Saturday started cloudy but cleared to scattered cloud by the time my lesson came. I taxied and did the takeoff which I think was worse than my first. The lesson covered climbing and descending. Climbing is once again Power, Attitude and Trim as with increasing power in straight and level flight, but today we have Stuart's own acronym - DABLE that is Direction, Attitude, Balance, Lookout and Engine. Direction - are we heading for our reference point; Attitude - does the aircraft have the right attitude and therefore speed; Balance - is the aircraft yawing; Lookout - are we away from trouble. Remembering of course that we use full power for the climb and set carburettor heat to cold. Every 500ft or so we check for other aircraft by making clearing turns. Finally we anticipate reaching our chosen altitude by 10% of the climb rate and level off with APT. So much to remember.
Then we set about the gliding descent. Once again we see PAT in action. This involves reducing the power to the engine, setting the correct pitch to glide and trimming out the forces. Carburettor heat is of course hot for this and we warmed the engine every thousand feet.
Golf Zulu Foxtrot is a PA28-180E - by far the most powerful aircraft I've flown. I really noticed just how quickly we arrived at my normal reference points and just how quickly we got back to Kemble! It may have been a function of the head winds, but we were climbing at over a hundred knots.
Sunday's weather looked more shaky. The day got cloudier and darker. Zoe from the flying club called - there was an opportunity to have an earlier lesson since Stu had had some cancellations. Dashing to the airfield the weather picked up as I got closer - all was well! A couple of botched radio calls for me, followed by a heavy footed take-off left me feeling a bit low.
We ran over yesterday's lesson quickly. Then on to climbing with flaps, descending with flaps and we touched on side slipping with crossed controls to descend more quickly. Flaps are used in a climb to increase lift and usually used to shorten take-off though we forgot to deploy this time!
More complicated was the gliding descent with flaps. This is used on final approach and landing. The flaps increase drag, slowing us down and provide more lift which allows us to floy more slowly. We did some practice aiming for fields to demonstrate approach angles and heights. I think I see my own landings in the distant future! I was rather heavy handed with the controls today - another habit to break. The important lesson, Stuart tells me, is that power controls ascent and attitude controls speed.
I'm not sure I enjoyed these lessons quite so much. I seemed to be a bit poor on everything I tried - possibly because I was feeling a bit under the weather. I really hope for some improvement next week.
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