Time: 1200Z (0600 MST)
Flying time: 1.3 hrs. (cumulative 14.1)
Landings: 2 (cumulative 32)
Aircraft: Skyhawk N7898N (T-41C)
Flight: ABQ-NW Practice area-AEG-ABQ
Jeff got back in town on Sunday, called me on Monday, we met at the Aero Club shortly after 0530 MST on Tuesday. Time to get back in that saddle!
I'm a bit unprepared. I forgot my clipboard, pad and pen. We grab a pile of scrap paper and borrow a clipboard from the club, and I borrow a pen from Jeff. File flight plan and get the briefing. It's a beautiful day, although the visibility is quite poor for New Mexico --- visibility is only 10 miles :-). A scattered layer at 12,000 MSL, smooth air, light, variable winds at 9,000 ft, 6 knot wind at 12,000. We're just going to do a re-orientation flight here, as it's been over a month and I probably have forgotten everything.
We get out to the plane just after dawn, and run through the preflight as usual. Hop in, run through the checklist, get clearance to the practice area at 10,500 ft (which must mean I'm in for some stall practice). Take-off clearance comes immediately upon request, and we're in the sky in no time. Hooray!
We get out the practice area at 10,500 ft (appx 4,000 AGL), and after a couple of clearing turns, enter slow flight and two power-off stalls with full flaps. Then a couple of power-on which pass uneventfully. One emergency descent and set up for emergency landing, then back up to 6,800 ft to practice som t&gs.
Well, one T&G.
Enter the pattern, set up on final, get all the airspeed and everything right. Nice roundout, nice flare. Only the flare is 5 ft AGL, and we KLUNK down on the runway. Nicely aligned with the centerline for a change, so I got the slip right, but badly misjudged the altitude. Flaps up, power in, up we go and back into the pattern for another.
And here we see why the Air Force has these T-41Cs with 210 HP engines and climbing pitch propellors. There's a vanilla 172 (or is it a 150?) ahead of us in the pattern. Nice tight pattern, but he's going slow. He lands ahead of us at a nice separation, but hesitates on the runway obviously pondering whether to make this a full-stop or not. He's still on the runway as we come across the threshold, so we go around. We fly to his left for a while as he takes off waaaaaaay down near the departure end of the runway, staying reeeeeeeeealy low and verrrrry slooooooow. We, meanwhile, are 700 feet above him doing 110 MPH (the T-41C's have old ASIs, measuring in MPH and not knots) in three shakes of a lamb's tail. He's going so slow we think we might pass him and get ahead of him in the pattern, but he's low and has right of way, and he keeps turning as if expecting us to stay behind him, even though we know he's seen and heard us when we were flying parallel. So we're stuck behind him, and slow to 90 MPH to try to stay there. But I'm having a hard time keeping separation, even when doing shallow S-turns to keep back. After a while it looks like this just ain't gonna work, so we depart the pattern and get clearances back to ABQ.
Flight back to ABQ is totally uneventful. After only a couple of vectors we're handed off to the tower, which clears us for landing when we're still 5 miles from the field. Straight in approach to 17, set up for final, and this time I don't roundout so high. Could have used a little more backpressure before settling down to slow down some more, but it's not a bad landing considering it's only the second one in a month.
Notes to self: Gotta get that altitude judgement tuned. Watch altitude in pattern, didn't stay where needed to be at each stage. When stuck behind a slow aircraft, deal with it better --- I could have slowed down, too. Also, could have extended downwind after he turned base. Get that physical.
Next lesson on Friday at 0500MST. Tune in next bat time, same bat channel.