Cremona II: The Return

On 08/22 I flew 1.2 solo up near the Morley area for some forced approaches. Went very well but I still feel as if I am crowding the field. The last two procedures I would have actually made the first third of the field. Somewhat satisfied I headed back knowing that my next "free solo" would include some time to work on this again.

Today however, we did a lovely dual flight to another new area. North of the airport the terrain flattens out to farmland. This is a great place to work on precautionary landings. Everything was smooth on the flight and we climbed out with a few turns to avoid the hangliding area (CYA228) which was active north of the field. I5 explained the lay of the land in this neighborhood, described some good and bad radio techniques for traffic advisories, and finally we did some map reading. We also reviewed what to do in case I became disoriented and wasn't sure how to head "home".

Following this we moved on to the actual task at hand - precautionary landings. I had done my homework and reviewed it over and over and over in my mind during the drive:

Perform a "circuit" (at least a downwind) to inspect the field (the high pass).
Get down to 500AGL (300 on the test and r/w) on a normal base for the low pass. The trick is to be nicely configured and trimmed with t/o flaps at 500AGL and 70 knots.
On the downwind we inspect the field again this time adding a timing element where we say each "second" on the downwind represents 100 feet.
Reaching the "end" of the downwind we perform an overshoot back to 1000AGL and declare if the field is long enough.
If we continue with the approach we make our radio call on the downwind (a PAN call), perform our pre landing checks, and go with a passenger safety briefing.
The rest is flown "normally" except of course we are landing in a field. At about 300AGL we perform the overshoot.

Was I great? No. Did I know my procedures? Yes. Did I know what performance issues I needed to work on in order to pass this portion of the flight test? Yes. Well actually I5 told me I would have passed, but there were some marks I would have been docked for which could easily have been avoided with some mental concentration.

On the way back we were given a "straight in" from north of Cochrane Lake. We tuned the YBW VOR and at this point I5 became intrigued that I understood how to use a VOR Receiver, and could determine my location relative to the VOR based on the radial and from/to flags. He then asked me if I could follow the Localiser Back Course all the way in and seemed amused that I was able to do this without must trouble.

The sunlight had really faded by the time we were on final. I guess these 7pm flights will soon be coming to an end - for 2009 at least.

Aside from the excitement of flying "somewhere else" and getting sign off to fly up there by myself, I also learned some interesting facts about the difference between GPS distances and DME distances that I had never considered before. Interesting little devices.

I'm booked for another flight next Tuesday but I told I5 that our should be to fly solo on that date and we will fly "diversions" (the last lesson prior to the first cross country) mid month.