This weekend I took to the (moody) skies again in the brilliant Aquila A211 at Teesside Airport. You can watch (most of) the lesson on the video below, and I’ll give you a summary of what we did.
Aquila Circuits
After a very dodgy takeoff on my 1st lesson in the Aquila, and a landing that required instructor intervention to arrest our descent rate over the runway, I approached this lesson with some trepidation – and a lot of humility.
This session we decided the best thing to do would be circuits – flying around the airport in circles, with a “touch and go” on each lap – a touch and go is when you perform the landing, but take off again straight away. It’s a quick way for pilots (and students) to get used to the handling of an aircraft.
We did 5 circuits in total, 3 were using flaps and 2 were flapless – i.e. with a ‘clean wing’, a way of simulating a flap failure but also a recommended way to land in high crosswinds as there’s less surface area for the wind to catch.
It was a windy day with a 9 knot crosswind and gusts throughout as a weather system moved in from the west. It made the ride quite uncomfortable at times.
I struggled with a few things which you can clearly see in the video – it’s a 1,000ft circuit but I often let it sink to 900ft or lower – this is due to the “sight picture” being different from the Cessna as you sit much lower in the Aquila. The other challenge was that the aircraft needs so much right rudder throughout all regimes of flight – including rate-2 left turns! – you will often see me become uncoordinated, particularly on the climb out after the touch and go. All learning points – and the main reason I record these lessons when I can!
So here you go, the final 3 circuits of the lesson (sadly missed the awesome landing on the 2nd try – such is life!).
Credit for the very fitting background music goes to Lilex who has kindly added their music to Pixabay.
Solo
After the lesson, the instructor said he would be happy to let me go up solo, after a quick emergencies lesson. The only trouble with that is my Air Law exam recently expired so I need to sit that again before I’m allowed to go solo.
So I’m hitting the books again! Wish me luck….
