Well, it's almost 2 months since I last flew, due to maintenance issues
and a holiday interstate.
I had a lesson today, and was feeling fairly confident that I hadn't
become too rusty, due to constant visualisation and going over stuff in
my head. I was slightly nervous about the a/c as it's wings were only
reattached yesterday, and the prop had also been removed for
re-dressing. I was a little surprised at the prop, because I had
expected the resin leading edge inserts to have been replaced, but they
weren't. They had just re-coated the prop itself with that varnish
stuff, whatever they call it! :-)
We started the a/c, after a couple of tries with and without choke. She
was running very rough, and didn't sound right at all. I shut her dwn
again, and tried again to start it. This time all sounded and felt just
right. Must have just been too much fuel in the previous attempts to
start it.
Taxiied and took off. Pulling back the throttle to begin decent for the
first touch and go delivered another nervous moment. A fairly strong,
unusual vibration was felt. As we were not on the ground, my mouth
instantly did an impression of a cats bum, and gauges were frantically
checked. My instructor suggested that the prop may not be 100% balanced
properly after being re-dressed. Turned out that must have been
correct, as it did it every time we throttled back, and caused no ill
effects other than the unusual vibration.
We did 2 touch and goes and a full stop with the instructor with me,
and then I did 5 touch and goes and a full stop on my own. One of my
aproaches was a little high, so I thought it was the perfect
opportunity to have a go at a side slip. I'd been shown how twice, done
it once with assistance, and done it once or maybe twice without
assistance. Well, I gave myself a little bit of a scare, as it didn't
go quite to plan. Discussions with my instructor once on the ground
revealed that I simply didn't have quite enough rudder applied, but I
was applauded for trying to practice it. I was't happy with any of my
approaches, most of them were too low, and I needed to apply power to
get back on the correct glide slope, and a couple of the landings were
a bit ordinary too, however I did have a bit of a last minute crosswind
to contend with on the last few approaches from about 300 feet and
below. I', now at 1.3hrs solo, and need 3 hours solo before we move on
to the next section of the syllabus.
I'm booked in again for next Saturday morning, so we'll try and whittle
away that time then.

--
Oz Lander.
I'm not always right,
But I'm never wrong.