The Flight School had a window from 11:00 to 1:00 for N53361, and the weather is 'severe clear'. Upon arriving I'm told that the vacuum pump is 'squirley', but for my purpose, this is not a problem. (I'll be practicing partial panel later, but with the outstanding weather, the Directional Gyro and Attitude Indicator aren't mission critical.) Normal preflight, taxi and runup. Nate does all of the checklists for me. Position and hold. I explained what to expect and let him take off. Pretty good job, nice rudder control.We depart to the west in the general direction of VPC. Talk about airspeed, outside reference and trim. Complete the checklists, etc. We can see to almost forever. Level off at 3,500 feet, and do some basic airwork maneuvers. Turns, climbs, and descents. He does a nice job, very easy on the controls. I think Skydiving has given him "air sense", but I'm not sure if there is a real correlation.
My turn. Back to RYY for some T&Gs. ATIS has changed to Xray, but it is as nice as can be. Light winds right down the runway. Listening for tower calls, looking for traffic and explaining what I'm doing gets a bit hectic, but all works out fine. I abort the first landing (not bad, just not what I wanted) and make two more and a full stop. Nice workout, and I was really glad to have the company. We coverd 89.2 miles, climbed to 4822 feet and had a max speed of 141 mph.
Cessna 172P
Time = 1.2
2 comments:
Yes. I can choose not to make a landing even though I've done all of the necessary preparation to make it successful. In this case we touched down sooner then I expected and "bounced", so I added power and went around for another try. The pilot should always be prepared to 'abort the landing' if things don't look just right.
That was definitely more fun then I had before. Dad makes this a very cool experience and am always looking forward to playing in the sky again with him.
Thanks dad!
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