Flying Lesson #76 - You Want Me To Do What? Where?

A Beautiful day, winds calm, ceiling sufficiently high enough but with haze to mess with the horizon and stratus clouds making this a very stable air kinda day.

So in this nice day for flying I was assured of making every possible mistake, and I pretty much did.

Good pre-flight, good normal takeoff and Ray had me headed to Lapeer.

I found Lapeer airport and we did a straight in approach which kinda sucked but I got the landing in ok.

Then I did a soft field takeoff which was a lot of fun and was pretty good, Ray had a few critiques of it but nothing to major. Did another one and it was decent.

Then a soft field landing which went ok on the setup but I came in with a bit too much power which made it unsatisfactory.

I did it again and did much better.

I then did a short field takeoff that was decent but need to be more forceful on takeoff right when I hit 55, other than that it was ok.

Then a no-flap slip to land which quite frankly sucked and I saw wasn't going well so I bailed on it, and apparently I should have stuck with it and tried to retrieve it. Ray got it fixed and we landed but it was not good on my part. Did I mention I really hate no flap slip to lands when they're not going right? - You're frick'n going sideways and down and the runway wants to run away from you while you do it - how fun is that?

Then we were about to head back but Ray then announced a diversion so I had map in hand and had to divert to Tuscola, which I did pretty well using straight pilotage - I'm getting better at that at least.

Got to Tuscola and entered the pattern and all set up and I thought I heard Ray say do a soft field landing so I get all that visualized and get ready to do it.

Well he had said a short field landing and by the time I had heard him and realized he had picked out the point for landing we were getting past the point. So yes, I really sucked on that one, and I knew it was going to suck, very behind and it was not good - my airspeed was way off and I would have done a go-around, which you apparently can't do on your check ride but you're supposed to retrieve it and apparently it was highly retrievable. Just Great.

So Ray then demonstrated the proper way to do short field landing and then we headed back to Pontiac.

At Pontiac I got in the pattern and did a no flap slip to land that was a lot better, with the airspeed where it should be along with the runway where it should be and it was pretty darn nice, so there's that.

That's 2.0 and 6 landings.