It looked like it was going to be a nice day to fly — low winds, high ceiling, great visibility. I was hoping to get a bit more solo time in, and I wasn’t disappointed.
I did a few laps with my instructor and I was feeling a bit rusty (even though I had just flown yesterday!) My first landing was poor and I plopped it down a bit hard on the runway. We went around a few more times — the landings got better, but I was still making a few mistakes. My CFI pulled the power on me while I was on base during one of the laps, proving the point that I had descended a little too low and I wouldn’t have made the runway in an engine out scenario. That was a sobering lesson.
Just when I was thinking that maybe I wouldn’t be soloing today, my instructor had me drop him off and I was on my own again! I did three trips around the pattern. On the first one, I came in pretty high (my instructor’s lesson on premature descents still fresh in my mind). I didn’t like the way the sight picture was shaping up, so I executed my first solo go-around. I figured that would make my instructor happy!
I snapped a quick pic while I was holding short for some landing traffic. I wish I could get some in-air pics, but there’s just too much going on while in the pattern to even think about distracting myself with a camera. Hopefully when I do some cross country work I’ll be able to get some more interesting shots.
I turned crosswind a little early and started feeling a bit behind the plane…did I just mess up the whole pattern? How was I going to salvage this? Luckily I kept it together and got on a normal downwind and eventually came in for a pretty nice landing.
Second trip around was routine, but on the third things got a little interesting. I was following another Cessna and was just about to turn base. We had a King Air coming in for a straight in on the same runway (26). Tower first asked me to keep a tight pattern behind the Cessna, but when I turned base I guess he realized he wouldn’t have time to get me down before the King Air was on top of me (they had already slowed down to allow for spacing but they were still a lot faster than I was!)
Tower asked me to extend my base and keep heading North. I complied, and after a minute they told me I could make a right turn and follow the King Air in. This was a bit of a new approach for me, but it wasn’t anything mind-blowing…I just followed tower’s instructions and turned in to final once I had the King Air in sight and they had crossed abeam my wing.
I brought it in for a bit of a sloppy landing (the winds were starting to pick up a bit). I probably had enough time for one more lap, but I decided I was done for the day and took the plane back to the FBO.
I debriefed with my instructor and he told me I’m cleared for unsupervised solo flights — he wants me to rack up 4 hours of solo time before I see him again. Wow — the leash is off, and next time I fly it will be completely unassisted! Looking forward to a new challenge ahead!
Below is the CloudAhoy track for the solo portion of the flight — click the image to view it. You can see the extended base and right turns the tower had me take pretty clearly.
Flight time today: 1.6 hours
Total simulated instrument flight time to date: 0.6 hours
Total PIC time to date: 1.8 hours
Total flight time to date: 47.4 hours
Total takeoffs to date: 175
Total landings to date: 172