Performance!

Yesterday's flight was centered around learning how to do performance take-offs and landings.  By Performance, I mean, utilizing the best peformance of the airplane.  The first one was a soft field take-off.  Basically, when you taxi on to the field, you don't stop moving, and you just apply power and try to keep the nose wheel tapping the pavement.  If the plane is on a soft field, you don't want to nose gear to get stuck in a hole or in the mud or anything.  A soft field landing is the same as any other until touchdown, where you just try to creep it down lightly and hold the nose wheel off some more.  I also did short field landings and take-offs.  In a short field take-off, I taxi the plane to on to the runway, as far as I can to the beginning and then hold the brakes while applying full power.  The plane really jumps off when you release them.  Then you rotate at the normal 55 kias and climb out at 60 kias.  This is the speed for the best angle of climb.

 

I also did some hood work, which gets really annoying after a while.  I have 1.4 more hours of that to go.  I think on friday I am going to fly between eagle creek and anderson under the hood, and try to do some TOLs at a controlled field.  It is one of my requirements to fulfill, so I need to check it off the list.