PPL Test Part 2

So, Saturday was kind of successful  Weather was a bit iffy at first but we decided to go to the General Flying (Stalls, Precautionary Landings, Forced Landings etc) first near Brits and then we would file a flight plan en route if the weather held up. The sky looked like this at the start of the flight:

All went smoothly considering the amount of cumulus clouds about and visibility was near perfect, we could see Wonderboom Airport, to the north of Pretoria, which was a first. Flight went well, radio work went well, everything went well. I remembered my FREDAS checks (Fuel, Radio Frequencies, Engine, Direction Indicator, Altitude and Safety) as well as HASEL (Sufficient height to recover at 2000 ft above ground, configuration should be clean, Safety, Engine, Location not to be over a built up area checks before every maneuver.

There were rain showers all around us, pretty cool to see. This was a first for me, flying below clouds and dodging rain showers. (not my pic, but you get the idea).

I successfully completed 2 stalls, a forced landing, a precautionary landing, 2 steep turns and a spin/spiral. My instructor was awesome and I can tell that he loves flying just as much as I do. He was chatting about his holiday plans while I was doing the maneuvers for the precautionary landing 🙂 He didn’t comment about the exercise at all, so either I was completely stuffing it up or I was doing good. I later asked him about my progress and he said, “Excellent”. I was happy with that! The precautionary landing takes about 15-20 mins with a great deal of planning involved as well. I must’ve flown over that poor farmers house at least 4 times!

Right then and there we decided not to proceed with the navigation part of the test since the weather to the north looked even worse, we decided to head back to Grand Central to do some circuits. On the way back we flew through some rain showers and radioed ahead to get a weather update. I realized how truly majestic nature is, it was so special to be flying around these rain showers. The 3 landings I performed were tough I must say, 25 knots direct crosswind, the landings were bumpy but I did well. Of course I had to deal with a simulated engine fire after takeoff as well 🙂 by the time I landed I was exhausted from all the concentration. A bit upset that I couldn’t do the test to its entirety but this coming Wednesday (19th December 2012 at 06:00) will be the day. Yes, I managed to get a slot with the same instructor, no easy feat!

More, later!