on my own

I was expecting to go up with Tim today and do some more hood work, but that's not what happened. Instead, he suggested that I should do some more solo work and get more used to operating the airplane.

I planned out a trip to Beverly, for practice landing there, and then headed up north towards Plum Island. (Though not landing at Plum; I'm not ready for that.)

Once I got to that area, I did a few practice turns, and then called Boston Approach for traffic reports. They had me squawk 5154 and ident, and I got to work. Since I was up there myself, I noticed more things. First of all, the top radio works better than the bottom, and I don't know why. Second, it can be really hard to understand what ATC is saying when there's static. Hearing my tail number but all else with difficulty, I felt like the dog Ginger in that Gary Larson comic -- "blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah."

First, I tried doing some steep turns. Then I spotted some ground objects and, at 2500 feet (so I could stay in contact with Boston), tried some turns about a point. The winds were much stronger than when I did my first dual practice, so these were more like attempts at turns about a point and sometimes _over_ the point. Oh, well.

I tried both left and right turns while trying to hold my altitude steady. This takes more concentration than it should, so I guess I'll be practicing just that for a while. I headed over to I95 and started an S-turn. Boston called and reported traffic to the north. I couldn't see it, but told them I'd look. After a second report of traffic, and seeing nothing, I finally caught a glimpse of a beacon.

There was a layer of haze over Portsmouth at around 2-3000 feet. Nothing where I was, but it obscured traffic over there. I reported back to Boston that I had the traffic in sight. I probably should have reported the haze so that they knew what I was seeing. I'll kick myself for that now. ;-}

After a few more turns, Boston told me that there was traffic headed my way from the north, and it was another pilot doing airwork. It was over an hour at this point, so I turned due west, and told Boston I was headed back to Lawrence. They terminated radar service, and I switched over to Lawrence ATIS and tower.

At first, it sounded like I'd get a straight-in for 23, as I was expecting. But then they switched to a left base. No matter; I just drifted a little further south, and then turned up towards Lawrence.

As I descended from 2000 to 1200 (TPA), I hit a lot of mechanical turbulence. It was very distracting and it kept me from making a nice base to final turn. I made my call and got clearance. I was too high and too fast, so pitch up, throttle back, and more flaps.

I ended up landing much further down the runway than I wanted, and certainly not stabilized at all, but I was on the centerline and aligned with the runway, and made the taxiway I wanted, so that's good.

While parking the plane, I managed to find the tiny ditch for the tail tie-down and put my nose wheel in it. It wouldn't budge. I shut down and got one of the A&Ps to help move it by hand. Boy, is that embarrassing.

Tim has signed me off now for solo cross-country, so I'm supposed to plan that out, and when conditions are good, I'll go.

Posted at 02:28PM Jan 04, 2008 by carlson in Aviation  |  Comments[3]