After a cancellation yesterday and one again this morning, I got up the airfield this afternoon for PPL lesson 27: Solo Circuits.
Unusually most of my circuit time has been on runway 03 which is used only around 10% of the time, the normal runway is 21.
Today runway 03 was again in use and we had winds of around 12-14kts but they were right down the runway which is fine.
As you can see from the picture, the weather wasn’t great, but it was good enough as the clouds were at 1800ft and circuit height is 1000ft.
The workload in the circuit is finally becoming a bit easier for me, the most important thing you have to remember is your speeds.
Speed, or more importantly the lack of speed can put you in serious trouble.
As a rule of thumb, take of speed is 55kts, climb is 70kts, 70kts for the base and then 65kts when you are coming into land. These speeds can move around considering your configuration.
The most important thing is to not get slow, lack of speed means a stall. A stall means a loss of power, and a lost of power means a forced landing might be in your immediate future.
I did 6 touch and goes today and the total time in the circuit was an hour. The circuit was pretty empty, there was one student from Oxford on a twin when I first started, and a guy from another club towards the end.
I had no additional maneuvers to do today such as an orbit, or extend downwind. In fact, there was only 1 time that I was number 2 in the circuit.
On landing I was asked where I wanted to park, to which I requested I wanted to go back to Echo.
I taxied at Charlie and did my after landing checklist. I then went via delta entered the runway and back of at echo to park.
Anyways back up at the school for some practice force landings if the weather decides it wants to play ball.
A FlyDubai Boeing 737-800 jet crashed in Russia today, RIP to all who lost their lives 🙁
