Hildy

tough going again today. 15kt headwind. turbulent landings.

sfGnome: that LSA will do a reasonable 30degree bank turn hands off.

I don't fiddle with the power at all, nor do I normally cut power in the middle of turning from crosswind to downwind and try to do a U turn back to the strip.

so it became short final while facing the wrong direction with no power to get me out of trouble.

perhaps I should do the base leg without flaps. it would give me more practice and confidence with the glide approach.

(currently applying flaps and reduced power at the start of the turn base; if I reduced power further and did final basically without power using the flaps to adjust drag...)

engine changes things too. tried a different LSA55, climbs like a spanked monkey. 1000fpm. much more aggressive torque roll - might be rigging, but needed constant left aileron and rudder.

how do I avoid panicking on the glide approach?

Funny you shoulds say that. One of our LSA's stalls beautifully doing it "properly" with a wing drop and a pronounced nose drop as well. The other one won't stall at all - well it just mushes along without doing anything nasty. They are really benign and not scary at all.I also have heard the line about being able to fly anything if you can fly one of these. That's good to know but other planes must be really boring to fly :) I'm quite liking the LSA now. I'll be flying to Temora in a 160 Hildy, what'll you be in?

yeah, the one I flew was very mushy. i will go and get GA aerobatic training in due course.

Congrats! I too have temora in my eyes, and another three weeks off work (interspaced with three weeks at work). I flew ten hours last week. Hopefully I will see you there!

I was convinced into learning in an LSA55 on the "if you can fly one, you can fly anything" basis, but I can't make her do anything nasty in the stall - it took some serious cross-coordination to make her go anything like pearshaped.

As outlined in some of the other posts above RAAus provide alot for not much cost when you break it down. The magazine alone costs $66.00 per year.

I've just passed my RA-Aus BAK/HPL/AL using my instructor's copy of the RA-Aus D-H manual. I think I will buy the D-H PPL set and study that.

My new medium term goal is to get some j160 time and then see if I can get a GA school which flies the j160 (I think there is one at YSCN) to let me take the GFPT.

dazza: you sound like my instructor, though, in the advice that he's giving.

the great thing about full time training is that I arrived at the airfield this morning and nailed a couple of circuits. I can imagine that if it had been two weeks I would have required 20 minutes just to get the feel of the plane again, but right now it's all in my right wrist.

cficare: yeah, I do. I'm a new convert to checklists in my day job, but coming up with good mnemonics isn't my forte.

... and adding radio calls into the mix musses up my flying again. I didn't realise how much cognitive load flying was still taking. I can fly S&L but my approach was completely messed up by having to make the turning final call.

When? Not as part of your downwind checks I'm hoping.

radio last. radio first.

davidh: doing that this weekend or next week depending on weather. the adverse weather today meant I got my theory tests out of the way. the training for my primary career basically consisted of memorising large numbers of textbooks so it wasn't hugely difficult.

I was hoping that I could work out where my touchdown point was in relation to the runway, but if ground level is inaccurate that doesn't help.

I've never driven a car with a carburetor or a choke. I also turn the radio on and off in the wrong order. I need to make myself a new mnemonic for the checks.

not for me! I love my work. I do want to do the CPL... but I wouldn't want to quit my day job, I love it that much.

You already know this probably but perservere - you'll get to the point where the penny will drop and it'll start falling into place. I reckon you've started ccts a little early as well but you're there now so it won't be long. None of us ever land well all the time either so I wouldn't worry too much about that aspect either - again teh LSA can be a bit of a handful in the flare 'cause the controls aren't all that effective at slow speeds. I also know what you mean about hard work - I've been doing short field landings lately and at the end of 30 mins of that I feel really stressed. I asked my instructor to do one and he made it look soooo easy. Annoying as hell ;)

I've now flown the LSA55 enough to know that I don't want to buy one.

Mozart: attitude, power, trim - or that's how I do it. that's because I still want a decent amount of power to accelerate from best-climb speed to cruise speed, so there's no point in cutting the power too early.

but i'm a voracious reader and i read multiple online groundschool tutorials before my first TIF even.

yenn: I think that's true. my motivations may be different in that I have a limited amount of time at this school before I move again so I want the highest yield training, even if it's not as much fun. but two lessons in the morning and I'm completely knackered for the day. it's almost as tiring as spending 8 hours at work.

I'm at a little aerodrome with almost no traffic. I'm pretty happy with 1-5 - I can do a coordinated 90 degree turn, climb, descend, etc. That was the first half hour of time, pretty much. Then it was circuit introduction with an overfly of the runway at about 100ft, two hours of getting that down to 20ft, an hour of trying to get it down to 5ft, and two hours of touch and go.

I would like some more time with stalls.

cficare: they're getting me down because I didn't progress anywhere near as fast as in the first hour. they're hard work! I have to spend every minute concentrating rather than staring out the windows thinking about how much fun flying is. but my last hour has been good - I'm nailing 50% of landings nicely and coming down a bit hard or bouncing the other 50%. I want that to be 90% by the end of tomorrow.

mozart: I'm learning in an LSA55.

I do understand your point, dunlopdangler; at no point during the flight am I thinking about the GPS. I am now using the downwind leg as a bit of a breather to stare out the window and remember why I am doing this; something like 50 circuits this week is starting to get me down a bit but I realise that I need to put in the hard yards now to be a better pilot later. I still have to look at the turn coordinator; my rear still doesn't know how much slip/skid there is. otherwise the actions on climbout/crosswind/early-mid downwind are becoming automatic; the main thing I forget in approach preparation is carby heat. I now have the hang of approach angle but I still need to develop the right feel on flare - at the start of every lesson I flare too much and bounce in the air a bit before touching down.

more circuits tomorrow!

I'm learning in an LSA-55. A handful to fly, but my instructor says that if I fly this, I can fly anything. I'm basically trying to learn to fly full-time in my weeks off work (I work week-on, week-off).

I thought it was aviate, navigate, communicate! I'm still on the aviating. Now got 2 hours of touch-and-goes down. Still trying to get the hang of how much stick pressure to use on flare.

Hildy,as has been said above- id ditch the compass...at least until you have finished your flight, then you can review it, but i wouldnt use it in flight.

The constant viewing of the runway is what will determine your circuit performance. The gps is going to add too much to your mind at this stage, and can be a hinderance.

 

With regard to how long before turning, etc in the circuit, this is the approach i use.....continue on upwind until 500ft has been reached.....turn onto crosswind, looking underneath my wing, ( i fly a Jab), until i can see the runway appear....level the wings...this concept usually gives a pretty good 90 degree line from the upwind point.

 

when i have reached 45 degrees from the end of the runway, is when ill turn downwind....roll the wings level, to track parallel to the runway....always looking at that runway throughout downwind to determine any drift you may encounter.......at 45 degrees from your threshold...turn onto base, again giving you a nice 90 degree line to the runway. the turn onto final is pretty simple, and you will pick up the turning points eventually, as the wind will always play games with you. Usually, in the Jab with an approach speed of 65-70knts, i aim to turn final at 650ft, which should allow for an established, wings level line on final, by 500ft.

 

i know its a bit long, but i hope it helps.

 

Liz.

Also, I have been flying a semicircular base, but I knew that in flight. I think it's because I don't have the knack of a coordinated descending turn yet.

Folks, have a look at what Hildy said in his first post. "If you look at the track side-on in google earth...". He isn't using GPS to as a navigation tool in the circuit, he's using it to review his flight performance back home in the comfort of his computer chair. I did (and still do) exactly the same thing with a small portable GPS recorder that sits tucked out of the way, silently remembering what I've done. When I was learning circuits, it taught me that those nice 90deg turns were anything but, and these days I still review every flight later that night for track and altitude accuracy.

 

Hildy, the most likely reason that your altitude track doesn't look as expected is that the GPS will be 'smoothing' the recorded path - it assumes that a sudden change in direction (ie no longer descending) must be wrong, and so it continues your downward path for a little while. You may be able to remove the smoothing if you dig around in the configuration of the GPS or in the program that you use to upload the data, but I wouldn't worry too much. You know with much more accuracy whether you hit the ground hard or rounded out too high than any GPS recorder ever will.

 

(p.s. I just looked at your track. Given that I can see where you wandered around in the instructors office and when you did the pre-flight check, I'm guessing you were using a sports gps watch. Right? :thumb_up:)

I'm not up to landings yet - this was my first lesson that wasn't a TIF. What I was trying to work out was how much variability in height I had over the runway, and how high above the runway I was flying. At first I thought the altitude readings were wrong, and I should compensate using the altitude of ground level, but when I looked into it further, I saw this behaviour where although I knew I was on the ground, the GPS didn't.

I don't look at the phone at all in flight; at certain points I don't even look at the instruments, I'm concentrating on flying the plane straight and level 40 ft above the runway. but I'd like to know if I achieved this in the post mortem.

It is a judgement that you will acquire, ( IF you are taught properly, and absorb it). Give yourself time. Normally turn crosswind on height achieved. The distance out for downwind turn is done by looking back at the strip. Nev

Primarily refer to the runway. Other aerodromes will not have visual cues, as tracking or turning points. (that you know about). Make all your turns and tracking in relation to the runway. Allow for known ( or encountered ) winds. Nev

- how long before you turn crosswind after climb

- how long the crosswind leg is

and how do you accurately maintain a certain distance from the runway on downwind?

I think your GPS is a bit slow. look how far apart the tracks are on the runway. on my GPS they are all on top of each other.

I doubt Hildy is having anything to do with the GPS whilst in the circuit, it more than likely gets turned on with the avionics during the preflight and from then acts as a data logger until turned off again. I must say that although they are undoubtedly clever and useful bits of kit, I find it more useful to have an instructor point out via visual cues where I might be going wrong, rather than rehashing the flight on screen afterward, when I don't have any opportunity to correct things. Dunno, maybe it's a generational thing:big_grin:

What I am using it for is to give a number for how well I am doing. So, I fly using visual cues, and afterwards, I measure the average track error in both lateral and vertical directions. This, obviously, doesn't work if it's not accurate - or rather, I can't get a "score" better than the error in the GPS.

The width of my downwind leg is about 180m. So I am concentrating on trying to fly the same track every single time (not plotted on the GPS, but by picking the visual cue points and banking the same amount for the same amount of time) to see if I can get that down.

I've found that downwind is the hardest part to fly accurately because of the lack of visual cues.

Hildy.Tell us about what you want to do in flying... RAA / PPL aircraft type(s) you are keen on, local versus longer distance flights, etc..

I'm quite keen on the amphibian foxbat, and air touring.

I have now flown 3 hours, 2.5 of which have been flying circuits. See http://url-is.com/flighttrack for my log of flight hour 2.

If you look at the track side-on in google earth, there is something noticeable about the final circuit. By looking at the speeds, you can see where touchdown happens because the speed drops down quickly at that point (although it only logs every second). Anyhow, the altitudes after that point continue to drop - about another 50 feet, so that the final approach looks more like a spiral.

Is there any way to improve the altitude accuracy of the GPS? I think that there's an inertial term in my GPS's firmware that thinks that because I am descending, I will keep descending - until there is a solid lock that proves that I am moving level again.

Otherwise, can someone suggest a better GPS unit?

Next lesson: touch-and-goes.

I'm going to be moving to the newcastle / maitland area next year for six months. Should I get lessons here in Sydney beforehand or wait until I move there?

- also, is it advisable or stupid to change schools / aircraft between solo / pilot cert / nav?

-H