3rd Flight

The weather for my afternoon flight wasn't the best of conditions. The sky was hazy and brown from the 800+ small brush fires somewhere in Northern California. A 20 kt wind from the north west with gusts to 25 would make the departure and arrival quite bumpy. The level of concentration for this flight was much higher and I felt drained by the end of the hour flight.

You want me to talk?
I made the preflight today without a peep of instruction from my watching instructor. This detailed and seemingly long process(especially when I am eager to fly) has become routine and smooth. After the plane was preflighted and the engine started, my instructor turned to me and asked if I wanted to request clearance to taxi. I will have to admit this is my biggest fear of flying. (I get mic fright flying online) :-S But hey, I need to start some time. With a script, I got clearance from the tower and we were off and flying for the day.

Mushing along
Our flight today put us back over Avila Bay. Our other training area over Morro Bay was out of the question due to flight restrictions from military helicopter exercises. Slow flights was on the itinerary for today. We started by doing slow flights at 50 knots, full flaps. We did very shallow turns that made a standard rate turn seem steep, otherwise we would stall. Then we pulled out the throttle completely and stalled the aircraft. My first stalls lost a ton of altitude, but when I improved my technique, I could recover with minimal height lost. Lastly we did some power on stalls. With full power in we increase our climb until the plane stalled. I know it is easy to get distracted on a climb out but the sensation of nearly lying on my back as we pitched up to stall is hard to ignore. Hopefully this means departure stalls are easy to avoid, but I still need to be careful.

Without warning...
I landed. That's all. I landed, but it is still pretty damn cool. I made the standard 45 degree entry into the pattern and expected my instructor to take control as we flew abeam of the numbers. Instead he started giving me instructions. Throttle back to 1700, flaps out 10 degrees,trim to 70kts, make the turn to base, flaps to 20 degrees, check for traffic on final, turn and line up for the runway, keep the numbers in the same spit, cut the throttle, flare, fly the plane though the roll out. Congratulations, you just landed the plane. I did pretty well except for the last part. As I cut the throttle, I let the altitude drop to much. My instructor quickly righted my mistake and helped my make a decent flare. Thing is, I don't remember touching down. I think I had a bit of fright from the bad flare, and got amnesia of the touchdown. But oh well, I was excited to perform my first landing, albeit I had some help with the controls.

Flight time logged: 1.1 hours
Total time logged:3.1