Yes, more take-off and landing work. Today was also extraordinarily cold, this time a nice balmy 15 degrees. Wind was variable from the north to west at 4 knots and was completely unnoticable. The cloud ceiling was at 1400′, so not even enough room for a standard pattern (1). This time, the plane did not spend the night in the maintenance hanger, but instead was in an unheated hanger. That was not the most comfortable preflight ever. But no one froze to death and we managed to get into the air before the windshield fogged up, so no worries. Today was the first day I can honestly say I was the one putting the plane on the runway. Still far from perfect, but I felt much more in control than the last two flights. Still sometimes a bit too aggressive with my control usage, but getting better. Also let my speed get a bit out of control at a couple of places, which is something that I definitely need to correct in the next couple of flights.

Had one practice go-around, which was no big deal. Since the plane performs so well when it’s so cold out, there’s nothing hard about aborting a landing. With no flaps, two people, and a full load of fuel, the plane was still climbing at 800 FPM. At full flaps, it probably would have made 200 FPM no problem. As opposed to the summer, where that plane is lucky to make 50 FPM climb rate with a full load and full flaps. I’m sure that next spring when it’s warm and we practice aborting a full flap landing, I’ll be looking back at this abort with longing.

Also had one practice engine-out landing. Abeam of the end of the runway, the instructor declares an engine failure simulation and brings the engine to idle. The trick is to then land on a runway :). Because of a rouge cloud at 1200′, I was already low and because I was (poorly) recovering from an overspeed from descending to avoid said rouge cloud, I was a little slow at this point. And then I poorly adjusted to best glide speed (70 knots in a Cessna 150), so it went bad. We made it, but it wasn’t pretty. I would not have tried to make 35 if not instructed to given my attitude when the engine “failed”. I think I would have instead applied flaps and made for runway 6, which would have been an easy turn and not stretched the glide distance from position of failure. But Willis, my instructor, is a better pilot than I am and wanted to show how one would get there if it had to be made. In post-flight conversation, he said that he would have done the same thing my instincts told me to and head for 6. The disadvantage of that is that you’ve landed without clearance. Not a problem in a real emergency, but not so good in a simulated emergency :).

More landing practice is clearly needed, but I’m making progress. More go-rounds, emergency landing simulation, and cross-wind landings are in my future. But if it’s nice on Friday for my next flight, I’ll probably be flying simulated instrument to get my second hour of that out of the way. The third hour will be when I’m doing cross country flights.

(1) The FAA rules for visual flight rules in class D airspace (small airports with control towers) are 500′ below, 1000′ above, and 2000′ horizontal from any cloud. So if the base of the cloud cover is 1400′ AGL (above ground level), the highest we could climb is 900′ AGL. Standard traffic pattern at US airports is 1000′ AGL. 100′ is not a big deal for visual flight rule landings – easily accounted for along the way. By the way, minimum cloud base for visual flight rules flight is 1000′.