A NICE SET OF CIRCUITS

Tuesday 5th March

Well, to consolidate my Tecnam type rating gained three weeks ago I thought a few circuits would be a good thing to do so I booked "WHZ" for this morning.  The weather conditions were just about perfect; variable, 3 knot wind and scattered cloud at 5000 feet.

Now, it wasn't quite a perfect flight because after start-up I was wondering why the engine was revving a bit fast when the stick waggled from side to side and there was Roger at the wingtip mouthing "Choke" at me - ooops!!!  Having closed that everything fell into place.  18 was duty runway and, remembering the lesson from last week, I requested taxi to "Golf 1" for circuits and was cleared for that.

First take-off good into a very quiet circuit.  Everyone else seemed off on cross-countries and on the first three laps I was either "number one" or "cleared touch and go" at the downwind call.  I made two standard approaches throttling back nice and early and getting the plane trimmed up for 60-65 knots on base and 60 knots on final with full flap and two very nice T&Gs resulted.  I decided the next would be flapless so I extended downwind to just beyond SH1 slowing down all the time so I could lose height on base not worrying too much about speed until final.  Having set attitude and trimmed for 65-70 knots I found I was much too high so a bit of side-slipping was called for.  A gentle bit of left rudder and right aileron first, straighten up, still a bit high so I slipped the other way briefly and was then about right for a smooth touch down a little further along the tarmac than before but would have been able to taxi off at "Echo" if it had been a landing.

The next time around I was called for a short approach quite early on downwind, was way too high turning final and made an early decision to go around, overflying at about 500'.  Two more circuits and my time was up (had to orbit once and extend downwind on the first) and the final landing was also pretty good.  Back at the club instructor, Andrew said it all looked fine from where he was watching so I was very happy with all that - a real confidence booster in the new type.