zaitcev.mee.nu

My deep-seated belief that my instructors were too nice for my own good received new food when I went up with Mr. Jon Pickering in a C-172RG of Iolani Air. Jon identified 3 areas that needed urgent improvement:

1. Power (mis-)management. He wants me to climb at full power out of an airport, then transition to cruise by letting the airplane accelerate, and then fly at cruise speeds and the most efficient power setting. Instead, I bump the power down as soon as I can, set 2200 RPMs, and then fly the throttle around 21" of MP. I am so used to be stingy and bump the throttle down as soon as I sense an updraft. But Jon implied that it's not good for engine, but more importantly it triggers other bad habits.
2. Flying the trim. Since I play with power, I have to chase it with trim, and in the end I start flying with the trim. I need to break this and get back to flying with the yoke. It may even help me stay on the desired altitude, which I don't.
3. Staying on the centerline. At the final, I am sloppy getting on the centerline. I enter a slight correction towards it and get roughly on the centerline some 300 ft up, then make finer corrections and line up for touchdown. At Waimea, this just does not work, because it prevents me from sensing changes in deviation immediately. It is too gusty. I should get strictly on the centerline early, and apply corrections promptly. In the event, my corrections grew larger and larger, and I had to call a go-around from 100 ft.

There was way more than that. I bounced us off the runway at touchdown in Kona at first. I forgot to raise the gear. I "set" the VOR instad of DG (not the first time it happens to me). My radio work is atrocious. I also flew 500 ft above a helicopter head-on: I knew he was there, but could not acquire him until we were 2/3 mile away. It was kind of fun in a bad way.

Even after all is said, I think I could've circumnavigated the island, or made the right decision to turn back, on a good day like that. But I need to be way more on the ball for the instructor to be able to forego teaching basics and move onto the local weather.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 03:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 409 words, total size 2 kb.