Flying Touch-and-Goes: My First Steps to Mastering Landings

We have started practicing touch-and-goes, where the airplane touches down and immediately takes off again without stopping. This helps to make landing practice quicker, as we save time by avoiding full stops and taxiing back to the runway.

Luckily, I can fly circuits at my home aerodrome without having to pay landing fees, which is not always the case in Europe. Some flight schools charge their students for landing fees, while others try to find uncontrolled airports where no fees are charged. I’m grateful for the opportunity to practice circuits without having to pay landing fees at my home base, and the long concrete runway is also an advantage at the early stage.

While my circuits are almost okay, my landings still need improvement. I think I feel much calmer at altitude, which may explain why I struggle with landings. Each circuit takes about seven minutes, which is quite long, while a landing only takes a few seconds. Unfortunately, I can’t practice landings only and must spend precious flight time on flying traffic patterns. I miss the Western Step on Klement’eva hill, where I used to practice landings on a hang-glider without having to worry about long approaches or circuits…

All I needed was bringing back the hang-glider up to the hill 🙂