Day 5 - Finding airfields and joining circuits

26th January 2009

(Note lesson date and scroll down to find oldest unread post)

Finding airfields and joining circuits is what we did today because the weather was too bad around our training area.

We climbed to 1900 ft to keep below the cloud base and headed for Gatton as the weather looked better over there. I noted wind direction and joined circuit down wind. When I turned base I kept the power on longer because we had a head wind, but then over shot the airfield centre line a little which I didn't mean to do, but it worked out well because of the cross wind final.

Now because I had worked out that I may have been looking too short up the field for guaging my height when I've been flaring, this time I tried looking further up the strip as I came in, flared and put it nicely on the grass. YAARHOO..!!!! And I have a record of it, my wife got it on video as she was out flying with JimG in Kev's Tecnam and just happened to be there at Gatton Airpark saw us coming in and grabbed the video camera, Awesome..!!!!


We had a quick cup of coffee (thank you Marty) and got airbourne again:


Kevin told me there was a private airstrip beside the railway line, half way between Forest Hill and Laidley (which is south west of Gatton). "Find it, join circuit and land there".

I found it, joined circuit and turned onto final and noted the electric train power lines that I would have to clear before dropping onto the airfield the other side of the power lines. As I cleared the power lines I pushed the nose down rounded out , flared and a got a reasonable smooth landing on a rough field.

Airbourne again, we headed back home detouring around a couple of showers and came into Lynfield on a powered approach. I got it down nicely but because of our ground speed with a little tail wind I was having trouble keeping it straight up the strip but still managed to pull it up so we didn't have to turn back to the hanger.

All in all a good day, three good landings in trying conditions and I'm pumped.

Now all I have to do is landings like that next lesson and I'll be happy.

T/T 6.4 hrs