Scott James Remnant

Two lessons booked today, one before lunch and one after lunch. The long term forecast hadn’t looked good, and I thought it’d be a good idea to try and cover the weather. Turns out that my hunch was right, the weather really wasn’t looking that good this morning, but looked like it might clear up towards the afternoon.

The original plan had to be to cover slow flight and stalling today, but the weather wasn’t going to be good enough for that; certainly not good enough for stalling.

John decided that the best thing would be to go up and do some revision of turning, especially while climbing and descending; and an introduction to slow flight. Then after lunch, if it had cleared up, finish up slow flight and move on to stalling.

We had plenty of time, because the previous student had cancelled; and as it turned out, the one between my lessons and the one after cancelled as well!

Victor November as usual, but today spotted a problem doing the checks; a screw had come loose on the left wheel spat and had to be tightened before we took off.

Handled the take-off again today, a fairly easy one along Runway 36 remembering to turn to 030° afterwards to avoid overflying Charlecotte who don’t like it when we do.

First bit of revision into climbing turns accomplished then, and again as we turned onto downwind before leaving the circuit. Held the course south, and did some descending and climbing turns over Shipston-upon-Stour before heading west.

Cloud wasn’t going anywhere, and the horizon was really indistinct which made holding a reasonable attitude quite difficult, let alone turning on it; but managed to muddle through.

Next up was an introduction to slow flight. This is basically slowing the speed right down while holding the altitude, keeping the nose very high. Brought the power back in a couple of stages, and after each one it was increasingly harder to hold the aircraft’s attitude and required huge movements of the controls.

Stall warner sounded as we got particularly slow and it was time to recover, so lowered the nose and increased to full power, climbing out of it.

Practiced those a couple of times to get the feel of it right. Then time for a bit more practice at some turns, had the aircraft in a descent when John asked me to turn, which I did; but I’d forgotten to get it in trim first, as a result made quite a mess of turning out and levelling off. Bugger.

In fact, I felt that the weather was throwing me off completely so we headed back to the school for lunch, with the hope that it’d at least clear up for the afternoon session.

No such luck though, after a decent lunch and some time in the briefing room covering the procedure for stall recovery just in case, the cloud wasn’t going anywhere. It had lifted a bit, and there was a spot of blue sky around Wellesbourne, but no more than that.

Visited the control tower to see what it was like, and they weren’t too keen on it either. Someone was up doing their skills test, but they’d headed off to the east for some decent weather.

Definitely wasn’t going to be doing any stalling today, and John asked me what I wanted to do.

Since it had improved slightly, and I wasn’t happy about mucking up some of the basics in the last lesson, I asked whether we could go up again for some revision of climbing, descending and turning.

He agreed that was a good idea, so that’s what we did. Another take-off, climb up through the circuit and out. He then set me a few exercises such as turning to a particular place, getting us there, changing altitude and turning onto a new heading, flying there; changing altitude again and turning towards home before a standard over-head join into Wellesbourne.

The improved visibility and much more relaxed nature of the flight, not having to learn anything more, really put me back at ease and I found that I was able to do the exercises much more confidently than I had before.

In the end, quite a productive lesson despite the weather. Several things to read up on for next week, since depending on the weather it’ll be more slow flight, some stalling or maybe even a first circuit or two.

P/UT Hours Today 1:30, Total 6:50