There is hope! I ran into Mr. Rogers at the airport today. He runs Liberty's aviation program and when he asked how the flight training was going I was honest and told him that I was enjoying the challenge but was currently in a frustrated funk.(see previous post)
He told me that this is very common and that around flight 7-8, things would start to click, especially the landings. That was very good news as I keep trying to convince myself that this should be much easier than it appears to be.
Today's flight was in sunny but breezy conditions. Today we practiced some more power-on and power-off stalls, slow flight, steep turns, and then an emergency decent. This new maneuver caught me slightly off-guard. We climbed to about 5K feet and then Carl suddenly cut the power to idle and shoved the yoke almost into the panel. This results in a very steep dive. Seeing the ground rushing towards you at about 180 mph is a little bit worrisome. While we were screaming towards the ground, I was to pick a place for an emergency landing. Apparently closing your eyes, screaming and hugging your instructor is not an appropriate response. We descended like a stone to about 1000 feet at which point I leveled off and worked towards my selected field. It certainly gets the ticker going and I noticed I actually broke a sweat. Not from any exertion, but rather from fear or being planted into the soil at high speed.
My landing at the end of today's lesson was almost smooth. The Piper had mercy on me, or, perhaps slamming yourself into the ground repeatedly to humiliate the student gets old after awhile. The old girl is giving me hope.
Overall a fun and exciting day.
Let's go flying.
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