Taking my complex time to ~4.5 hours

Today I earned another 0.9 hours of complex time in the Arrow. It has been a while since I've been able to fly; the weather has been poor for a week or so. The decent weather today brought the fellow pilots out of the woodwork to work off their pent up need to soar.

We had gone through most of the procedures before today, so this flight was to knock out the last two: power-on stalls and simulated engine outs. The stalls were nothing surprising - fairly docile if you keep on top of the rudder input. The engine outs were another story. We practiced a few at West Point airport and when you pull that sucker back to idle you are landing REAL soon. For instance, we pulled it to idle when I was a little past abeam the numbers (coming from too-wide a downwind leg) and we weren't going to make the runway - we would have had to settle for a field in front of the runway if this had been for real.

When we were about to add a little power in order to make the runway on that first "engine out" we looked up to see skydivers all around us. They had been annouced on unicom so we were ready for them. We did a go-around (called off the landing and started climbing again) and made a right turn to go away from the open chutes. Making a wide circle around the airport let the jumpers land and the jump plane - going for the pattern in a dive-bomber descent - get back on the ground before we re-entered the pattern.

We did two more simulated engine outs which I managed to put on the runway and then headed back to Williamsburg. My instructor had turned on the interior lights (when I wasn't looking) on the way to JGG. This meant that when I went to lower the gear just before entering the pattern the three green "gear down" lights didn't come on (they were too dim to see b/c the interior lights were on and dim).

I calmly said "Hmm, not getting 3 green" (I figured my instructor had done something, since we just practiced this emergency before going to West Point). As he was saying "Well, what should we do?" I checked the master switch - it was on - I looked at the circuit breaker - not popped - so that left the interior lights. As I went for them he called out "YOU SAW ME TURN THOSE ON!" - I laughed and said I didn't but I don't think he believes me. What I really should have done in this situation was exit the pattern, get some altitude, and run the full checklist. Since I knew he was tripping me up though, I figured I would go through the steps that were in my head first.

I made the pattern into JGG a little too tight, causing me to overshoot final and come in pretty high. Not a good approach at all. I managed to salvage it, though I probably should have gone around and tried again. The "swamp monster" gave us a nice little balloon-up-then-dump-you-down as I was high in the flare. Thankfully we had some extra airspeed that let me pitch up more to fight it.

Things to work on:

  • Call out "3 green" at the various points in the pattern, don't just do it mentally
  • Avoid any side loads on the gear when landing/taking off - today's serious gusts were causing me to overcorrect with rudder

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