This morning we stayed right here in Sarasota (SRQ) and circled the pattern under tower control. And the pattern was busy! At one time we were number four following a regional jet, and two Cessnas! The beauty of a pattern is you know where to look for the other guy and are able to keep spacing on him.
The tower sent us off on 360's a few times and had half doing left turns and the other half right turns. We were doing the non-standard approaches. I admit that I don't like right turns. The visibility out of my window is much better! It just ain't natural!
My landings are improving. I'm getting the picture and understanding where those little wheels are. Keeping the nose off is tricky and directional control is not good yet, but I can get it down, keep it down, and slow it down!
Big grins, when Sherman said good job on one landing.
Our last landing was a short approach. I did all the communicating today, but Sherman had to answer when the controller asked if we could do a short approach, behind a CRJ Regional Jet.
One of the problems with landing behind a heavy jet, is wake turbulence. I have a friend that flopped a very nice turboprop over at Bush Field when thos nasty little tornadoes got him on short final to 35. The method for avoiding a problem is to never fly into the vortices. You watch for where the big guy touched down and then stay above his flight path and land appreciably beyond his touchdown point. It's easy when you only take 500 feet to land and the runway is 10000 feet long! Just yesterday I made three landings on one approach at Venice! It was like "Bounce, Balloon,Bounce, Balloon, Land". And we still had room to take off again. Love that Remos! And the trusty Rotax engine that keeps me out of trouble.
That was our full stop and it was pretty smooth.
Sherman took a guy up studying for Sport Pilot CFI out for his first ride in an LSA. I studied for my test, and when Sherman came back, we worked on pilotage and cross-country flight planning. Celestial Navigation on sailboats has really paid off!
Then I went to the other flight school next door and they set me up for my written test. The FAA has a bank of 520+ questions, they randomly select 40 and give you two hours to do it. It's done through a contractor named CATS and the security stuff is wild! After they took away all my stuff, no wallet, phone or other stuff. They sit you in front of a computer with video surveillance and you work the test. I missed 5 questions and got an 88%. Passing is 70%, but I was hoping for 100%
The test score sheet has to be given to the Pilot Examiner for your check ride. It is stamped, embossed and one-of-a-kind. No copies acceptable. I guess a lot of guys will cheat on the tests if you let them. I think I've flown with some that used something other than intelligence to get past their tests!
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