Lesson 5: Touch and Go

On Friday I took the morning off to get a flight in before the weekend. Chris was running late, so he left instructions for me to start the preflight. I went through the list, line by line and checked everything. When he arrived, he double checked the oil and decided it was a little low and topped it off.

We opened the cockpit and turned on the radios to test my new headsets. I can hear through them fine, but the mic input is a little low. I might look into having the output gain turned up. We finished the check and taxied to the runway. LZU was busy this morning. We were on deck for takeoff.

"Today we're going over to Winder to practice landing." Chris looked at me. "You look nervous about that .. " he continued. He was right. I was nervous and excited.

We throttled up and took off. Chris obviously left more of the takeoff to me this time, because the plane was REALLY wanting to yaw and roll left. I had to apply significant right rudder and right aileron to keep a level climb.

We headed east to the Winder-Barrow airport to practice "touch and go"s. A "touch and go" is a landing practice excercise where the pilot lands, getting all wheels down on the runway, and then immediately throttles back up and takes off again.

Chris would handle the first one. We got runway clearance and circled around to begin the approach. Chris called out the actions as we approached the runway.

"Power down to 1700 RPMs and descended to 2,000 ft."

"Flaps to takeoff. Pitch for 70 knots." I switched flaps down one notch.

Pitching for speed means that on a descent, you pitch the nose up to induce drag and slow airspeed and likewise pitch down to decrease drag and increase airspeed. Thus, you are using pitch to control airspeed.

"Pull power to idle and set flaps to landing." I pulled the throttle level all the way to idle and switched flaps down all the way. The stick was getting mushy. We were over the runway at about a 100 foot altitude, a little high intentionally. We descended down to what looked like about 30 feet.

"Start pulling back," Chris said. I pulled back on the stick to level. Our descent slowed.

We were almost down. "Now pull back more," Chris said. I did as he said and felt our back wheels bump down, followed by the front. That was it. We had landed. Bumpy but intact. It was back to the pedals for rudder control.

"Ok full throttle, 1st notch flaps, and take off again." I flipped the flaps to T/O, throttled up and lifted off again, this time anticipating the hard left turn tendency. I felt the bird wanting to roll and turn left, stepped right and rolled right to keep level.

"At 1500 feet flaps to Cruise." We passed through 1500 feet. I flipped the flaps up.

Rinse and repeat.

We did 4 more touch and goes at Winder, each one getting better and smoother. We got back to LZU and landed. The LZU landing was much smoother. I need a lot more practice, but I'm getting more and more comfortable with each lesson.