I was a little nervous for this flight, given my reasonably poor performance last time.
Luckily: the flight was great!
It was a saturday morning, beautiful weather and a little bit of side-wind.
We used runway 09 this time, so that took some reminding of where the important spots are, but this circuit is a little easier than the 27.
Thankfully, my instructor had already completed the pre-flight checks, all I had to do was drag the plane out of the hangar.
We proceeded with our checklist, taxing out and taking off.
We mostly did circuits again.
The things I still need to work on: relax! I'm still a little tense, although I already feel a little better it's still hard for the instructor to make small corrections when I'm holding the stick.
Also, during flying I need to hold the stick more still. My instructor showed me if I let go of the stick, the plane just stays stable. So apart from small corrections I shouldn't be doing too much with the stick.
My right rudder work during take-off was OK. I didn't take into account the side-wind enough so I was moving off a bit. It's actually hard to see if you are going straight during take-off, since you're facing the sky. But you can use some points on the horizon and anticipate the side-wind.
That was most of it.
Doing a smooth landing is amazing. I started to round off a little too early, but barely moved the stick forward in response so the plane came gently down.
Since I landed with side-wind, as soon as I'm on the ground I must correct my direction with the rudder, which I had not done. But next time I will.
After a few landings we went up to 4000 ft. We can do that only in weekends, when we have more "G" (uncontrolled) airspace. During the week, we're limited to staying under 2500 ft AGL (Above Ground Level).
We flew around some of the clouds and a little faster. We had a great view over Hasselt. This is so cool.
My instructor mentioned that we did have to be careful that under the clouds we could find glider planes, since this is where upwards thermals can be found.
Those thermals were also active right in my final leg during landing. They made it a little harder to descent and we came in a little far on the runway. Luckily, a ULM doesn't need much runway.
Preparations
The mental preparations and deliberate focus did help a lot in making this a better flight, since I could avoid silly mistakes.
I even did the radio again.
A new challenge is coming though, as my instructor is off for a month. So I won't be flying for 5 weeks and will have to do a lot of imaginary circuits.
Conclusion
The flight was great. Many things to improve on, but I feel like I took some important steps.
I will have to keep up practice during our 5 week break though.
Track
Note: the GPS recorder seems to have failed so the track below isn't exactly accurate.
Running costs
1 hour flight time: € 96
1 hour instructor: € 30