tuwood
Pre-takeoff checklist
Well, guess who flew a plane all by himself yesterday?
As I mentioned earlier I was kind of expecting it if the weather held out, and it did. We did some normal work out in the VFR practice area and then a handful of touch and goes and my CFI jumped on the radio and informed the tower that the next one would be a full stop and asked me if I felt like I was ready to solo.
He said I needed to do at least three touch and goes, but could do as many as I wanted if I was feeling good.
The good news is that I survived, but I was hoping for a much better experience. I made a few mistakes that weren't major and I made one which I feel was major. On one of the landings as soon as I hit ground effect I pulled up just a little too hard and ballooned up (had a touch too much airspeed too). It wasn't that bad and I've done it several times before and would just hold a good pitch and ride the balloon back down. Well, for whatever reason that I can't explain when I ballooned up I pushed the nose down slightly to level out the balloon and didn't then pull back enough. Landed nice and flat (or slight nose wheel first) and started to porpoise. I immediately knew I needed to go around and hit the throttle, but still got a couple good bounces in. Talk about an adrenaline rush climbing out after doing that.
All and all it wasn't as bad as it seemed at the time, but I was pretty frustrated with myself because I know exactly what causes that to happen and I had never once even come close to doing it before. I ended up doing 5 touch and goes total and did a couple go arounds, but the plane was still in one piece and nobody had to start a thread about another Cirrus CAPS pull, so I'll call it a success. hah
As I mentioned earlier I was kind of expecting it if the weather held out, and it did. We did some normal work out in the VFR practice area and then a handful of touch and goes and my CFI jumped on the radio and informed the tower that the next one would be a full stop and asked me if I felt like I was ready to solo.
He said I needed to do at least three touch and goes, but could do as many as I wanted if I was feeling good.
The good news is that I survived, but I was hoping for a much better experience. I made a few mistakes that weren't major and I made one which I feel was major. On one of the landings as soon as I hit ground effect I pulled up just a little too hard and ballooned up (had a touch too much airspeed too). It wasn't that bad and I've done it several times before and would just hold a good pitch and ride the balloon back down. Well, for whatever reason that I can't explain when I ballooned up I pushed the nose down slightly to level out the balloon and didn't then pull back enough. Landed nice and flat (or slight nose wheel first) and started to porpoise. I immediately knew I needed to go around and hit the throttle, but still got a couple good bounces in. Talk about an adrenaline rush climbing out after doing that.
All and all it wasn't as bad as it seemed at the time, but I was pretty frustrated with myself because I know exactly what causes that to happen and I had never once even come close to doing it before. I ended up doing 5 touch and goes total and did a couple go arounds, but the plane was still in one piece and nobody had to start a thread about another Cirrus CAPS pull, so I'll call it a success. hah