I went for another short practice flight with the son of some friends of ours -- he is 12 years old and is quite talented with anything vehicle related. For example, he just hopped onto my wife's Tour Easy recumbent bike and started riding around as though there were nothing to it.
We flew from KRHV South down to Coyote Lake at 3500', then got the ATIS from E16 and decided not to land there. We dipped down to 2500' and crossed the Coyote Valley. We saw it was foggy around the coast so we turned round and came back the way we came, climbing again over Coyote Lake. We then called in and made a straight-in into KRHV again.
The E16 ATIS was reporting, if I recall correctly, 14G16. Not horrible, but it was a slightly bumpy day and I didn't want to make harrowing bumpy approaches that test my comfort level while I had a brand-new pax with me. I would be distracted, and there would be too much mental pressure to "succeed" rather than back off if I didn't like things. So I decided to just fly today.
I demonstrated some maneuvers to Bobby, like why we have a rudder and what a steep turn looks like, and he seemed excited about it. I told him (and his parents) to get an intro lesson with a CFI so he could get the experience of actually being on the controls.
For our landing, I was at 3,500' and was given a straight-in. As usual, I tried to teach myself how to glide in. I judged where I could cut my power then did so and tried to maintain VG (59 kias) and remain perfectly coordinated. I ended up not having enough energy, and that doesn't surprise me -- we had about a 14 or so knot wind blowing down the runway. So let that be a lesson to me about my glide performance with a headwind. :) I added power and came in on a fairly normal approach path for the last bit.
We flew from KRHV South down to Coyote Lake at 3500', then got the ATIS from E16 and decided not to land there. We dipped down to 2500' and crossed the Coyote Valley. We saw it was foggy around the coast so we turned round and came back the way we came, climbing again over Coyote Lake. We then called in and made a straight-in into KRHV again.
The E16 ATIS was reporting, if I recall correctly, 14G16. Not horrible, but it was a slightly bumpy day and I didn't want to make harrowing bumpy approaches that test my comfort level while I had a brand-new pax with me. I would be distracted, and there would be too much mental pressure to "succeed" rather than back off if I didn't like things. So I decided to just fly today.
I demonstrated some maneuvers to Bobby, like why we have a rudder and what a steep turn looks like, and he seemed excited about it. I told him (and his parents) to get an intro lesson with a CFI so he could get the experience of actually being on the controls.
For our landing, I was at 3,500' and was given a straight-in. As usual, I tried to teach myself how to glide in. I judged where I could cut my power then did so and tried to maintain VG (59 kias) and remain perfectly coordinated. I ended up not having enough energy, and that doesn't surprise me -- we had about a 14 or so knot wind blowing down the runway. So let that be a lesson to me about my glide performance with a headwind. :) I added power and came in on a fairly normal approach path for the last bit.
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