Flight 6 at SpanaFlight
(Total: 7.5 Dual, 21 Landings)
9/30/99
I don't know what Mr. Weatherman has against me, but I swear it must be a
conspiracy in the heavens. This week had been beautiful up until this
morning. Sunny, and 75 degrees. Then the clouds and fog rolled in
just for spite. I cursed the weather all morning from work, hoping that I
might just scare some of the gray away. Fortunately, by the time I reached
the Airport, most of the clouds had listened to my threats and were gone, only
to be replaced by a thick haze.
Matt decided that we would work on landings today. A smart move
considering that the visibility was so poor. At ground school, we talked
about Minimum Equipment Lists. Matt gave me a weird acronym to help me to
remember the FAA VFR day and night requirements. "Tomato Flames"
for day and "Flaps" for night.
T achometer O il Pressure Indicator M agnetic Compass A ltimiter T empurature Gauge O il Temperature Gauge
F uel Quantity Indicator L anding Gear Position Indicator A irspeed Indicator M anafold Pressure Indicator E mergency Locator Transmitter S eat Belts
F uses L anding Light (for Hire) A nti Collision Lights P osition Lights S ource of Electrical Energy
After ground school, we went out and pre-flighted the airplane. I asked
Matt a bunch of questions regarding the rest of the panel switches and
indicators that I had no knowledge of yet. In previous flights, they were
mostly controlled my Matt, or not used at all. We took off, and decided to
get a look around the area a bit, before we started pattern work.
One thing I noticed as we reached about 2000 feet, was how fast the clouds
about 1000 feet above us were moving. I doubt we would have gone anywhere
near them, but I can see how they could overtake us if we weren't careful.
We decided to go ahead and stick around the airport and work on landing
procedures.
We flew around the airport to the north and entered the downwind. We
were still using runway 34. We proceeded to do 4 touch and go's and one
full-stop landing. I did pretty poorly at these this time, and except for
the last time around, I was doing fairly shoddy pattern flying. I know I
will improve at these landings. I have to. I just don't feel really
good about them at the moment. We parked and debriefed inside the
office. Matt demonstrated on the white board what I was doing. I had
been drifting to the left on most of my landings, which I had thought we were
lined up with the runway on. We were too high on all the landings as
well. We even bounced once.
Tomorrow we are planning on doing the Stalls, steep turns, and slow flight
that we had originally planned for doing today but cancelled due to the
weather. Hopefully these will go well.
