I got to Riverside Airport Saturday afternoon just before my scheduled 1pm lesson. The Directional Gyro had been replaced in the 152 a day or two earlier, so we would be flying it.
I completed the pre-flight checks and we looked at the lesson plan for the day, we would be flying to the west practice area to work on slow flight, stalls, turns and emergency procedures, working to get the maneuvers closer to check-ride tolerances.
The airport was very busy, as there was a Beechcraft fly-in, I got the weather report from ATIS and received clearance to taxi to runway 1 left. As soon as we pulled out into the taxiway, we were stuck behind a couple of pilots in Beechcraft who had pulled up to the airport's controlled area marker before calling for any clearance, which is legal but a bit thoughtless. They eventually got finished with whatever they were doing, but we had to cancel our taxi while we waited for them. There were so many Beechcraft calling ground control that at one point the controller called out "Beechcraft one-zero.. uh, sorry, Piper one-zero-three..."
We got a new taxi clearance, completed the run-up checklist and were assigned number four in line to take off. We got to witness what was technically a runway incursion, as someone had rolled to a stop with the nose gear just past the runway edge markings before getting clearance from the tower, but nothing was reported.
Finally we were number one to takeoff, and Bob called for a soft field take-off, so I dropped in ten degrees of flaps, and held the controls back as I pushed the throttle to full, to keep the weight off the nose wheel. After rotating at 50 knots, I immediately leveled off while still in the ground effect area, increased speed to 67 knots, then raised the flaps and climbed out as normal.
We were quickly given instructions to make our turn to the west so as to get us out of the way of faster planes taking off behind us.
On Saturday I had spent some time looking out the windows at the trees that were turning yellow and red for autumn, this time out there was a lot more brown visible as the leaves were starting to fall.
We climbed to 2500 feet and headed to the practice area, where I performed some stalls and slow flight, then Bob pulled the throttle to idle and we went through the emergency procedures for a failed engine and forced landing. After deciding that we could land in the field I had picked out, we did a go-around, engine to full power and climbed back to altitude.
After some steep turns we got the fresh weather report and headed back to Riverside. The airport was still pretty busy, so we were given a hurry-up request and cleared straight in to land.
Next lesson is Wednesday, which will be night time flying again, so probably more maneuvers and pattern work to knock the remaining rust off of my flying.
Soon I will have to start deciding where to fly for cross country navigation lessons!
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