In which I do some solo flying to build up PIC time, dodge some rain and do some rather nice landings
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Today I was booked to do some solo time. I got some last minute instructions from J, preflighted 4964 and headed out, taking off from 36L.
I departed upwind and headed out to the training area. It was rather cloudy so I wasn’t able to get high enough to do any stalls, but I decided to practice a few steep turns. I headed out there partly just to get the extra practice departing and joining the circuit.
I did a couple of steep turns in each direction. The first few weren’t so good, but once I got back into the hang of flying the attitude and ‘pulling’ it through the turn, things definitely improved.
I had to avoid a few light rain patches, it was interesting to see the patches of rain in the sky and watch them move.
After doing the turns, I decided to head back and do some circuits. I made my inbound call and joined crosswind.
Rather than describing each circuit in detail, I’ll just list them
- a few flapped landings
- a couple of flapless landings
- one short field
- one glide approach
Happily, all of the landings were pretty good, although there was a slight thump on touchdown after the first flapped landing (but it was the first landing for the day). The glide approach was also successful, I did an S-turn, then a sideslip, then lowered one stage of flap, and nicely made the field and did a T&G. On the short-field landing, I landed slightly longer than I hoped (just after the first taxiway), I was hoping to land between the threshold and the taxiway or abeam the taxiway, but I was only just beyond the taxiway so it wasn’t too bad.
I ended up getting 1.3 solo time for today, which brings my total PIC time up to 7.3. I need another 2.7 PIC time to get my passenger endorsement.
Map for today’s flight:
Amusingly, some of my radio calls today ended up sounding a little managled at the end – Lilydale is a bit of a silly word really. I decided I sounded a bit like the Swedish Chef at times 
