Head not in the game.

Scrappy is how I’d describe my last flight. A good learning experience is Bob’s take on it. He’s much more the optimist than I am, for sure.

Don`t get me wrong, some of it was OK. I managed an obstacle takeoff from runway 15, a runway I've never used before. I think I`m even over my terror of runways with no run up spaces now.15 doesn't have one, so we found a little spot out of the way. I got us into a tight corner and ATC told the big nasty Dash 8 that they`d have to wait for me! Which they did.

My steep turns weren't quite as horrendous as before. I`m judging by the fact that Bob didn't seem to need me to repeat them over and over again, that my first efforts were tolerable. Unlike RTH I much prefer doing steep turns to the left. I don`t mind the feeling over hanging over nothing but for right hand ones, the feeling of being up in the air at the top of the plane makes me feel slightly queasy for some reason.

My forced approach was terrible; I crowded the field and would have overshot it big time. That`s almost forgivable but worse is the fact that I kinda realised early enough on that I really could have done something about it. I could have made some S turns. I could have widened it out. A couple of slipping turns maybe. But no, too much altitude and not enough ideas.

Precautionary, well I roughly achieved what I needed to, low pass; overshoot and then back round again but still scrappy technique. Nothing massively dangerous but not exactly a polished performance either.

Bob`s debrief was basically positive. Emphasising the way that I do have all the basic blocks there, I just need to fine tune my performance.  Mostly he`s right, but I got flustered out there today because I couldn't remember the steps involved. I need to get my head back in the game, start visualising those manoeuvres again and sort it out.