That ever elusive first solo flight is
remaining out of my grasp. Again the winds were too strong to remain in the
circuit so we head away to some open fields to do some practice forced
landings. I am not with my usual instructor as he was booked out but he is in
the club house and tells todays instructor what I should be learning
It is my most confident take off to date. I
seem to zip through the pre take off checks and am lining up on the runaway
without the instructor saying much. I even get the radio calls right (mostly).
We take off west from runway 26 and begin our climb to 2300 feet. It is fairly
bumpy but not as bad as last week. We enter Farnborough Airspace and switch our
radio to their service.
My instructor suddenly indicates there is a
plane at our 12’ o Clock and sure enough seconds later it zips by underneath us
at about 50 yards to our left. I am slightly shocked by how close it was and
the fact that I did not see it. It was in our blind spot beneath the nose as we
climb. The instructor does not seem to make a big deal out of it so we carry
on.
We do some practice forced landings the
majority of which seem to go well then we head back to Fairoaks. We switch
radio to Heathrow to get permission to enter their airspace temporarily so that
we can climb high enough to do an actual forced landing. So at about 1900 feet
over Fairoaks the instructor sets the throttle to idle and we are gliding.
I am over keen to make the runway so as we
approach we are way too high. I push the nose down to lose some height but
subsequently pick up too much speed. I manage to land it quite heavily about
half way down the runway. Still it was a successful if not slightly untidy
forced landing. My instructor seems pretty happy with it and says the wind was
partially to blame.
We taxi back in and disembark. There is not
much of a debrief and then I’m back in the car heading home. Hopefully back to
the circuits next week.
Total Flying Time: 15hrs 45 mins
