Sunday, April 17, 2011

third time's the charm

sorry i didn't update sooner. i need to get better at this. anyway, i had my third flight friday. another fun time flying around. took off from 24r again, then headed over to the santa fe practice area. worked on getting my straight and level flight perfected, but it was liberally interspersed with climbs, descents, and turns. i'm getting the hang of the whole thing now. managing the power for an ascent or descent out of a cruise. also tried a few climbing/descending turns with varying degrees of success. i'm definitely not going to be winning awards for those yet, but they're coming together reasonably well. my cfi also added the element making some of those turns compass turns and noting the corresponding accelerations depending on which direction we turned.
after i'd say a good 45 mins of sky play, went back down. i flew the entire approach until we were very far downwind on final, at which point he took controls and we glided with the stall horn for probably a good 500'. (yes, downwind on final. as it turned out, the variable winds suddenly found direction suspiciously close to 080.) then more time with taxi. doing much better following centerline (taxiway is somewhat sloped and the plane has weak right rudder), and didn't hit the wing on any taxiing crj-700s.
next flight is planned for wednesday. since we didn't do steep turns friday, wednesday will probably be the day. i have my reading already done too. he didn't mention anything else in the plans, but i'm guessing a couple more shots at compass turns as well as climbing/descending (turns). and maybe we'll get into the lower end of the planes operating regime aka slow flight.

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