Lesson 17 PPL
02 May 2005This time I went out to try something new because the weather although very gusty, turbulent and unpredictable, above 1500 ft it was really calm and almost perfect for flying. We knew this as my instructor had already been flying in the morning. So after a extremely bumpy takeoff from 13 (literally dropping what felt like 30ft 15 seconds after takeoff) we turned right and went just north of Saltash to about 2500ft and practiced doing some steep turns.
Steep turns are when the plane is almost on its side (with a bank angle greater that 45 degrees) effectively turning around one field and pulling about 2G. It makes your arms and everything feel very heavy, but it’s quite fun feeling the forces! Then we did an few spiral dives and aircraft avoidance procedures, which meant going from straight and level flight into a 90 degree right turn and level again in about 10 seconds, which was just really fun - felt a bit like aerobatics!
Then we joined right base for 13 and had an extremely bumpy ride down to the runway where I was actually looking out the side window at the runway on final approach because of the wind, somehow I managed to land on the centre line without too much of a bump and taxied back in.