Pilot Life: Practice Towards Improvement

Hot off the heels of yesterday's successful stage check flight, I set out this morning to practice and improve a few things my stage check examiner pointed out to me and commit myself to getting them done right. After pre-flight, I hopped in the plane and got the engine started. After doing the routine run-ups, I taxied to the runway and took off.

Good ol' N802CT!

I started today's solo flying session by staying in the pattern around Spanish Fork to practice some landings and keeping myself on the runway center-line each time I touched down; this was one of things my stage examiner pointed out to me yesterday and I will admit to agreeing with him. For a while now, I've been more focused on perfecting my landing techniques to the point that I've started neglecting touching down on the center of the runway. So I focused on getting my touchdowns accomplished on the center of the runway and then add the techniques in combination soon after!

After polishing up on my landings, I left the pattern and headed south to practice some maneuvers. I started with stalls and steep turns from a relatively high and safe altitude. I then practiced an emergency descent to get down to a lower altitude to practice all my ground reference maneuvers. After I felt satisfied with my ground reference maneuvers, I headed back to the airport to practice a couple more landings before calling it good.

I feel for the most part, polished up. Now I've got to keep myself sharp until the checkride!