Friday booked off and two targets set. First; More Solo Time! Second; Pass my Met exam.
The weather did not look to bad, a little overcast but nothing low enough to trouble circuits. First job of the day was to drop Caroline off at work, this meant I got to drive the new car. A rather nice little Skoda (queue jokes from the rest of the family) Fabia Estate 2003 model just under three years old.
So with Caroline dropped off at our works headquarters in Lincoln, I set off through the traffic to get to Humberside Airport. I was soon there and as I parked up Richard my instructor came over and said they were running a little late, I said not to worry as I could get a little more revision in.
Richard came back with the people on the who he had taken on a trial flight, and it was now my turn. Richard then gave me a shock.
“Did you want to go up and do your circuits on your own?”
Oh god, did he really just say that. I was honoured, I must be really becoming a pilot, for them to trust me to just go off. I thought carefully about it, I had not flown for two weeks and while the weather was fine, the wind was 300 05KT, which meant that it would be runway 03 and not 21 as I was used to. I asked if Richard could come up with me for a few. So off I went to preflight Romeo Lima and Richard joined me later.
Take Off
I was glad Richard was there. Traffic was extremely busy and there was a lot to keep track off on the radio. We were sent off to taxi via the grass taxiway, so it took a while to get to the holding point Uniform. I completed all my checks and finally we were cleared to take off. I noticed that we seemed a little low on power, still within limits but when I raised the nose to the climb attitude the speed stopped increasing. Speed was too low so I pushed back on the yoke and leveled off. Letting the speed increase, once we reached the climb speed I raised the nose again and we climbed away. Richard gave me a few pointers on the land marks and I came round and made a very good landing, once the best I had done with an instructor on board for a while. Off we went again and but this time I was asked to hurry things up on the downwind leg and get down as fast as possible, there was a learjet coming in to do a few circuits. I turned very early on the downwind while I was still parallel to the runway. Carb heat on and power reduced. Raising the nose to lose some speed, once I had the ASI in the white arc it was on with two stages of flaps. I then ensured that I established a 80kt descent and decided we needed to lose a lot more height. I reduced the power all the way and we dropped, I then let the speed increase somewhat, to make the turn on to final safer as it would be a little steeper then normal. Round we came and I reduced power again. Lower and lower, the speed was still a little quick and I rounded out too high. As the speed came off I realised I was still a little to high, and committed a major no no. I pushed the nose down. I immediately raised the nose again and added power, Richard reminded me, never push the nose down when landing, you will have us in the ground before you know it. The power slowed the rate of descent and we touched down. That was fun, apart from being rushed at the end and not adding power early enough when I realised I was too high. Off we went again and this time everything was less rushed.
On the third landing I made it a full stop and dropped Richard off. I then went off again myself, three quick circuits later and I was parking up on the apron, another 30 minutes solo added to my log book.
Exam
So a great morning. Now for the hard part my met exam.
Had some lunch and felt that I was as well prepared as I could be, so off to the exam room. A good half of the questions I had no problems with, but the others were all a little tricky, questions about the validity of the F214, don’t remember reading about that. After I finished I thought that I could have passed but there was at least 7-8 questions that were border line. This was going to be close. Oh Damn!