This was my second lesson with new instructor. It was great weather again (I feel it’s almost confirming my choice). I got a text last night to read up on a new airport KBDR, Bridgeport, CT. I was sooo excited to go to a different airport!
Before we started to pre-flight the plane, my instructor handed me the key to the plane, to keep! I feel pretty cool having a key to a plane on my key chain now.
We get to the plane and pre-flight it and after starting it up, since I’m not onto VORs yet we just put in the GPS KFRG to KBDR and it has a nice purple line to follow to the airport. Since we have two radios as well we set up the frequencies we’ll have to change to after I get our ATIS.
I go to the run up area and the right magneto runs a bit rough. He says to lean the mixture for a bit, let it run for about a minute and then full rich again and it’s fine. Something I have to get use to is that he prefers I don’t switch to Tower until I’m at the hold short lines, while before I was use to changing after the run-up.
We head out and the north practice area is on the way, so I know where I’m headed no problem. Once over the Long Island Sound (where the practice area is) you can almost see Bridgeport airport across the way, but I had the GPS to help. It’s a quick ride.
Call Tower 10 miles out, doing left traffic for the first landing, which involves going a bit wide to avoid going over rich people’s houses. What is nice about that airport, there is a tower still, but you hardly ever get extended on downwind so it’s much closer to a real pattern each time versus at Republic I hardly ever do a real pattern.
My first few landings were coming in too high and too fast and the landings were a bit flat. My instructor was also really on me to break my bad habit of not climbing out at Vy, which I think he may have knocked it out of me by the end of the lesson. I got better about coming in at 60-65 knots half way through which helped a lot. I was sometimes still not straightening out the nose enough at the last second.
I fixed the speed problems, now it’s just about holding the plane off better. I found out a bit high (though getting better) and I’m just not flaring high enough with the right timing to get a nice touchdown. A lot of it is I pull back too hard at a point and balloon.
With this instructor though my landings aren’t as great, but he’s not talking and coaching me through them, which is what I need. I need to not have someone telling me what to do, but get the feeling by myself. We can talk afterwards about what wasn’t right. I think my landings have been better, but I haven’t been as confident I can land the plane by myself without freaking out as I am now.
Another lesson scheduled tomorrow so hopefully it goes well! Weather could get iffy, so we’ll see.
Lesson time: 1.9 hours
Total Time: 27. 3 hours