The Doctor's Lair

A much more interesting flight, with now things happening a little more slowly. Highlights of this flight: talking on the radio and lots of traffic, almost a traffic jam. On the way in, I requested the controller for clearance, he issued instructions to three other aircraft before combing back and asking,"Inbound aircraft, say call sign". After I said '222 Uniform Mike', he asked for an ident(so that he can identify on radar) and then said,"2UM, make straight in, runway 6, number three to land". Now thats traffic. We were about 8 miles from the airport and there were two people in front of us to land. Brian even had to ask the controller for a clarification on the traffic. In other traffic, we saw quite a few planes today. Our practising area is about 12 miles WNW of Ann Arbor and there we had about three aircraft cross our path. One was even doing some tight circles and we turned to get away from him. Around this time I was shown some prominent landmarks in the area so that we can make it back to the airport....and that wasn't all of it, we also had to turn away from a jumper aircraft, that is one that takes parachutists up to about 14000' and they jump. Better stay away from those too.

In actually flying the aircraft, today started with some rudder training for turns. This was followed with climbing and descending turns. Then came slow flight and descends with flaps down, the approach configuration. The ending was lining up with the runway with a slight right crab to stay on the centerline. Brian then demonstrated the flare and the landing. I then got to taxi the plane back, shut down, park and clean.

The radio part was fun. I liked it and was not as bad as I had imagined it to be. Preparation does help and I had two good sources. A nice book by Bob Gardner,"Say Again" and www.liveatc.net. This website has a nice collection of ever growing ATC feeds and it does help getting one used to how the voice on the radio sounds like. The book helps with the phraseology and the etiquette. Highly recommended if you are having communication problems on the radio. Its a long post, but the last thing, the first time I got my preflight weather briefing on my own. 1.2 hours flight bringing the cumulative to 2.2 hours.