She could fly.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger      2 comments      link this post     


Today I did three landings with the other instructor, and he said we should stop at that.

Why?

Because they were good.

The first one he said was perfect, and the others were good, and, he said, "I think you finally have the picture in your head of how it should look."

Yesterday, after doing 11 landings/takeoffs for almost two hours, I confess to being tired. My right leg was twitching from the constant right rudder, worse than when I go for a hard run. My left arm was tired from pulling back on the yoke during the landings (my friend Naomi informed me this past weekend that I have "chicken arms").

After yesterday's session, he sat down and drew a side-view picture of landings on a piece of paper, explaining what was happening during each part. He also drew a picture of what I was doing so I could see what I wasn't grasping correctly. I studied that picture all day yesterday, and envisioned landing so much that I got honked at in the jeep* at a green light because in my mind as I practiced "landing", at the intersection, I was just about to start pulling the nose up. That was no time to accelerate!

Today, he said, we'd stop at the three and end on that good note. "If we keep doing them, you'll start getting tired and little things will happen and you'll begin wondering what you're doing wrong. Right now, you have your confidence level up, and that's a good place to end on."

Frankly, I'm pretty happy.

Granted, the wind was light and almost straight down the runway, but still. I know I don't have it down perfectly, and that there will be rough landings and go-arounds and such, but today I did alright. I really did. I didn't screw up talking to tower, setting up the radios...it was a good morning.

Ending on a good note every now and then is really important for students, especially those like me who are all to quick to beat ourselves up, anyway.

There were a lot of airplanes on the ramp, and so I had to park the plane a little further away from the building than usual. The guys who work there are pretty friendly, and one joked with the instructor, as he was walking to the building, that I'd probably get worn out hiking to the building. I was in the airplane still, doing post-flight things like installing the control lock and turning switches off and such, but I could hear the instructor's reply.

"Nah, right now she could probably fly right to the building," he said, in regards to the dorky smile I couldn't wipe off of my face after not bottoming out on the landings.

Well, he was right.

I could fly.

And now I'm going home for the weekend. Driving, yes, but smiling the whole way.

View: This is the diagram (JPEG) the second instructor drew for me to explain how a landing should look (the bottom image) and what I was doing (the top image). I knew I was doing that, in a sense, because it had been explained to me a lot in both words and gestures so that I could see how a landing should look, but having it on paper, oddly, helped. I studied the paper all day, locking the comparison in my mind of what I was doing versus what I should be doing. So, as I was landing, I was looking out the window and thinking of the angle of the plane on the paper and how that compared with what I was doing. I'm not sure what the deal is with me and having stuff down on paper, but it seems to work.




* More than once I've reached for the cigarette lighter to slow down while driving the jeep. That's weird. But it is "throttle-like."

Labels: landings, lessons

Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger  8/28/2008 10:20:00 AM   (2) comments   Links to this post    

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