Taken during the pre-flight walk around

There isn’t too much to report about this flight other than I spent some more time around the circuit. I hadn’t flown for two weeks so it was a good way to refamiliarise myself with how to fly.

During the flight I practised a combination of: normal approaches; flapless approaches; glide approaches; short field approaches. There was a steady wind of about 14 knots blowing down the runway which meant I would climb quickly and descend quickly. In my normal approaches I only had to use two stages of flap to get myself down. I enjoying my flapless approaches and the shallower approach was very noticeable. I also practiced a couple of flapless glide approaches which was fun. My first short field approach may not have counted as I only used two stages of flap when I should have used all three! I improved late on in my session by approaching high and dumping the final stage of flap later in the final leg and increasing my rate of descent.

 

There are a couple of things I would work on improving after this session. I need a bit more practice with my straight and level on the downwind leg as I am sometimes flying at 1100ft rather than 1000ft. There could be two reasons for this: not trimming correctly as I come out of my climb on the crosswind leg of the circuit; gaining height in my 30° turn at the end of the cross wind leg to the downwind leg. My straight and level has improved a lot from where it was so I am confident I can work this out next time I fly some circuits. The second thing I need to work on is my application of differential braking once on a short field landing as I applied more left brake than right and ended up uncomfortably swerving across the runway on one approach.

 

This will be my last session flying circuits for a while now. From June 20th-24th I have a double session booked in every morning. Weather dependent I believe I can get up to fifteen hours of navigation in and – with some luck – my qualifying cross country flight.

This is something I could have added to an older post, but here is the AIP chart for Lee-on-Solent where I fly from.