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2021-07-07.md

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Information

  • Date: 2021-07-07
  • Time: 08:00
  • Expense: $264.05
    • Ground Instruction: $16.80
      • Rate: $56.00
      • Time: 0.3
    • Flight Instruction: $67.20
      • Rate: 56.00
      • Time: 1.2
    • Plane Rental: $165.60
      • Rate: $138.00
      • Time: 1.2
    • Tax: $14.45
  • Aircraft:
    • Category: Airplane
    • Classification: Single Engine Land
    • Make: Piper
    • Model: Cherokee Warrior II
    • Serial: 28-8016338
    • Identification: N8222F
    • Hobbs:
      • Start: 6072.5
      • Stop: 5073.7
    • Tach:
      • Start: 2231.1
      • Stop: 2232.1
  • Points of Departure and Arrival:
    • From: KJEF
    • To: KJEF
  • Weather:
    • Official:
      • METAR: 
         KJEF 071253Z 11003KT 8SM CLR 23/19 A2997 RMK AO2 SLP133 T02330194
 KJEF 071353Z 00000KT 10SM CLR 27/20 A2997 RMK AO2 SLP134 T02670200
  • Covered:
    • Normal Landings

Lesson Review

This was another day filled with loops around the traffic pattern, so I'll skip ahead a bit.

Landing

Today started out good, was a little rough in the middle, then ended pretty good.
I pulled a few decent landings, then for whatever reason I starting being too aggressive in my flare and setting the plane down hard or not aggressive enough and landing too flat. I don't exactly know what happened to cause the change in behavior, but it was infuriating. My CFI picked up my frustration and decided to change things around a little bit - he requested a tight pattern from the tower, muttered something about becoming a CFI and never being able to fly, then took the yoke.
After whipping the plane back around the traffic pattern lower and faster than I would have ever dreamed of, he lined us back up, said "your airplane", then told me to slow flight all the way down the runway.

Well...I got about about a third of the way down the runway then heard the tires chirp.

Did you notice that I said "heard" and not "felt"?
As it turns out, my CFI was being sneaky. He told me that he had an ulterior motive here - and it appears to have worked. We did this twice more and both times resulted in smooth landings.

Due to some incoming traffic, Tower told us to switch to a right pattern, so we climbed to standard altitude and my CFI told me to set up for a normal approach.

At this point in my aviation career, a right pattern is still a little odd, so "normal approach" maybe isn't the best phrasing!

As I extended the flaps to full, my CFI instructed me to keep my speed up a bit (70kts across the threshold instead of the normal 60kts), so I reduced the throttle a bit to flatten out the approach and pitched down a bit more before the flare. He then told me to slow flight down the runway again. About halfway along, we rolled the wheels on! As smooth as butter.

We did this a couple of more times, then called it a day. My CFI explained that while it wasn't textbook, some people responded better to a bit more energy in the approach. As I became more comfortable, the landings would naturally begin to get shorter and I would begin slowing to the standard speed.

Last Thoughts

Everyone wants to be the exception.
As much as I wanted to be that one perfect student that landings just clicked for - I'm not. I'm struggling a bit with them. While that is endlessly frustrating, I've been assured time and time again that I'm right on track and that everyone fights with the last 6 seconds of an approach.

I'm really hoping that I sort them out in the next couple of lessons, because my CFI has been talking solo for a while now.

Recap Data