Saturday was another bad weather day, so I didn’t get back in the air until today. A full week since my last flight — with the rainy weekends we’ve been having, I’ve been cut down to flying once per week. After last week’s dismal performance, I was inside my own head a bit. I tried to psyche myself up a bit on the way to the airport…I can do this! This time will be better! I repeated my mantra and tried to convince myself I would eventually get the hang of landing a plane.
Preflight went normally and as we taxied to the hold short line I was feeling more confident. We were taking off from runway 8 again, but I had flown this pattern last time, so piece of cake, right?
I took off and started to set up my pattern. I felt ahead of the plane — I pulled carb heat and power as we reached pattern altitude, called the tower, and deployed the first notch of flaps. I throttled back abeam the numbers and started coming down. I turned base and dropped another notch of flaps. My instructor was dead silent this entire time, and I took that to be a good thing. I had this!
Then I turned final.
Oh man — I had overshot the runway by a LOT. I had no idea what to do — do I turn back to try and line up? Call the tower and tell them I needed to abort the pattern? I laughed a bit and asked my instructor, “Now what?” He borrowed the plane for a second and did a steep turn to get us lined back up. We were on the exact opposite of a stabilized approach at this point, so we executed a go-around — far from nailing my first landing, I wasn’t even going to touch down on this first lap.
He asked me how that happened — I told him I had obviously drifted in towards the runway on downwind, eliminating the distance I had for the base leg. He told me it was because I was ignoring the wind, and he was absolutely correct. While surface winds were pretty much calm, up in the air the were blowing enough to push the plane around. Now my confidence had taken another shot and I struggled to keep things together the rest of the flight.
We did a few more laps and I paid more attention to the winds aloft. I did better with my ground track, but my landings were still poor. I am either flaring too high and dropping the plane down hard, or not flaring enough and landing flat on the nosewheel.
My instructor decided to try something different and he demonstrated a no flaps landing. He felt doing some no flaps and power off landings would help with my speed management. Just as we turned downwind, all of a sudden the windscreen was filled with rain. This was a new experience for me and it was a bit unnerving — I could barely see outside. I remember being very thankful I wasn’t alone in the plane at that moment, since I wasn’t really sure what to do.
I kept flying the pattern and then my CFI took over for the landing — good thing, as I have a hard enough time putting her down when visibility is great! We decided to cut the lesson short since the weather didn’t look like it was getting any better.
After some reflection, I realize I’ve been combining the roundout and the flare. I read a lot of articles and online advice on the landing process, and the best bits I’ve taken away are to focus on speed management and to level the plane off to arrest the descent and then just keep it from landing. I need to focus on a few things next time I am up:
- keep my speed in check (I believe I’ve been coming in too fast, adding to my landing issues)
- judging the roundout height properly (great tips here by Rod Machado)
- shifting my focus to the far end of the runway when rounding out
- concentrating on leveling the plane off, then holding it off, instead of just trying to go right into a flare
- using very gentle control inputs at the beginning of the roundout and flare
I’m looking forward to the next lesson where I can try to put this advice to good use. Until next time!
I recorded today’s flight in CloudAhoy – click the image below to see the track (you can clearly see my terrible pattern shape on the first lap).
Flight time today: 1.0 hours
Total simulated instrument flight time to date: 0.6 hours
Total flight time to date: 39.4 hours
Total takeoffs to date: 136
Total landings to date: 132