06.12.02     10am   SHERBURN  CESNA 150 2 HOURS

I arrived late but the weather had cleared so we got straight off into the circuit after the fuel had been refilled. I also found out that i should have been reading the aviation law book ready to do an exam in it soon, perhaps on a day that i couldn't fly. The circuit is essentially about taking off, ascending to 1000 ft, flying in a loop, descending and landing, but as soon as you've landed you take off again. There is no relaxed flight, there is just enough time to do each manouvre. Take off full speed, when you reach flying speed of 70mph you pull back on the controls and begin to take off, as soon as you're off the ground you have to push forward to stop the angle of attack becoming so great that you you stall. At 200 feet you remove the 20degrees of flaps and pull up as the nose tries to sink without the drag of the flaps. Keeping the correct angle of attack for ascent you then do an ascending turn to the right, before the ascent is completed it is time to make another turn to the right again, at pretty much the same time you finish that turn and begin level flight, A.P.T. Then you call that you are down wind. "november juliet downwind'. At that point you do your checks, Brakes, Undercarriage, Mixture, Fuel, Harnesses and Hatches. Then you are ready to do another turn to the right, this time a level turn and as soon as that is done begin descent. Carboretter heat on, reduce power to 1700, 20 degrees of flap and nose attitude down to descend. As you decend you make a turn to the right again to line up for the runway, and call 'november juliet final'. keeping the nose attitude so that you are heading for the run way you have to judge all the way down whether you will land on the runway - checking both descent and position, when you come to the runway (and this is the worst bit because there is no delaying it, avoiding it or going back) - you pull up and level the wings, holding off as long as possible so that the plane gently lands, as soon as you've landed you're up to full power again and off. After an hour we had a break and went back. I realised that under pressure (just like when i was learning to drive) left and right go out the window. (when taking off again you need lots of right rudder to stop the plane skewing off to the left) Its also very confusing when you take off - partly because its a bit panicky in a cesna as they're much more likely to crash (!?) - but mostly because you have to pull back to make the plane take off, then immediately push down to stop it going into a stall, twice i got confused and Jane had to tell me not to fight her as she corrected my mistakes. At the end of the day i realised i have to do much more home work to make this work. But also that doing circuits is perhaps the most interesting thing about learning to fly, landings and take offs are the most tricky things, but you have a moment where you are on the ground before flying up again. I imagine that it will look quite casual, like its not so difficult and as if gravity is not so strong.....)

WEATHER: cloudy, not very much wind. grey.