All Checked Out

After our recent move to S.C. I was feeling the need to get airborne again. Enter flyuza.com - the local training and aircraft rental facility.

I scheduled a bit of time out at KUZA today to get checked out in the C172s - particularly the newer C172R. That airplane had what I expected - a nice little 2 axis autopilot, modern avionics, and fuel injection. What I didn't expect was a Garmin 530 GPS (instead of the smaller standard King GPS) that not only did all the standard fancy garmin stuff, but has traffic and terrain alerting. Color me impressed.

Well, that was, until I broke the plane. :) On my first landing we felt a weird vibration as we rolled off of the runway toward the taxiway. It felt much like a nose-wheel shimmy, except this was coming for the left side. Plus the airplane wanted to turn left very badly. I looked down and, with no wheel pants installed, could see the problem right away - a flat tire. I eased to a stop while we decided what to do.

We were just clear of the runway but not yet across the hold short line so we needed to keep moving a bit more. I put in some throttle and tried to get the plane moving in the right direction, but even with near full power she simply wouldn't go straight - only left. We stopped after a few seconds of this and saw that the tire was coming off the wheel. OK, that's enough of that.

We radioed the FBO for a tow and shut down. They came over a pumped up the tire. As they did, we heard a BANG - the tube inside the tire had blown. The tire was sealed around the wheel just enough that it held air for the 30 yard trip into the nearest spot on the ramp.

My instructor looked at me. "That landing doesn't bode well for me signing you off on these planes" he said with a smirk. I laughed and said, "yeah, that must have been my worst landing ever". It actually wasn't that bad, I think that tube was just on its last leg. I was thankful it didn't go flat while we still had speed though. It would have been fairly controllable with airflow over the rudder (I think) but we may have ended up in the grass.

I needed 2 more landings before he could sign me off so, with a promise from me to not break anymore airplanes, we hopped in another older C172 and finished 'em up.

Now I can fly those C172s whenever their schedule allows. I look forward to going up again soon!

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