Grant's flying

I fitted in another quick fly today. We flew a Piper Warrior over to Hoxton Park late yesterday afternoon heading west into the setting sun, and then practising CTAF circuit joining procedures. CTAF is common traffic advisory frequency. Its also a common convention that pilot's use to communicate their intentions when there is no control tower. I have to say I have flown these procedures at various aerodromes, and gone over them dozens of times, drawing little diagrams as to how I would join circuits from different approach directions, but when you are actually up there, and (correctly) focused on flying the aircraft, its a different kettle of fish.
So we approached Hoxton Park from the East. Its roughly a north/south runway. I made my CTAF zone entry call, and another pilot kindly advised that the approach to the north was the in-use circuit direction (runway 34). I overflew the aerodrome at 1,700 feet (500 feet above the circuit altitude) and then Lawrence said "how was I going to join crosswind". Hoxton Park requires 4 legs of the traffic pattern to be flown. Essentially I had flown the crosswind leg, but not at pattern altitude. You would perhaps do this to check the windsock if you did not know the runway in use (but of course I did!). So with some gentle prompting I did a 180 (a flying u-turn really), flew over to the dead side, descended to 1,200 and announced I was joining crosswind. Next new safety tip: overfly crosswind no further downfield than the threshold (in case a high performance plane is taking off and inadvertently reaches pattern altitude before you can see him). The remainder of the circuit was routine. Silly things get you; I found the plane's call sign "Foxtrot Zulu Whiskey" difficult to say clearly, and I kept forgetting to nominate the runway in use in my calls (I have spent too long flying at a controlled aerodrome you see, and you tend to abbreviate runways at Bankstown to "Left" or "Right" since the runway in use is implied). My approach was high, I got the power off, flaps out, even kicked in a little slip to correct, and made a reasonable touch down, but again with a small bounce as I had done last week. The warrior is forgiving, but I wanted to do better. We did another circuit and I improved on the second landing.
We then climbed out on runway heading back to 1,700, clear of the CTAF zone and I repeated the whole process, this time approaching from the west. It was all a lot clearer now. I headed for the downwind end of the runway, announced my intentions, flew over to the dead size of the circuit, turned upwind and descended down to pattern altitude, made a prompt left turn, overflew the threshold at 1,200 feet on the upwind end, then finally turned downwind for my final circuit of the day.
My return to Bankstown was a standard approach via 2RN which seemed like an old friend at this point. Lawrence asked me what altitude I should be at, at the 3 mile reporting point and casually I descended from 1,500 to 1,000 (having of course temporarily forgotten this important fact). I did a straight in approach on runway 11L which was routine, other than I was on late final, perhaps 1nm, and I had not been cleared to land. I asked Lawrence if we should go around? Lawrence blipped the microphone and simply said FZW on late final, and the tower responded immediately with our clearance. So I also learnt an appropriate way to remind the tower when I needed some important information. They do get distracted just like us pilots.
We taxied off the runway 6 minutes before last light, just legal at touchdown I think. A go around would have put me in a potentially illegal position for our next approach, so we talked about the philosophy of whether I should have landed without clearance in this situation. also I asked Lawrence if he had a night rating - he has a multi-engine command rating which would have legally got us by had we missed the last light deadline.
Interestingly Lawrence related this story of another student doing solo's that morning. He had been cleared for his first solo. He had done one circuit already and was told by tower he was number 2 behind another plane. Its the pilot in command's responsibility to maintain clearance from the plane in front (not the tower's) and this student pilot had not slowed sufficiently to keep separation. This caught up with him on his next touch and go. The plane in front did a full stop landing and took its time to taxi off the runway. The controllers apparently were busy dealing with a separation issue in another part of the control zone, and had not cleared our intrepid student for landing. The student landed anyway. Seeing the plane in front taxing off to the left, he steered his plane to the extreme right of the runway, overtook the plane exiting the runway, and then with 180m of the runway left, decided to continue with his touch and go, barely getting the plane airborne again. So the flight school had a lot of paperwork to do that afternoon. On my own first solo circuits experience, I also found a plane on the runway I was lined up for. The tower in this case told me to go around, which I did. I think on another occasion I initiated the go-around myself. I have not problem with this type of decision, although throw in "last light" and it all gets a bit more complex. I think I would prefer to risk a landing at last light (with the runway lights on) than risk a collision.
Anyway, always fun.

I broke a long drought today and had a quick fly before I go home to Brisbane. Just circuits, but in a nice newish Piper Warrior, equipped with a shiny Garmin GPS and all the mod cons (a mere snap at only $15 an hour more). The weather was real bad this morning, clouds scattered at 1000 (i.e. pattern altitude), broken at 1500, wind gusting to 35kts with maximum cross wind component of 15kts, rain and turbulence. By the time I got out to the airport late afternoon, the weather front had moved through, the wind was 300@30, blowing straight down the runway, with no real crosswind at the ground. My first circuit I was following a Cessna who proceeded to encroach Sydney air space (by flying past Bankstown hospital). Lawrence said I couldn't follow him and directed me to contact the tower, advise that we were turning early upwind and resuming pattern altitude. So I did. Tower approved an early crosswind turn and I was back on track. First landing I did a gentle bounce (the Warrior is so much more forgiving than the Grob's I trained in, in part due to the gas-strut suspension). My next two landings were good, although I was a little low on my third approach, not allowing initially for the strong headwind. I did two flapless approaches, with characteristically long float times, which were all good.

So I checked my log book. I'm actually just under 70 hours when I added it all back up again. My final flights pre-PPL practical test are: