A few days ago, a student pilot on a Facebook group I belong to asked for advice on how not to get discouraged in flight training when things didn't go as expected. I suggested that it was important to end each lesson with at least one positive thought and dwell on that.
Today was one of those lessons.
The weather reports listed the winds as "calm" or at best "variable, 3 knots." The wind sock on the field hung limp. There were scattered clouds, but overall it looked like a good day to go flying. Calm winds meant I could really begin to wrap my head around landing the plane. That was today's plan. Take off, fly out to Colorado Space Port, do a few touch-and-goes, then return back to Centennial.
We got up in the air, and discovered that the winds aloft weren't exactly "calm." Still, we plowed ahead. Space Port cleared us direct to runway 35 for touch-and-goes, and I began to descend and line us up. And that's pretty much when things went south. The winds were neither steady nor gusty, they were just unpredictable. We bounced around a lot, which made it difficult for me to read what my control inputs were doing as we tried to land. First attempt was a go-around. I climbed us out, but was a bit rattled, so my right turn into the pattern was not smooth. Then I started overthinking the turns. Then we tried another approach. More of the same. My instructor ended up flying this landing getting us on the ground, because he wanted to try to get a sense of what the winds were doing. He gave the controls back to me on climb out, and again my turns were not smooth. Again I was overthinking them, fighting myself as much as the winds. We attempted two more before deciding the conditions were definitely not conducive to teaching me anything about landing. We headed back to Centennial. Conditions did not improve on the way back. Because of this, my instructor handled the landing. Once on the ground, he commented that he had not fought that hard to land a plane in a long time. I guess I can couch my inability to figure things out in the context that my instructor was having trouble as well, so I shouldn't beat myself up. We decided we need to schedule earlier flights to take better advantage of smoother air.
Looking at today's lesson in terms of its intended goals, it's easy to cast this as something of a failure. Mission not accomplished. However, anytime I'm in the air, I'm learning. Maybe not "how to land," but "what is it I need to figure out for myself so I can land in the future." I need to get a handle on power adjustments. "Pitch for airspeed, power for altitude" makes sense. What I need to figure out is how much (or how little) to adjust power to make necessary corrections. I'd be high, reduce power, then sink a bit too much, then need to apply power again and balloon up again as a result. There's a happy medium in there somewhere, a sweet spot. I need to find it. I've done exercises like that higher up, but without the runway in front of you and getting closer as you get lower, it's difficult to get a visual feel for what those changes are doing. With that in better check, I can pay a bit more attention to the "pitch for airspeed" side of things as well.
Primary goal aside, there was a lot that went very well today. Things (outside of landings) are really falling into place. First, there's the pilotage aspect of things. My instructor asked me right off if I felt confident enough to fly us out to the Space Port without his assistance. I did. I knew how to get where we were going, the ceilings I would have to contend with, and the landmarks along the way. I had a bit of trouble finding the tower and runway from 5 miles out, but I knew I was in the general vicinity and by the time I was three miles out, I had a good point of reference for them. Same on the return trip. I knew I was east southeast of the field, because I was anticipating them landing me on the north/south runways and I wanted to head that direction so I could line up. They gave me the east/west runway instead, so I tracked back north a bit. There's not a whole lot on the ground to use as definitive references for much of the route south from Colorado Space Port; it's mostly farms and ranches. I think the more I fly that direction, the more I'll recognize.
Second, my radio calls are getting stronger. I handled all the calls from run-up to when we were on final at Space Port. (My instructor handled the calls in the pattern at Space Port so I could concentrate on flying.) It's becoming more and more natural to me to talk with ATC and know what they want me to do. I'm still not 100% used to the speed at which ATC's instructions come at me, but that will come with time. My big worry there is even though I'm repeating what they're telling me, I'm also the kind of person who forgets a name 20 seconds after someone tells me what it is. Fortunately I've also learned that ATC does not view it as embarrassing to have them repeat instructions. The phrase "it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission" does not apply to aviation.
I still need to work on verbalizing my checklists, particularly the ones I run while in the air. WRBC - Weather, Radio, Briefing, Checklists. My instructor would ask for a briefing of what we're to do when approaching the airport, and I would give the briefing prior to even tuning the AWOS weather info. That's got to be done first, no matter what. Once I have the weather, I can contact the tower and get instructions, then brief my instructor and run checklists. And, again, remember to verbalize the checklists as I run them. Fuel, mixture, seats, lights, gauges...
While on the subject of checklists, I'm filling in gaps in my ground checklists. These missing items are things that aren't on the checklist but are important steps such as tuning in the airport ground frequency and setting Foreflight and the plane's GPS before I start moving the plane. Also, I added "close window" to my pre-takeoff checklist after forgetting twice in a row.
One other takeaway from today's lesson... it's a ruddy pain in the arse to try to use a touchscreen in bumpy air!
