Best lesson yet!

Bob’s assessment not mine! It was a good lesson though; I was so relaxed from the get-go. Everything was going right. Right from the taxiing (nicely on the line), run up was smoothly executed. Even a lighthearted moment when I realised that my GO/NO GO brief was going to be different because Bob was going to demo a short field takeoff. So I made him do the briefing! I answered all his sneaky little questions properly, “are you going to make your call to tower now?”, “No because there’s a honking big Dash 8 on final.”

The flight itself went well, apart from trying to level out at circuit altitude, forgetting that I was going to exiting the circuit and going out the practice area. I navigated us out. Actually feeling relatively confident that I can spot all the landmarks. Remembering where I’m exiting the zone, where I can climb up to the next level* and so on. I spotted Claremont first time and my position calls are getting better.

We worked on steep turns and stalls today. Steep turns are ok, still a little tricky but easier once I relax into them. At first I was tending to lean forward into them, which makes back pressure on the control column problematic. Stalls were fine once I realised that power off stalls are not that violent and you don’t need to nose down too much to break the stall.

Now that I’ve soloed I’m not feeling any time pressure at all. I just want to fly! I don’t really mind what we do up there. Every flight I learn something new. Every time I get to practice something else and every time I’m up there I do a little better!

 

*Pearson’s (YYZ) control zone stretches out beyond City’s (it gets kinda messy out there) but basically I have to stay below 2500ft until I get to a certain point then I can climb to 3500ft and so on