Time: 1200Z (0600 MST)
Flying time: 1.8 hrs. (cumulative 11.0)
Landings: 5 (cumulative 26)
Aircraft: Skyhawk N7887N (T-41C)
What a day. Up till 00:30 last night, up at 04:30 to get squared away for meeting Jeff at 05:30. Beeeeg cup-o-joe at the 7-11. How come no place that makes Good Coffee is open at 05:00?
The usual, flight plan, preflight, runup. Wind is really calm, 170 at 3. I get all the clearances and hit runway 17. Not a great takeoff, I keep trying to use ailerons when I should be using only rudder. But it's OK, and we're told to turn on course before we even overfly the intersection with runway 3/21.
We head on up to 8,500' at which point we terminate radar service and take 'er up to 10,500, heading out to the practice area to do stalls. Two power-off stalls go fine, and then I know I'm in for another dreaded power-on. That spin a few lessons back really put the fear of God into me, and I'm scared. So instead of going right for the takeoff stall, we do a little minimum controllable airspeed work. 10,500ft at 65 for a few minutes, and now that we're nice and slow, hell, let's do a power-on stall. No problem, got that rudder thang down pat now :-).
"Ok, let's say you've got an engine fire, what do you do?"
Fine, we do an emergency decent for a while, and look for a suitable landing site. The dirt road'll do. We get down to about 500'AGL, pitch for best glide and then set up for final onto the road. I guess we were about 100'AGL when we finally decided to punch the power back in and give that cattle meandering down the road a little something more interesting to talk about while grazing.
Ok, we climb back up to 6,800 and head back to the practice area to do some ground reference maneuvers. This is the first time I'll try S-turns across a road and turns around a point. We try a few, and I don't do so well. But hey, it'll come with practice, so I don't feel so bad. Now for the work. Back to Double Eagle for some t&gs.
We do four t&gs at AEG, and Jeff doesn't touch the controls the whole time. I do have to remember to transition my gaze to the end of the field sooner, and once I land us a tad hard, but I'm starting to like this. Some of the traffic around AEG is getting me nervous, especially the other T-41C who is making these REAL wide patterns right in front of me. At one point he even does a 360 to avoid some other landing traffic, and is pointed right at me for a bit longer than I would like. Shrug.
Back to ABQ, I don't start to flub my radio work until well into the game --- I get a bit flustered when the controler vectors me around some traffic, but recover quickly and take us in on a pretty good approach. But can't do it all right, I don't put in enough right rudder during the flare and crab a little bit. Klunk. A fairly rough set-down, and one which shows my landings still need some work. Still, Jeff hasn't touched the controls on any of my 5 landings today.
Things to work on: getting the flare right, and dealing with the wind with rudder a bit more comfortably. Getting over the fear of spin so I can just do the stalls and avoid the spin without fretting. Learn the ground reference maneuvers. Jeff says to go ahead and get my physical, and start getting ready for the pre-solo written, because it ain't far off. Note to self. Start wearing old shirts to my lessons.
Next lesson in two days!