So at lunch today i eaded to the airport to get a lesson in.
Rain had just gne through, leaving a humid haze in the air and about 5 miles visibility.
I met up with Tiffany and talked about what I wanted to for for the lesson - navigate by map, get to Linden via some checkpoints including US 23 and work on some short field landings and steep turns.
The wind was out of 120 at 9 knots so we would be using Runway 9L at Pontiac and 9 at Linden - a side I've never landed on before and she promised it would be a treat - that side is a real short field landing with trees as obstacles and a swamp that does funny things to the air as you fly over it on final. Yay, might as well get the experience.
So I start N1689H up and get going and on doing a short field takeoff they originally were going to have me head west off the downwind to exit the pattern on to my destination but instead decided to have me cross over midfield to the southwest. Never did that before and it was an experience.
Haze and clouds kept us below 2,500 and while I missed my first checkpoint as it was too close to the airport and the relocation threw me off I found the second one just fine on course, then got to 23 and diverted up to Linden using US 23 instead of the railway line that's on the north side of the airport.
I then overflew Linden, checked with Flint's AWOS for winds and sure enough they were out of 110 at 9 pretyt much just like Pontiac, and then entered into the downwind.
I made a perfect short field landing. Go figure.
I then did a taxi back, and did softand short field takeoffs took off and then did a go-round as the approach was not to my liking. I then did it again and landed fine and then we headed back to Pontiac. No steep turns as the haze just had us too low and there was too much traffic around.
We got to Pontiac and I did some patterns and Tiffany really helped fix my soft field takeoff - Yay its good now! We kept working on short field landings and I was doing pretty good.
Then on a pattern the tower told us to keep our base in close.
I'm on the downwind, level with the end of the runway.
Tiffany chops the throttle. With no warning. "You just loss your engine, so it's power off 180 time." She said most cheerfully.
All righty then - set for best glide, turn immediately towards the runway, got it lined up for final, runway made, second notch of flaps goea in, over the threshold, third notch in and touchdown rather nicely if I say so myself. We really gave them a close in base as requested.
In short, it went great. Just when I think about throwing in the towel, a day like this draws me back in.
While I was doing great, others were having a not so good day. As we were flying the pattern at Pontiac, we overheard a call from Flight 101's 172RG Cutlass - they were not getting a front nose gear indicator light. So they flew by the tower and we could also see that while their rear gear was down, the nose gear was not. The instructor on board was rather calm and after a couple flybys they flew off to the north to work the problem and had three hours of fuel to burn off before trying to land. I haven't heard how it resolved yet but they were getting the equipment ready when I left just in case.
1.8 and 6 landings.
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