steep turns

Today was yet another perfect day ahead of a coming winter storm. The forecast is for several inches of snow tonight and very high winds. This morning, though, was calm wind and perfectly clear skies. I think I'm sensing a useful pattern here. ;-}

I took off from runway 5, and headed out to the practice area near Plum Island, climbing to 2500. I then did two clearing turns, and then practiced some steep turns to the right and then to the left. It's been a while since I last did these, and I'm obviously rusty. I was able to roll out within 5 degrees of my target heading (entered at 090, then rolled out on 085), but holding altitude is much harder. I lost about 200 the first time, then ballooned out on the next one. There's a lot of coordination involved in rolling back and pitching down at the appropriate time, as well as reminding myself that I need more back-pressure once I get past 30 degrees of turn.

After doing four of those, I headed back to KLWM. The tower gave me a right downwind entry for runway 5, and I had no problem entering properly. I remembered my previous attempts, and realized that I needed to keep my distance so I wasn't too pushed in. Unfortunately, I turned to base far too early. Part of the problem was just sighting the 45 correctly, but a bigger part of the problem was that there was no wind -- I'm used to having a good steady headwind on final, and calm winds mean that I end up too high.

I realized I was way too high and needed to lose both speed and altitude with little room to do so. I pushed in the power and started a go-around. There's no reason to dive at the field if I'm not on fire. I called the tower and told him what I was doing, and he told me to go into a left pattern.

This was a bit more to plan. I was about 100 feet low in pattern (not good; a result of the work from the go-around, I think) when I called midfield, but was right on at the numbers. I pulled power, carb heat, and put in 10 degrees of flaps and trimmed for a descent. I didn't turn as early, but I was still a bit high on final. I pulled the power way back and settled in at about 75 across the numbers. I made the first-turn off at Delta.

I taxied back, and did it twice again. There were two other planes leaving for weekend vacations between my passes, so I ran up the Hobbs a bit waiting for them to go. No problem; I'm not in a hurry. My last landing was quite nice, though a little on the fast side, and I made the turn-off on all of them.

After I'd taxied off the runway on my last landing, the tower asked what conditions were like out there. "Absolutely beautiful!" I replied. He said I should enjoy it while I can, because it's going to turn ugly soon. I know we're not supposed to use the airwaves for chatter, but it was nice to get a human response in a case where we're usually all business.

I talked to Tim after securing the airplane. In addition to the three-leg cross country, I need to get some more dual time on engine-out procedures, and then a bunch of specialty landings. He said that from here on out, I should be doing all of my landings as short field, soft field, crosswind, or some other kind of practice. The next set of lessons will be practice for the practical test, so when it comes up, I should be completely ready.

I'm a little low on hours (33.2 so far), so I also feel like a few more of these basic practice days couldn't hurt, too.

Posted at 03:35PM Feb 29, 2008 by carlson in Aviation  |