Monthly Archives: September 2015

Soft field takeoffs and landings

Last week on September 8, Srinath flew a bunch of touch and go’s at New Jerusalem. One was a “there is a cow on the runway” go-around.

 

We took off today and flew the usual right downwind departure. While flying over brushy peak, traffic controller alerted us to traffic in the vicinity which took us a while to locate. By that time we neared Tracy and Steve observed that the runways which had been closed for re-surfacing were getting ready and now being painted.

Today, Srinath had a chance to practice soft field takeoff and landings at New Jerusalem. Steve demonstrated it first and then let Srinath try it out a few times. On the way back to Livermore, we chatted quite a bit about how these require some of the most finessed piloting techniques.

Air work and strong winds

After reviewing audio from the previous flight’s recording, we determined that the intercom was not working on the rear inputs. We can only hear the radio come through so unfortunately none of the cockpit chatter was recorded. While I squawked about this issue, since the plane is owned by Five Rivers Aviation it is really up to them to fix it.

Departed Livermore in the evening into a headwind. We flew our regular course towards Byron but the ASOS reported winds were too strong from 220 at 15 gusting to 21. Steve decided we should head towards New Jerusalem instead so we banked right over Fore Bay and did two sets of steep turns to the left then to the right. Followed by slow flight with shallow turns, power-off stall, a stall on right turn and a power-on stall. Then we did an engine out simulation.

By now the Byron area winds have increased to 20kts@220. We shot a straight in landing on Rwy 23. It was really bumpy over Fore Bay and more so as we approached the runway. We ended up being too high so the first approach and a landing wasn’t salvageable. We did a go-around and gave it one more try (good landing this time) before heading back to Livermore.