8/11/09 Checkout Completed

Today was my second lesson for getting checked out in the Cherokee.

The weather was looking pretty poor. One of the 172’s took off while I was preflighting the Cherokee, and a few minutes later, landed. The instructor in the 172 mentioned that they weren’t able to get above 600ft as they tried to head south. Oh well, I’ll complete the preflight and see what happens with the weather as I wait for Kelly to arrive.

My instructor and I discussed the cloud clearance for a few minutes, and decided that we'd stay in the pattern, practice landings, and see how the weather progresses. My instructor always says that if you can land well at Twin Oaks, you can land most anywhere anyway.

We departed 20, and turned left upwind to remain in the pattern for 02. The overcast cloud layer kept us at 800ft AGL, below the normal pattern altitude of 1000ft AGL, but the visibility was very good.

My control over the aircraft felt much smoother from the start, but still was a little caught off guard by the sink rate with the power pulled back to idle. I was a bit late rounding out before touchdown, and landed a little flat. Fortunately I didn’t come down hard on the nose gear, or bounce back into the air, either of which can happen with a flat landing, and earn groans from an instructor.

The next time around resulted in a better landing.

The third time around my instructor pulled the throttle to idle as we approached abeam the numbers on downwind. A large continuous left turn, and the first notch of flaps on a very short final, brought us right over the numbers before touching down. A power off approach from the downwind needs to be flown much closer than in the 172, which has a comparatively high glide ratio.

At this point we decided to call it a day because the clouds were progressively getting a little lower, and we'd done about all we could do with what we had for weather.

My instructor said that as far as he's concerned I'm checked out on the Cherokee, and would be ready to fly it on my own with no problem. We'll still do one more lesson to practice some soft and short field takeoffs and landings, as well as some simulated emergencies from altitude

It's nice to know that I can now fly an airplane that is somewhat different than I learned to fly in.