A mostly sunny afternoon. That was what the weather forecast said. For once, it seemed like it was going to be accurate. A quick glance out at the sky through the window in the morning confirmed it.
I arrived at the airfield a few hours later. I was greeted by a lot of people inside the airfield building, all waiting for seemingly only one person – my flight instructor. I joined them in waiting.
A short while later I heard an aircraft engine before seeing a small high-wing plane taxi in. My flight instructor came in afterwards.
Immediately he sent me out to inspect our aircraft before flight. It was still in the hangar. I walked out with my sister and did the pre-flight. With everything okay (except the oil level, which was soon fixed), my instructor pulled the aircraft out and turned it around.
I adjusted my seat and got in before my instructor did. He explained that because of the wind, depending on the situation he might not let me go solo. I was reminded that a westerly wind was also on the forecast.
The engine start today was a bit rough, and after two attempts we got it to work the third time using the choke. Pre take-off checks continued normally, and we taxied out.
We used runway 18 for today’s flight. It was almost perpendicular to the wind direction. The actual effect of the wind became apparent during takeoff, with the aircraft having a ‘weather-vaning’ tendency to swing its nose toward the wind. Other than that, during the circuit the only thing that made it noticeable was a necessary heading adjustment to maintain track on downwind.
I turned onto base leg while giving the radio call. Because now the wind was behind us, it gave us a slightly faster groundspeed than normal. I had a small challenge in slowing down and descending in order to make the runway. I ended up too high on final.
I had the engine at idle all the way down to the runway, with what looked like a massive crab angle. Now was the hard bit. As soon as I started the flare, I kicked out my left rudder and straightened out. To stop myself from drifting off the runway to the left, I lowered my right wing, keeping a straight path along the ground. Then I was supposed slowly touch the ground, right wheel first, then left, then the nosewheel. Except that didn’t happen – although I straightened out okay, the aircraft plonked right on the ground again. I would only get better with practise so I gave full power for another go.
On downwind this time, I tried to get more distance on base by flying outward a bit more. However, on the base leg again it was apparent I was too high and coming in fast. This time, instead of lowering flaps in stages, I went down to 30 degrees in one go.
I descended toward the runway with a high sink rate, so my instructor felt I should have arrested it sooner. This time, after I used the rudder to straighten out, I managed to land a bit softer, right wheel first.
We rolled for a bit before applying full thrust again. At the side of the runway, there was a huge clump of trees creating turbulence in the wind blowing across the runway. As I flew through that turbulent air the aircraft swung left and right despite my efforts to control it. As we climbed over the treetop level the effect disappeared.
The circuit was pretty much the same on the third round, namely a high and short base leg necessitating 30 degrees flaps in a single go. Again I had to go down with a high sink rate. It felt odd to see the runway out the side, and not in front of me.
The runway got closer as I went lower. I had a last-second check to make sure we were ready to land – and found that I forgot the carby heat. My flight instructor realised that too and turned it off for me.
During the flare, I waited a bit too late then gave a bit too much left rudder. It was a little unsteady during the touchdown. My instructor decided to use the remaining runway by taking off again, and doing another crosswind landing on what distance was left of the grass strip.
With the wind proving too much for me to handle alone, we called it a day and taxied back in. Beside the hangar someone had pulled out their colourful-looking plane. I had to carefully taxi between that plane and a Cessna 175 parked on the other side. I then turned into the tie-down area.
Because of the wind, my lesson was shortened to 0.7 hours, but it was quite an experience to say the least. I should practise more landings of this kind, but it all depends on the weather.
Unfortunately my phone ran out of batteries and died, so I wasn’t able to record my flight track today. It didn’t bother me much, because we pretty much only did circuits anyway.
The weather forecast for next weekend is ‘Cloudy, isolated showers. Winds southwesterly and light’. Let’s see if it stays true.
Total hours:
11.2 Dual
0.2 PIC
