Short take offs and landings

Hi all

Today was one of those days where everything just seems to go right. I woke up bright and early to the sound of my phone going off. In that half asleep trance I grabbed it and just missed it typically. I saw that it was Cabair flight school and so I promptly phoned them back. They had bad news. Liam had phoned in ill and so he wasn’t going to be able to take my lesson, however another instructor Alfonso was available and so I jumped at the opportunity to fly with him.

I drove over to Elstree aerodrome and after meeting up with Alfonso we had a little briefing on what we were to be covering today and we then pretty promptly headed out to the aircraft, proceeded to do the pre-flight checks, jumped in, started her up, radioed ahead for information and taxi clearance, got it and then taxied over to the runway to to do our final pre flight and engine tests.

Today I was learning about performance take offs and short landings. These are effectively take offs in the shortest distance with the best rate of climb and landings in the shortest distance.

Alfonso gave me a demonstration of both of these and then it was my turn. In a performance take off, you have to apply full power before releasing the brakes as then the plane has the best rate of acceleration. Two stages of flaps are down and so rotation speed is at only 55knots. Not very fast at all! Once the plane is in the air the airspeed will begin to increase and so after the plane is climbing nicely and the airspeed has increased up to around 70kts, I’ll ease off the flaps one by one gradually.

We were on a different circuit to the one that I’m used too and so Alfonso pointed out the landmarks that we use for the circuit as turning points. As I was on base leg I started to set up for finals by descending to 600ft, slowing down and bringing in two stages of flaps. Usually I would approach the runway on finals at 70kts but now I was to do it at 65kts and so the plane loses some of the control you have when you are flying a little faster. As I approached even closer I would aim the plane just before the runway threshold and I would level off earlier than usual with the aim to touch down actually on the threshold.

Once the plane was on the ground I’d apply the brakes fairly aggressively on and off like a manual abs system so that they wouldn’t lock up on me. The challenge was for me to land and stop before the alpha exit on the runway which really isn’t that far along and I’m very pleased to say that I managed that 3 out of 4 times.

Also, during this lesson Alfonso demonstrated to me a bad weather circuit which was interesting to see. Unfortunately we were only allowed to do one per session but it was still great to learn about something totally new.

I’m now at home for Christmas as my university has broken up and I’m very happy about the next three weeks at home with lots more flying!

Mike