Practice Forced Landings Part 2

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