I was fortunate enough to fly twice over the weekend after a month of stormy weather. The first flight was a solo one, just to brush up on some maneuvers before the more important second flight with two of my favorite people. Since I’ve recently past 160(!) flight hours, I realize I need to do more post-flighting.
What really made me think about doing post-flight reviews consistently was that first one of the weekend.
The morning was hot and humid with the wind right down the runway at 8G17KT. A little brisk, but nothing too crazy for Oklahoma. There were a few things that happened during the flight worth noting though.
Rough takeoff
Everything was fine and normal, although I noted that my takeoff wasn’t great. I ended up riding the brakes which started making the plane rotate and it took a split second to figure that out.
Thinking back, I realized the plane was lifting off before the V-speed I was waiting for so I tried to correct that because I was so focused on the speed. The take away I’ve gotten from that is to focus more on the feel of the plane than strictly on the V-speed. Usually I’m better at that, but for reasons I’ll get into later, I was off my game.
After letting the nose come up and reaching my climb speed, I was able to trim and fly out from the airport with no problems.
Maneuvers were ok
It was a busy day in the practice area. Everybody has been waiting weeks for decent weather so we all rush out at the same time. Between keeping an eye on the traffic around and getting configured for slow flight and stalls, I realized it was hot. I knew it was hot on the ground, but a wave of tiredness just hit me once I lined up on the 360 heading.
I drank a little water and then proceeded to do slow flight, stalls, and steep turns after my HASELL checklist. There were some things I was more lax on than usual. This particular plane I rent has a powerful tendency to yaw to the right so I didn’t stay as coordinated as I should have. I lost and gained weird amounts of altitude during steep turns.
I have very tight personal expectations for my flying. Altitude within 50 ft, airspeed within 5 kts, heading within 10 degrees. So this was unacceptable by my standards. But again, I’ll come back to what happened here.
That landing…
Well… coming back was equally rough. The winds shifted as they tend to so now there was a slight crosswind down the runway. Tower extended my downwind until I was on a seven mile final so even though I followed my checklist, the flow was a little off.
I added in flaps like normal and lined up like what I thought was normal. Then of course as I started getting closer to the ground the plane started that right yaw again. And the whole time the crosswind was gently pushing me off center. Then I did something not so great.
I used no aileron to correct for the crosswind, didn’t use quite enough rudder to fully straighten out, and I was a little too fast. So I porpoised twice before I remembered to just hold back pressure on the yoke. At that point I was relatively right of center and really wanting to get back to the parking area.
What happened there
At some point I let my eyes drift away from my aiming point. I use the centerline and the touchdown points or the numbers as a crosshair to aim at. I wasn’t aiming anywhere this time.
By the time I figured that out, I was already low and fast. I was power idle, but my pitch kept the speed up because I never rounded out and by the time I pulled back it was already a mess.
Personal check in
All of this was very weird for me. I’m usually on the ball for all of my flights, even in the heat of summer. The problem was that I wasn’t really up to flying that morning. I was tired and grumpy and I felt like this was another thing to get off my list instead of the joy it is.
The attitude I had should have been enough to keep me on the ground, but I also wanted to go up because the weather was finally clear. What I needed was another hour of sleep and to go up another day.
It’s always better to wish you were in the sky than wish you were on the ground. I’ll keep that on my list of questions to ask myself every time.