Monday, April 03, 2006
FAM 3
Twenty touch and go landings today. My freaking brain is fried.
The flight started badly because of a brand new checklist that Training Wing Four threw at us on Friday which changes a lot of our pre-start and pre-taxi checks. I didn't study them as much as I should have and got my routine all fucked up form the start. I've learned that I do better with a routine, that way I know everything is done and set. I forgot to check the oxygen system today. Not a good thing.
The weather sucked too, so I had no horizon to reference, which made things a lot more difficult than they had to be, but a lot of my mistakes were simply instrument scan. I'm not scanning the instruments quickly enough and reacting appropriately. But that's what this flight is for, to make a lot of mistakes and correct them. We almost hit a bird too, how's that for a fun day?
The difficulty with the landing pattern is that there is so much going on in the two minutes you have in between each touch. Every second you have is used up with an action, a checklist, a radio call, or a check of the instruments. Take even a second off and you are missing something that will screw up your pattern. But with practice those mistakes start to go away and the steps start to become second nature.
Even with all that going on, I still enjoyed the flight. I don't know what it is, but being at the controls makes it all better. Back to studying, I've got a 0650 brief tomorrow morning. Probably not going to fly it; the weather looks crappy. You never know though, today's weather was supposed to be nice and almost no one got up in the air.
