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Saturday: Landed on almost every piece of pavement Oakland International has (diagram from AirNav). We didn't try for the big runway as it has a landing fee. Other than the passenger jets we had the place to ourselves.
We flew the 600' left-hand pattern on nice big 27L, 1000' right-hand pattern on 27R, then a very cramped 1000' right-hand pattern on tiny 33 where you wind up having to drop like a stone on final. A good workout. This is training my eye to make adjustments for the situation: does it look like I'm high when the runway is shorter, how quickly do I need to get rid of engine power or add flaps when I have to make an abbreviated pattern, all that sort of stuff. Going around the same pattern on the same runway all the time just trains you to turn at the clump of trees, and good luck to you if you ever go somewhere where the trees are different.
My centerline control -- flying directly down the center of the runway -- was improved. I would say I needed to get a better idea of when to start the base-to-final turn so I didn't undershoot. Benjamin wasn't worried by that because I kept noticing it and adjusting. He said there were two things he'd worry about: perfect alignment of the aircraft's long axis with the centerline of the runway, and looking out the window more. He reiterated that the landings I made were safe, and he said that the one time I did a go-around it was a good and conservative decision. I should just improve that alignment and be smoother by continuing to look out the window. OK. I can deal with that.
Sunday: Winds were CRAPPY and ceilings were low, so we stayed at Palo Alto and got beaten up a bit. When the stall warning horn is chirping randomly on downwind, you know the winds are gusty, no matter what nice sedate 16-knot wind they're reporting down there in the tower.
I made more go-arounds than landings. I don't know what resemblance those winds had to what was being reported, but I'll tell you that one of my go-arounds was because I had the rudder all the way to the floor and the nose still wasn't pointing down the runway*. At one point Benjamin said "The next time we get it on the ground we'll quit for the day." It just wasn't useful to keep going at that point.
It was interesting to run out of control input like that. Now I know what the Warrior runs out of first: rudder. The Citabria, best I remember, runs out of aileron first. You've got a heavy crab angle in on final, you transition to the cross-controlled setup for landing, and the runway just WHOOSH slides away to one side.
Two more lessons scheduled for this coming weekend. I will get back to being good at this. ...someday.
______________________________
* On a crosswind landing, the pilot has to use aileron (bank - putting, say, the right wing down and left wing up) to keep flying down the center of the runway, and has to use rudder (yaw - swinging the nose left-to-right) to align the airplane's long axis with the long axis of the runway. There are nicer and more comfortable ways to fly a desired course through a moving airmass, but on landing it really matters that you both fly along AND line up with that slice of pavement on the ground. Naturally these control inputs max out at some point. Aircraft manuals state the "maximum demonstrated crosswind component" in which a particular make and model has been landed. According to the wind reports from the tower we weren't close to that, but it was clear the wind I was feeling and the wind they were feeling were pretty different.
We flew the 600' left-hand pattern on nice big 27L, 1000' right-hand pattern on 27R, then a very cramped 1000' right-hand pattern on tiny 33 where you wind up having to drop like a stone on final. A good workout. This is training my eye to make adjustments for the situation: does it look like I'm high when the runway is shorter, how quickly do I need to get rid of engine power or add flaps when I have to make an abbreviated pattern, all that sort of stuff. Going around the same pattern on the same runway all the time just trains you to turn at the clump of trees, and good luck to you if you ever go somewhere where the trees are different.
My centerline control -- flying directly down the center of the runway -- was improved. I would say I needed to get a better idea of when to start the base-to-final turn so I didn't undershoot. Benjamin wasn't worried by that because I kept noticing it and adjusting. He said there were two things he'd worry about: perfect alignment of the aircraft's long axis with the centerline of the runway, and looking out the window more. He reiterated that the landings I made were safe, and he said that the one time I did a go-around it was a good and conservative decision. I should just improve that alignment and be smoother by continuing to look out the window. OK. I can deal with that.
Sunday: Winds were CRAPPY and ceilings were low, so we stayed at Palo Alto and got beaten up a bit. When the stall warning horn is chirping randomly on downwind, you know the winds are gusty, no matter what nice sedate 16-knot wind they're reporting down there in the tower.
I made more go-arounds than landings. I don't know what resemblance those winds had to what was being reported, but I'll tell you that one of my go-arounds was because I had the rudder all the way to the floor and the nose still wasn't pointing down the runway*. At one point Benjamin said "The next time we get it on the ground we'll quit for the day." It just wasn't useful to keep going at that point.
It was interesting to run out of control input like that. Now I know what the Warrior runs out of first: rudder. The Citabria, best I remember, runs out of aileron first. You've got a heavy crab angle in on final, you transition to the cross-controlled setup for landing, and the runway just WHOOSH slides away to one side.
Two more lessons scheduled for this coming weekend. I will get back to being good at this. ...someday.
______________________________
* On a crosswind landing, the pilot has to use aileron (bank - putting, say, the right wing down and left wing up) to keep flying down the center of the runway, and has to use rudder (yaw - swinging the nose left-to-right) to align the airplane's long axis with the long axis of the runway. There are nicer and more comfortable ways to fly a desired course through a moving airmass, but on landing it really matters that you both fly along AND line up with that slice of pavement on the ground. Naturally these control inputs max out at some point. Aircraft manuals state the "maximum demonstrated crosswind component" in which a particular make and model has been landed. According to the wind reports from the tower we weren't close to that, but it was clear the wind I was feeling and the wind they were feeling were pretty different.
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The long-straight in from Morgan Hill is the ILS 30L (http://204.108.4.16/d-tpp/0602/00693ILD30L.PDF). It starts at GILRO, which is, oddly enough, over Gilroy.
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