on 19 right, with the option to take off again after touchdown. We did several laps in a right traffic pattern, when Bob made our first strange request, a left turn after take off, and a left traffic pattern to the parallel runway 19 Left. Air Traffic Control gave us the go-ahead, so after climbing back above 500 feet above the ground, we made the left turn and went around the other way.


Bob asked the tower for some Light Gun signals, but we couldn't see them, as it was still daylight. The Light Gun is basically a huge flashlight that shines white, green or red, that the Air Traffic Controllers can use to signal airplanes that have had radio failures.

After our take off on 19 Left, Bob had another "strange request" ready, a right turn after the end of the runway, followed by another right turn, which would take us back north between the runways, for a left turn short approach back onto 19 right. The Air Traffic Controllers were fine with that, as long as we stayed east of 19 Right, and west of the control tower at mid-field. There was a Southwest Airlines 737 coming in to land on 19 Left as we were flying over the northern end of the airport. Watching from above as the jet touched down was a really neat sight!
I made the left turn and the short landing, using a forward slip to lose altitude quickly. After touchdown, we raised the flaps, hit the power, and headed home to Riverside Airport, where we were given clearance for a straight in landing behind another Cessna.

I logged eight landings and 1.2 hours on this lesson, that solo flight is really getting close now, I can hardly wait!
-Gareth