Lesson 9 – Pattern with Tailwind and Convective Activity

The intent of this lesson was to continue to work on takeoffs and landings somewhere other than Palo Alto. However, I got to experience a few things I have not experienced before in my lessons. Namely, landing with a tailwind and flying through lots of convective activity.

Both my instructor and I were getting over head colds so we weren’t sure how things were going to go. I was pretty much fully recovered; I was just a little tired from the whole ordeal. My instructor still had clogged ears which could pose a problem on the climb if he could not clear them. The plan was to climb to 2000 on our way across the bay and then see how he was doing before climbing to 3000 to cross the hills going in to Livermore.

Once he confirmed that his ears were fine we headed toward Sunol golf course. My instructor pulled the power over Sunol and said, “engine out.” I then began the restart checklist and the simulated calls to ATC and proceeded to look for a spot to land. I find a suitable landing location and headed toward it. IT was a large graded section of land; possibly to be used to build houses on in the future. There were two sections to this land. The north section was more clear of brush, but appeared more bumpy. The south section was less bumpy lot of grass on it. There were big cleared areas in the grass which looked like roads that a big tractor would use. To me they seemed to be little runways so that is the area I fixated on. I picked my abeam point and started a turn to lose altitude. As we came back around, I was lower than I thought I would be. I would have made the field but it would have been rough. My instructor said I should have initially gone for the northern section which was more open.

After we climbed back up to 2000 feet, I contacted tower and was told to fly on a 45, report 1 mile and enter left traffic for runway 25 left. I set up for the approach, turned final and realized that I was a bit high. I did a slip and lost altitude and rounded out about where I wanted to. I flared for the landing and then floated down the runway. I floated and floated until I got to my abort point and had to add power to initiate a go-around. I tried it again, but this time was very high and had to do a large slip to get down in time. Once again I floated along the runway and passed the abort point. I couldn’t figure out what was going on as this had never happened before.

On the third attempt, I came in much lower on my descent and my flare was right over the start of the runway. I then floated for a while and then hit some lift and went up into the air and then came down and floated again and eventually got it on the ground right at my abort point. It appeared that there was some large convective activity over the runway. The heat from the blacktop was rising up into the air and producing a strong thermal which conspired to keep me from landing.

We exited the runway and got clearance to taxi back to runway 25 left. After we made it all the way down to the start of the runway, the controller told us to make a 180 degree turn and taxi to runway 7 right. My instructor laughed and laughed at this. It was a long taxi down here and now we had a long taxi back. We looked at the windsock on the way back and sure enough the wind was blowing decent for runway 7 right. So, besides the convective activity which was keeping me off the pavement, we also had a tailwind on the previous three attempts. This was good practice to throw into my bag of aviation experiences. Now I know why it is much better to land with a headwind.

Once we got put on the correct runway, the rest of the landings were much better. I did not have to execute a go-around again that day. We even tried a landing without power which is the second part of the engine out procedures. That went well though I was a little high on the approach. Being a little high though is better than being too low. If you do not have an engine and you are too low then there is nothing you can do. If you are too high, then you can always do a slip to lose some altitude. That is what I did on this engine out attempt and it resulted in my touching down right where I was supposed to.

After a bunch of landings, my instructor was feeling sinus pressure in his head a bit so we headed back to camp. On the way back, the cockpit was quiet as he sat back and watched me take care of the climb over the pass, get the Palo Alto ATIS, descend down, contact tower and enter the traffic pattern at Palo Alto. The approach and landing were good at Palo Alto to finish up a successful day.

If everything goes well, I only have two more flights to go before my first solo flight. The next lesson will be a mock phase check lesson where my instructor will pretend to be the phase check instructor and will go through everything that I will be tested on in the phase check. Once that is done, then I will get assigned a phase check instructor by the computer system. I need to set aside about 4 hours for the phase check and it will consist of some ground questions and then we will have a flying test. I will need to fly to a suitable area and demonstrate all the basic flight maneuvers, including the ground reference maneuvers. We will also do engine out scenarios and then do some pattern work and landings. If all goes well, then the phase check instructor will sign off that he thinks I am ready to solo and then we schedule a time for the flight.

The first two solo flights are supervised solo’s. That is the instructor is there at the airport and watches me fly around the pattern from a distance. I will be limited to just flying around the pattern at Palo Alto until after the second supervised solo. Then I can fly unsupervised solo, which is where I can either stay in the pattern or go to another airport within 25 miles of Palo Alto to practice pattern work there. I could also fly out over the coast to practice my flight maneuvers, etc. My instructor will not be around for these so I will be on my own.

After the solo’s we will start on the next phase of training which is flying at night and flying cross country. This will be fun as we will get to visit a lot more airports and maybe even enjoy the scenery on the way. However, there will be a lot more preparation work in this phase as I will need to plan a route of flight, get all the weather and wind information on the route, calculate the fuel requirements, weight and balance of the aircraft, wind correction angles and much more.