Well, I managed to get through a lesson with the aircraft intact. On Friday morning Jerome and I took my old reliable friend, N5533F, up to visit its sick sister at Blair. We did several touch-n-gos. I tried Jerome’s advice for flying the pattern… 100 MPH on downwind. Abeam the touchdown point reduce power to 1800 RPM, one notch of flaps, one crank of up trim, 500 FPM descent, 90 MPH. After the base turn, one notch of flaps, one more crank of up trim. After the final turn, drop the last notch of flaps if needed, one more crank of trim, get on slope, cross the numbers at 85 and pull power back to idle. It worked. Landings were improving, but my TnG takeoffs were pretty gnarly.
This is where I really wish I had video in the cockpit. As soon as the wheels touch my mind is trying to process the landing — but I’ve got only a couple of seconds to clean p the airplane (flaps UP, carb heat OFF, check gauges, fuel pump ON) then full throttle for the takeoff. It would be nice to completely ignore the landing and focus on the takeoff.
Anyway, visibility was getting worse when we headed back to Eppley. Jerome wasn’t sure if we’d even have a VFR approach, but as it turns out we did. We got a left downwind for 32R, Tower cleared us to land, and I did a dead-on approach and a very nice landing — best of the day by far. Either I figured something out or just got lucky, I don’t know, but it seems I usually land better at OMA than BTA. Don’t know why. I’ll have to explore that some.
So I’m working on brushing up my knowledge test stuff so i can get that out of the way. I had hoped to have it done while John was out of town, but there are just too many other things to deal with. I should be back up to speed before long, though. And I’m approaching a tiny little milestone… two more flights, and I get to total up and sign my first full logbook page.