Circuits! More Circuits!

Damn, it feels like I am redoing all my training from the pre-solo stage despite being officially licenced for 6 months already! But that's just part of being a pilot am I right? You're naturally a permanent student pilot because a good pilot is always learning!

So I now have 5 hours of flying here in Hong Kong and on a considerably heavier and larger Cessna 172S (I do have 1 hour on the R model, no real difference). It feels like I have to learn everything again, and just as I was about to be confident and a little too comfortable last week, today was a completely different story...

Firstly, what was last week like? Well it was wind calm with the windsock nice and drooped, however today was different, surface winds showed gusts of up to 15 knots and due to terrain around the airfield, mechanical turbulence tossed us around the sky in the circuit of Shek Kong airfield. Despite this, we continued with some more advanced circuits, such as glide approach, short field takeoff and landings and of course flapless. Flapless is very interesting due to the tight circuit in Shek Kong, once abeam touchdown point you will reduce speed from 90 knots on downwind to level flight at 70 knots and turn base at the normal 45 degree point. After turning base you will reduce throttle to near idle to compensate for the already high profile. Other than that, everything is status quo and pretty normal. Shek Kong circuits are high workload and everything happens very quickly, more often than not I find myself saying, "Cessna Uniform Whiskey late downwind 11 touch and go."

My first landing really wasn't great, I over-flared and ended up ballooning and then touching down rather hard. Another interesting point is that Shek Kong has trees on the sides of the runway and buildings on the approach end of runway 11, creating a "washing machine" when the winds pick up. It could be a nice steady headwind but as you descend below 100 feet, a headwind can turn to a gusting and shifting crosswind, which emphasises authority and strong control over a mushy aircraft at already low speeds. We rarely get any wind over here but when it does pick up, boy is it fun!

Subsequent circuits saw improvement as I can now anticipate where the updrafts or downdrafts are, worst thing was that there was a pocket of an updraft on short final, causing me to make the decision to go around once on a flapless and another time during a short field approach and landing. However both times the same words came out of the instructor's mouth, "Good decision, well done."

The instructor today taught me a trick to mastering glide approaches, I call it the, "Cut in half" method. It is really simple, when the engine quits you pitch and trim for best glide speed and then divide your circuit height to two. In Shek Kong our circuit height is 800 feet, so we pick two 400 feet reference points, approximated of course. This allows you to mentally plan forward where flap extensions should be and how the approach should be flown, and allowed me to be not too high but not too low every time.

Today knocked me out of my complacency, however also gave me more confidence with dealing with circuits and recognising the idiosyncrasies of the Cessna 172S, below is the track log for today's circuits. Note that I made the mistake of forgetting to activate the tracker before takeoff so I did it mid-flight.

Various lengths of final approaches
due to various types of approaches

 So that's it for today! Also I have ordered a new pair of David Clarks DC ONE-X headsets, my first pair of ANR headsets so be prepared for a flight review of that! Also next week I will be on holidays in Vietnam, so I will be back the week after.

Have fun! Fly safe!

--
Howard