The day could best be described as a character building day with a wind up to 16 knots and for the most part nearly all crosswind. This meant that the takeoff was crosswind with some downwind and the landing some head wind but mostly crosswind.

The first task was a short field takeoff with obstacle climb. The book tells us that we use 10 degrees of flap, hold on the brakes(if surface ok ) till full power is reached, then release the brakes and let the aircraft accelerate to a rotation speed of 51knots and then climb at 56 knots. Once clear of the obstacle retract the flaps and resume the normal climb. The main problem here was keeping the aircraft straight (the crosswind wanted to cause difficulties) and the second one was trying to get the aircraft off the ground too soon. When faced with quite a steep slope, and some downwind component, and the end of the strip coming up and with trees getting close the tendency was to rotate a little early with the stall warning getting a little agitated. At that point there was still quite an amount of room left and with speed you have better control over the aircraft and better ability to climb. Pulling the aircraft off the ground at 45 knots the aircraft didn’t want to climb and simply was just 'mushing' until speed was gained.

The short field approach was OK but the crosswind landing caused a few problems. The approach has to be adjusted by crabbing into wind but as we can’t land in that configuration we have to straighten the aircraft prior to landing (either prior to rounding out or during the round-out). We straighten the aircraft (in our case with the wind from the right) by applying left rudder. If we do this and nothing else the aircraft will drift to the left so to compensate we apply right aileron sufficiently (thus raising the into wind aileron) to prevent any further drift. In other words we have crossed controls, right aileron and left rudder and we adjust these control imputs to keep tracking straight. To keep straight on the ground keep the right aileron on and be ready with brake to keep in a straight line.

The instrument flying was not too badly carried out and the same for the emergency landing but I think what caused most problems on the day was orientation. A lot had trouble with keeping in touch with the strip and flying the circuit correctly. The grass strip that doesn’t stand out like a long bitumen runway is easily lost sight of and the right hand circuit on the short field landing didn’t help. It is important to pick out land marks such as dams, buildings, trees, hills etc. (and in this case other aircraft on the ground!!) and also use compass headings to keep orientated.

Thanks to Kevin Wilkins for providing us all with a great lunch

Congratulations to Ed Collins who was best on the day with 62.5 points from Kingsley Picker with 59.5 and Leigh Cutler and John Bestwick equal on third with 53.5.

Jerry Trevor-Jones