My Flight Journal

Monday, July 12, 2004 9:17pm

As seems typical with my training, after another 3 months of being ground-bound I finally got back in the air. Was more of a 'knock-the-rust-off' kinda flight than anything. Started off with slow flight clean, to a stall, into slow flight dirty, and MCA maneuvering. Was a little bumpy so that made it interesting.

From there we went into steep turns. I was surprised how easily I nailed those. Last time I did steep turns I was having a hard time keeping an altitude, I was bobbing up and down 100ft to either side of my target alt. This time I don't think I deviated more than 50ft, and most of the time not more than 20 or 30 ft. I was just dead on

From there we did a simulated engine-out. Ran through the checklist and set up beautifully for a field with good use of s-turns. Broke that off at 600ft. And since we were down there now, went ahead and did some ground ref. S-turns across a road and turns around a point. Was a little sloppy on the first attempt at s-turns, but probably still within PTS. Did em again and did much better.

Came back to the airport and set up a downwind for 9L per the tower's instructions. As I'm on downwind I can see some BIG landing lights on long final for 9L also. It's a 727 coming in. Tower says to me, "uhhhh, how about you switch to 9 center and turn your base as soon as practical, 727 on final for 9L". Hey, no problem! So I decided that was close enough to a clearance for a short approach that I chopped the throttle, dirtied it up and turned in front of the monster barreling down the pipe. Winds were something like 180 at 8, so I got some really nice crosswind landing practice in too. Touched down right at dusk. 1.2 hours on the tach.

Going back out tomorrow to practice landings and then I suppose I need to knock out some solo stuff.