Flight 9: Stupid Landing Tricks
Today was all landing practice, which I’ll keep doing until I get it. We did our touch & goes over at Peter O. Knight (TPF). The runway we used made for an interesting pattern, part of it over Hillsborough Bay and the approach over an oil refinery. My first chance to descend toward large tanks of petroleum had arrived. There’s no reason to worry about hitting one, since if you’re low enough to do so at that point, you’re already in trouble.
I was asked to fly a few feet above the runway without touching it, and made a near-perfect unassisted (but unintended) landing. The back wheels hit the pavement together; I didn’t bounce or drop it like a rock the last few feet like I often do. The only thing wrong was that I wasn’t supposed to land! (Maybe that was just a CFI trick to get me to land properly.)
The next time around was supposed to be a regular touch & go, but I went up and down on the runway like a rabbit without ever touching it. Not good, but better than hitting the pavement several times. I did the last landing back at home by myself, so that was two for eight.
Today: 1.3 hours
Total: 10.4 hours
