| Lesson 8 | |
| Flight time logged: | 1.1 hours |
| Total flight time logged: | 11.4 hours |
| Total takeoffs/landings: | 27 |
| Total cost to date: | $1835 |
Today was a calm day with clear skies. Runway 7 was the active runway. In today's lesson I remained in the traffic pattern doing touch-and-goes to practice my landings and to practice a few emergency landings. Because it was such a nice day, there was more traffic than usual for 6:00 PM. I had to keep on my toes while flying the pattern.
My normal landings are getting a little better. I found it interesting that my best landing was the one where my instructor did not talk as I was landing. I'm still getting the feel of the plane in ground effect, but I believe I'm getting the hang of it. I felt like I did not do as good as I could today. I'm not sure if it was due to the distractions (including the instructor) or what.
My instructor introduced emergency approaches and landings today. In the traffic pattern on downwind, my instructor pulled the throttle to idle to simulate an engine failure. We were at TPA abeam the thousand-foot runway marker. I trimmed for 65 knots then talked through the engine restart procedure. I then glided down to the runway threshold maintaining 65 knots. I had to use some flaps, but made the touchdown successfully.
I started feeling a little frustrated with the instructor today. I feel like I know what to do now, but I'm still trying to listen to the instructor to get additional input. The problem is that the input is more like "static" in that it is distracting me from getting the feel of the landing.
Anyway, my next lesson is tomorrow evening. I was told that we would do some maneuvers (stalls, slow flight, steep turns, etc.) to keep those in check and to act as a warm up for me. After these, I will continue practicing normal and emergency landings. I hope I'm more in the zone tomorrow. I still think I'm four to five hours out from soloing.
