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"Mastering the Skies: A Flight Student's Journey Through Challenges and Triumphs"

Transcript: Okay, hello, hello, hello. I forgot who asked me or told me I should record what the flights are like, if it was Ollie or John. I believe it was John, but I'm not 100% sure. So this is me doing that, and thank you for telling me that as well. And today we did landings. We did landings. Seven in total. And we also were landing at different airports, or a different airport in this case. Initially we had planned to land at two different airports than Montgomery Field, but ended up just being one. And that was mostly on my decision, because landing itself was already a lot to maintain and think about. And then on top of that, having to try to communicate with Tower and everything else while doing all these landings. I think that idea was just really stressful for me. So we flew to Ramona, and there was cloud cover today as well. I think approximately 3,600 feet altitude, which meant that we have to keep 500 feet below that. And that definitely affected a flight path that I normally would have flown. Normally I would have flown probably about to 5,500, and we would have flown actually more east normally. But instead we flew at, I think, about 3,000, maybe a little bit lower, and avoided the clouds, and basically flew northeast to avoid some of the mountain ranges and not hit them. So that was kind of an interesting experience on the way to Ramona. Calling Ramona Tower was, I made lots of mistakes. On the ground I also made a few mistakes. The tower was clearly not very happy with me, because I forgot to repeat a bunch of information, and Chris repeated it for me, which thankfully, thank you Chris. So, on the ground, I was struggling between the difference of line-up and wait and hold short. And there are actually quite clear instructions in a lot of ways, but I got line-up and wait from Montgomery Tower on our initial takeoff. Also, my initial takeoff was, it seemed to me to be a crosswind takeoff. And that, it was kind of a struggle. Kind of dipped the left wing a little bit, probably because I was applying too much left aileron to counteract the crosswind. But, especially as the flight controls picked up, when you're at speed, they affect way more. So, I dipped the wing a little too much. But, overall, got off the ground. I think I also rotated a bit too slow. So, I tried pulling the aircraft into flight a little too early, without getting enough ground speed or airspeed. So, we sunk down a little bit and then picked up enough airspeed to actually take off. So, those are the mistakes on takeoff today. But, and I was told initially to line up and wait, which means get onto the runway. Line up. Like, be on the center line of the runway so you are prepared to take off. And wait for instructions to be cleared for takeoff. So, that's what you do for that. And Ramona Tower told me hold short because there was some traffic or something or whatever. And I wanted to start moving. But, Chris told me, hey, hold short means hold short. And it's like, oh yeah, okay. I'm getting confused between the two. And mostly, I think that this is just like high cognitive load of so many new things, oftentimes. Like, because as we came in to land at Ramona, I also, I basically more or less set us up for landing. And Chris actually landed the plane with my hand. on the controls still to feel the landing. And then we stopped and got set up to get in the pattern and do a bunch of touch-and-goes. So we did a bunch of touch-and-goes. I think we, I guess, did five. Because one landing at Ramona, five touch-and-goes, and then we landed at Montgomery. So, yeah, every landing was new. Every landing was new. So I don't like descending, it turns out. So that's the thing that I have to just get a lot of confidence in. It's like got to just figure out what feels comfortable in terms of descent rate, when to start descending, setting it up, distances for the descent, all of this kind of thing. So that's what I struggled with, as well as keeping enough airspeed. I think pretty much every time I was dipping a little bit below 65 knots, which is the airspeed that you should be landing at. So I think overall this is like a problem of like I'm not very good at staying on glide slope, so I need more practice doing that. It's basically all of these factors contributing to each other to the landing. And I mean, I landed a bunch of times. Some of them were not very pretty. One of them was actually quite good. One of them was like a solid, good landing. My approach for that landing was terrible in terms of like glide slope, speed, and stuff. But I did land, and actually it was quite a soft landing. Like if I could land like that every time, I would be fucking over the moon. And like people wouldn't be that scared. So that's cool. I know it's possible. And it opens up that possibility of that happening. So we got another flight on Monday. And yeah, we got another flight on Monday. And we're going to do, for sure, more pattern work and all this kind of thing. Probably some instrument stuff. My checklists were pretty good. So I'm going to laminate those and get those going. And really, I need to finish my other checklists as well for sure. Both for emergency procedures as well as things like coming in to land. And getting those all bound nicely, I think, will be really helpful. I don't know how I'm going to do that yet. But I will think of something. I am either thinking about getting another flight board or sewing one myself. But I almost want to use one that someone has made so I can get an understanding of why it was made the way it was. As well as seeing if it works for me. I think there's a lot of this stuff that's going to be kind of trial and error to a large degree. But yeah, we landed. We landed today. And landed at Montgomery. Also not super pretty. That one was actually really not so great. But actually, maybe that was a good one. Maybe my last landing at Ramona was quite poor. But we made it happen. And generally, I think, understand some of the systems. But it's just going to be like... I can't say I understand everything. Right. But I think all of it's making sense. It's like looking at the runway and the glide slope. I kind of feel like I know how to correct. But it's just learning how to maintain and set it on path and let it happen. So that's my debrief, I guess, for today. Also, sometimes I just don't hear what the fucking controllers are trying to tell me. I'm just not with it. Sometimes I just don't hear what their instruction is. It sounds like mumbling or some shit. So I forget what I missed today. But last time I missed an altimeter reading or setting. So yeah, I mean, that's kind of what's going on. Thank you.