Today was a great day for me as I had the opportunity to fly a lot, and I am thrilled about it.
I started with touch-and-goes at my home aerodrome, then took a short flight to LKPLES, which has a runway that is 1640 feet long and 15 meters wide. That airfield is pretty close to LKLN. I made a standard pattern, but on the base leg, I realized that I flaps failed to deploy. It wasn’t a good idea to land without flaps on that short runway, so I decided to return. Our runway is long enough for a Cessna C150, so landing without flaps is not a big deal – just a little higher speed and longer flare.
After landing, our technician fixed the airplane in a short time, and I was able to fly once more. And this was a great flight for me because it was my first $100 hamburger flight! Well, not literally, but I ordered pork and french fries. We landed on another grass runway that was a little sloped. Czech Republic is a great place for initial flight training due to variety of runways!
Here are some photos I took from our home base:
The weather was fantastic, and the sky was clear, which allowed me to see breathtaking landscapes from the airplane. I could see scenes of terrific beauty. After 2 pm, the wind picked up, making landings a bit more difficult, but it allowed me to make progress in my training.
I noticed that clouds look different from the air than from the ground. They appear almost flat at the bottom, while from the ground, they look like pieces of wadding. There were some weak thunderstorms far away, and they looked very interesting too.
On my way back, I spotted a small house (actually a former windmill) where I was living for some days in May. It looked even more cozy from the airplane. There are a lot of beautiful places to fly in Czech Republic, including small villages and old castles.
At some point, I realized that I had more time on the pattern than earlier. I was able to perform all necessary actions faster, and they required less thinking. I suppose that it is a good sign my progress!
Leave a Reply