Lesson #2

Time flown today: 0h 55m
Time flown so far: 1h 50m

My second lesson was booked for Saturday early morning (09:30) and, having leart the lesson the week before, I'm at the club at just before 09:00.

I really appreciate the piece and quiet; having two young kids it's been a while...9am arrives and the field slowly wakes up; shortly after the first takeoff is happening - this must be an amasing time to fly.

The weather is not amasing, and it looks like it's going to rain later, but for now it appears to flyable, which is good.

Pete arrives around 09:15, and we check weather and notams together before going through the ground briefing - it looks like we'll be looking at the effects of the other controls - throttle and flaps today as well as the effect of the 'slip stream' - the 'wind' generated by the engine and it's effect on the main controls.

Pete book the plane out (it's G-BTNH again, which I'm happy about) as I untie the plance; he then shows me how to do the walk around to check the plane outside; after we climb in Pete goes through the pre-flight checks, calls for taxi and it's 24 again; he rolls us out of the grass and I'm given control over the rudder to taxi us to the holding point while Pete handles the throttle.

Reacing B1 we're through the engine checks and, when completed, Pete radios and we're ok to go.

Takeoff is still causing me slight nerves, although I promised myself it wont!, but that disappears shortly afterwards as we turn towards Woking, and then head over Guildford.

Just after Guildford Pete demonstrates the effect of the slipstream; first he accelerates (mostly by lowering the nose) and demonstrates how sensitive the controls become; I have a go at feeling them and really small movements are required to get the desired outcome.

Pete then raises the nose and the speed starts to bleed out; at around 70 knots he lets me feel the controls again - they feel really sluggish and it takes big movements to get the plane to react.

And now for the slipstream - Pete opens the throttle and raises the nose further - we're still going slow, but now the air stream from the engine hits the tail fairly fast so rudder and elevators are very sensitive, but aileroins are still sluggish as they are aneffected by the engine stream.

A good thing to know..

We turn around and it's time to play with the flaps - Pete demonstrates first and I follow with practice of opening the flaps; we must first ensure we're within Vfe speed (104 I think for the warrior II, but its clearly indicated with the white arc on the speed inidcator) and then we can open the first stage of flap; the nost raises which I counteract with the yoke and the speed starts to bleed.

Another stage opened and the same happens again, this time the nose movement is even bigger.

Third stage of flaps is less about lift and more about drag and indeed there's hardly any movement of the nose but speed bleeds out much quicker now.

It's time to raise the flaps back, one by one, and the reverse effect takes place. all makes sense.

We're doing well for time, and its all going pretty well, so Pete suggest we'll start looking at turning.

I know the basics already so it's more a case of a) keeping the turn coordinated, complimenting the roll with the rudder to ensure the ball stays in the centre b) getting familiar with 'the picture' - the angle which horison crosses through the windscreen; getting to know this ensures one can enter the correct angle of turn without having to check the instruments, which give one more chance of looking outside (for traffic and for fun), which has to be a good thing!

I think I'm doing fairly well and doing a few practice turns to either side I get the angle fairly consistent, and I'm mostly coordinated; I learn that left turns require very little rudder (if at all, after the initial 'getting into the turn') whilst right turns need a fair bit more; Pete explains it is all a result of the rotation of the prop.

Soon enough it's time to head back and I'm turning us towards Ockham; where Pete calls in and takes control.

There's a fair bit of activity on the circuit (although not too much) so we're asked to do an overhead join for 24 left, Pete cross over the centre of the runway (or thereabouts) and then executes the three left turns whilst descending to 1100' to get us into the circuit.

We're turning into base, and then final, and there's a plane before us just about to take-off; I learn it's a visiting aircraft and they're not quite familiar with the turn out, so they talk to the tower and get instructions while we're getting closer.

Pete suggests this might have to be a go around, something I'd be the last to object to, but in the end the guy ahead roll out, and Pete - with nerves of steal (and 900 hours worth of experience, I guess) holds the approach and we touch down moments after the guy ahead has left the runway.

Very interesting.

A very pleasing lesson - I feel like I've achieved a lot in these 55 minutes as we go into the club to check out and write the cheques.

An interesting thing is that this time I remembered I've got a G1 phone, with GPS capabilities and Google "My Tracks" installed and I turn it on when we start the taxi.

The result is a tracked path on Google maps that shows the entire lesson, which I find very interesting; I'm hoping to remember to do this in every lesson (but will inevidebly miss some); you can find this one's here

Because I did not think about it for the first lesson I've tried to manually create the track of it from memory, it surely not 100% accurate, but should be good enough and could be found here (you will have to zoom out to see either track)