Well it’s taken me over a year to get back up again, mostly due to me buying stuff I really don’t need but heh I can make a whole different topic aboutthat.
I made my way over to the flight club’s amazing new building, had to wait 10 minutes for my instructor to arrive - she was late because an external power van caught fire. Meanwhile I watched the newly constructed apron for the flight club which was not in use cause the controllers were on holidays.
Welcome to EHRD😎
I sat in the classroom for a couple of minutes while the instructor gathered all the papers maps and charts necessary for this flight, so I made myself comfortable and noticed a lot of cool collector’s items lying around like these old goggles and what I believe is a velocitity instrument measuring in m/s:
Then we started the briefing. Today’s flight will take us to the plains left of Dordrecht for some maneuvers - more on that later. We will take the runway 06 Romeo departure, keeping right of the Dutch A16 highway heading south.
Then we headed over to the port for the passport and baggage checks etc. We briefly walked airside over towards lima where today’s ride, a 41-year-old Piper Pa-28 Archer II was ready to be started.
I climbed in first to my seat. From the wing I boarded on the cockpit looked absolutely tiny, but once you’re in it it’s fine. Here’s what it looks like:
Quite different from the DA40 I’m used to, but I really liked it; everything had such a nice classic feel to it.
Then came all the preflight checks: nothing different than any other GA plane really. Instructor said it might be best if she made the ATC calls since it was very busy today which was somewhat disappointing since I had practiced my vfr phraseology lately, but I knew it was for the best.
I taxied out to V2 behind a Robin Dr400 and a C172 and started the runup checks and before I knew it we were cleared for takeoff, enjoy:
We made our way over the planned route while spotting two other planes heading the opposite direction on the Romeo arrival and before I knew it we were at outside of the CTR and over the middle of nowhere (impossible cause it’s Holland but let’s ignore that).
The first things we did were coordinated turns: you make a left aileron turn and give left rudder and back pressure, same applies for right aileron turn with right rudder. Most of the time my problem was the back pressure, I would either give too much or too little, but I got the hang of it fairly quickly after a couple of turns.
Then we moved on to trimming. We made a 180 to get to a clearing in the clouds as we needed some space ahead of us. The instructor showed me how to trim it: you would hold the controls in place to maintain a straight line (0fpm). You trimmed the aircraft up or down depending on what kind of pressure you had to give to keep the aicraft level. It took a bit of getting used to, but just like the turning you get the hang of it really easily.
Then came a fun part. The instructor pulled back the throttle and told me to pick a field to make an emergency landing. At 500ft we ended the scenario: I wouldn’t have made the field I picked - I would have crashed into the village in front of it😀.
Then we made our way back by the Romeo arrival whilst looking out for traffic on the busy arrival route. We crossed over the runway at around 1000ft to enter 06’s left downwind. After an extended downwind due to a runway check we turned base and final and made a late landing executed by the instructor due to winds and exited on V5 so I could have some time taxiing back to Lima.
Then we finally got to our parking spot and pushed the plane into its spot and watched two 737s departing right beside us. I took the opportunity to take some more photos of this sexbomb of a plane:
We made our way back towards the airclub and talked about the damage: financing.
What was said in that room stays in that room 😳. Just kidding. We talked about what the further options were and I am currently working hard to get more lessons in what will hopefully be in the next couple months.
That’s all! I hope I can make another one of these again soon.
Rian