Saturday, September 17, 2005

Who needs "stinkin' flaps...

What a crazy day, bright and sunny here in Delaware and overcast and ground fog in Millville NJ. Ok, the bride and I decide since we have time to wait out the weather we will hit the Flight Line to have a bite to eat. Not to busy at 7:45 am, but we do notice Dave (CFI) eating breakfast with his son. Mary and I pull up to a table next to them. After some good eats we head back over to Big Sky and park it in the pilot lounge waiting for the ground fog to burn off. About 9 am it looked promising so I headed out for my pre-flight. Dave soon joined me and we saddled up for some T&G's today. I tried a different position today with my seat a tab farther back then normal, hoping that this would help with my rudder controls. Today runway 10 is the ticket out of town, so I taxi out and complete my run up. There is a slight cross wind from my 3 o' clock so holding the yoke full right and slowly rotating to level as 5219J lifts off. adding right rudder
to keep on heading I climb out to about 600 then turn cross wind. Still climbing, i look back over my shoulder at the runway end about at a 45 so I turn downwind with the focus on giving myself room. I am looking for that same picture every time of the runway at 3/4 up the strut. Downwind looking good staying on heading I add carb heat as I pass by midfield and pull the power back to 1500 rpms as I look for my position for my base turn. Yep, you got it, no flap landings today. I complete my base turn and pull the power back even more to around 1200. Turning final I pull the power all the way out (keeping hand on throttle today) I am making slight corrections looking good. I seem to always line up left of centerline. Looking down the runway holding it off......holding....then I let it down ....GRRrrrrrrr.... Dave reminds me that I don't have to fly it down, bleeding off that airspeed will settle the plane in just fine without the thud. Dave tells me that I must continue to fly the plane all the way until we tie down. I make two more landings no flaps then get back to my regular landings. Dave has me aligning myself right of center line as I come in for the remainder of the day. Strange but I seem to be over the centerline now. I'm beginning to wonder if its my eyes....Dave says it's my perception of driving the car looking over the hood and I am still applying that same thing to looking over the cowling.
I need to adjust my focus and get aligned. Dave seems to think I worked myself past the "rudder plateau" today so that's a good thing now if next lesson I can ace my landings to back that statement up. All in all a fun day. I joked about stressing over last second rudder controls and told dave I was going to kick my shoes off and fly barefoot. He said he knows of a guy that does that. Hmmmmmmm...something to ponder.

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