Is it really October? The sun is shining the wind is almost non-existent, the clouds are high and scattered, all in all a perfect day to fly. It’s been three weeks since I have been at the controls of our C42 Microlight and I thought I may have forgotten a few things, but as it turns out it like riding a bike! Well the fundamentals that is, it would seem I have forgotten how to execute the various exercises to the standard required and to be honest I could not even remember having executed some of the manoeuvres, stalls in a glide descent for example!
So today’s lesson was take off and leave the circuit to the east climb to 6,000ft (the highest I have been) and then execute a stall with powered recovery, execute a stall within a turn and recover, execute a stall in a glide descent and recover without power, medium level turns and steep turns.
So we taxied out to runway 19 back tracking it, as we approached the take-off point Julie call down wind and as we could see she was nearly on base leg we turned off 19 to allow her to land. She landed and back tracked to a taxiway, by this time the parachute plane was ready and holding short so we lined up and took-off, I was a little late in switching the fuel pump off and taking the flaps up but other than this all was good with the take-off. Turning to the east I called that I was leaving the circuit and climbed to 6,000ft; the view is amazing and reminds me why I love flying, we could see for miles, RAF Marham, King’s Lynn and beyond it the Wash and many other places too.
First I did a HASELL check Height, Airframe (check the flaps etc), Security (harness and hatches), Engine (Ts & Ps), location & Lookout (turning one way and then the other), next the stall, as some may have read I could make it stall very well previously and Mike pointed out my mistake. Instead of trying to maintain altitude by keeping the stick moving back I was trying to keep the nose level! As normal by following Mike’s instructions I soon had it stalling every time, as for the recovery this was not too bad it should be nose down (but not too much) and power on to recover to a climb, my problem was lowering the nose too much and too quickly almost putting it in to a dive, however it did recover it!
It’s basically the same technique for each of the stalls, just without power in the glide descent.
Turning, well that should not be too bad I have done a few of these, or so I thought! Well my turns were too shallow and as I steepened them up to 30-45° for a medium turn and 45-60° for a steep turn, I found one way I lost height and the other I gained height, in fact I remember blogging about this, but still I had issue until Mike pointed out that I was using the nose on the horizon and not a point on the windscreen in front of me!
Time fly’s, if you excuse the pun, while flying so it was time to fly back and as I approached I saw the parachute plane just taking off and with no other traffic in the circuit I was straight down, I think I rounded out a little high, but the landing was ok.
And so ended another lesson, next week, weather permitting, it’s an hours solo to consolidate the stalling and turning.