February 2023

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Monday, February 27th, 2006 10:28 am
Saturday's lesson was less stunningly wonderful than last Sunday's, probably because my instructor kept failing everything on me. Soft field takeoff! Short runway for landing - with an obstacle sitting on the numbers! Oops, your flaps don't work! There goes the engine! I'm surprised he didn't find a way to fail the gear.* My landings were not as beautiful with all this going on.

However, I was (in his words) "perfectly safe, and that's what matters". He had no critical comments after our lesson, and that's a compliment.

Sunday we were weathered out. The storm system we'd thought we would see in the late afternoon arrived earlier than predicted. SJC's TAF indicated it would be heavy enough to bring visibility down below VFR minimums, and while PAO (my home base) wasn't bad YET, we weren't sure when we'd get closed out. We said forget it.

My homework for this week is to complete my flying club's annoying aircraft checkout questionnaire. Weight and balance calculations... fuel used during climb to 3,376 feet on a 71.2 degree day... bla bla bla. Not hard, just takes time. I get to show that to my instructor this coming Saturday.

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* This plane does not have retractable gear. He did fail the brakes, in a sense -- on the "soft field" takeoffs and landings we didn't use them.
Monday, February 27th, 2006 10:51 pm (UTC)
And any landing after which you can use the aircraft again is a great one!

I've had one good landing.