4th Annual Boundary Bay Air Show

Lesson 9 - Traffic Circuit

My usual instructor is out of the country so I flew with someone else today. We practiced the traffic circuit around Boundray Bay Airport witch is a little lower than standard at 800 feet. It's a little harder to work a lower pattern as you have less time time to do all your maneuvers and checks, but once you get over that it's convenient to be able to complete more patterns in the same amount of time. We did about seven touch-and-goes with varying flap settings. Looking back I can note the variations in the approach with the different flap angles, but while flying I was focusing on keeping the plane "on the numbers" to pay attention to the exact angle I was coming in at.

As usual I rushed a few things, particularly the flair and hold off. I'd flair right away, a little too much and then try to hold, only to have the plane drop the last ten feet. Near the end I paced myself and started touching down lightly just as the stall horn sounded.

I'm proud to say there was no floating, no bouncing and no drifting, but I was lucky today as I had stiff wind straight down the runway the whole time. I'm going to need a lot of practice on the crosswinds. There was one shaky takeoff today when I was distracted, talking to my instructor. I wasn't paying attention to the precession and after I lifted off I lightly touched down the left main again. My instructor didn't seem to notice so I just leveled and pulled back a little more.

No pictures today, as the weather wasn't the best and I had no time to take any shots from the plane with the high workload environment of the pattern. There were about two to three other craft in the pattern and had to wait a little while to get into it in the first place.

Over all it was an excellent day.