After a bit of a break, Tony and I meet up again for a bit more practice. It's now the 11th of March and I hope I can remember what to do after a week's break from training.
I pull my machine out from its resting place at the back of the dark hangar and check it over. It all looks good so I find Tony and after while we get in and taxi out for a first session of take-offs and landings as before.
This time though, the wind has changed direction by 180° so we use the same runway but in the opposite direction, i.e. runway-two-two. It makes a nice change to see the runway from a different direction when landing. Tony is careful to point out though that there's a farm (The Yellow Hat Tribe) directly in line with this end of the runway and not too far away, so we don't go right to the end of the runway, as we might otherwise have done, to minimise any noise nuisance to their more sensitive inhabitants.
We have a good day doing a fair few more take-offs and landings. Tony's happy that I'm now getting quite consistent with the take-offs and judging the airspeed better before gaining height. By the end of the day he lets me do a little circuit for fun:
After we turn left from the take-off direction, it's obvious from the smoke drifting across the fields from a bonfire just outside the airfield that the wind is now quite strong across our desired path. I should have taken this into account but do a neat 90° turn allowing the wind to take us significantly off the preferred 90° track.
There's a nice view of the karting track as well, which I hadn't seen before. At ground level you don't get to see it at all.
The fourth leg is also fairly untidy; two 45° segments instead of a straight line. Ideally we'd have done a nice rectangular track but just doing turns without losing too much height or speed is a learning experience in itself.
I'm very happy though that at the end of day four with eight and a half hour's training so far, I've made good progress thanks to Tony's expertise.
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