Staying on Top

Once you climb your Everest, in my particular case with my particular Everest anyway, it is hard work to stay on top...that is to maintain my skills and improve my skills. Last October, after watching my skills and confidence erode due to not flying enough the previous two years since passing my checkride, I decided I would rent the Cessna 150 once a week for 0.5 hours and work only on skills, mainly landing and pattern skills. So for $46 dollars a week, the price of a meal out basically, I could maintain and improve. Even as a high school teacher, this is something I could afford-- so long as I was careful in other areas of our budget. Another way, that I was able to get more "bang for my buck" is using my goPro camera that I received for Christmas. I film each flight/landing and then go back and study what I did right and what I did wrong. Sometimes when I think I have made the perfect landing, I go back and then find there was something embarrassing I forgot to do (like apply carb heat) or on the flip side, sometimes when I think I really blew a landing and go back, I see that it really wasn't that bad after all. Then there was the time in April when I looked back after a bounce and go-around and decided it was time to get a tune up lesson with my instructor, which really paid off by the way.  The video above is from last Sunday afternoon. I felt really good about some of the improvements I could see--keeping things more square in the pattern, keeping correct distance from RWY on downwind, turning base at exactly 45 degrees past the numbers and keeping more altitude on final (above the trees) for increased safety. I made and recorded 4 circuits around the pattern and flew for 0.6 hrs. I did notice room for improvement and that would be to hold the nose gear off longer on touchdown. So that is my next goal. An Everest isn't easy to climb and they are not easy to maintain either, but technology when properly and strategically used, can really help and be a nice ally for us on our climbs.