Getting my head round it all.

Those of you who follow this blog will know that Sunday was the day I was meant to start my epic planned “Mission”

You may have also noticed that the blog has been strangely quiet on the whole matter. I mean there haven’t been any triumphant “Mission accomplished” posts or any bitching about the weather either.

So what’s up?

Well the truth is it didn’t go exactly according to plan, which I don’t necessarily have a problem writing about but I started writing this post about 3 times now and tailed off. Not really knowing where to take it.

Which means I didn’t have my thoughts straight in my head yet.  I’m good at writing reflective stuff but only once I’ve got some finality in what it is I’ve learned.

Two days later and I think I’m coming to terms with it all.

Let me explain.

On paper the aim of the flight was to head out to the east, then north to Uxbridge and see if I could find Greenbank airport. A grass strip where I first learnt the dark art of the precautionary and indeed a softfield landing.

Of course the grass nature would mean that I couldn’t actually land, the flight school’s insurance won’t let me take it on anything other than a paved surface. But I’d planned a low and over and considered that close enough.

In my head the flight had a different purpose. I wanted to show off to RTH. I wanted him to see that in the last two years or so, I’ve become a different person in that cockpit. A safe, calm, competent and confident pilot.

Long story short, that didn’t happen.

To cut to the chase, the following things happened:

1)      I got flustered by some traffic on the way out of the zone and got fixated on overtaking them

2)      I got confused by the traffic at Greenbank using what I considered to be the wrong runway, this threw off my spatial awareness and I got hopelessly confused trying to join a right hand circuit. I ended up calling it off.

3)      The approach to 08 over the city stressed me out a little

4)      I finished as I started – with a less than stellar landing. Nothing dangerous, just “firm”

Please don’t misunderstand – I didn’t do anything dangerous, it just didn’t go according to either plan. And for a little while that left me a little disheartened and a little p!ssed off with myself.

But over the next couple of posts I’ll explain exactly what went wrong and why I’m kind of ok with it now.