Tuesday 20th June 2006 “Dirt Tracker”

Departing Leeds at 09:25UTC, we were outbound the zone via Harrogate to practice some more straight and level flight at a constant power, with an introduction to the straight and level at a selected airspeed. The only difference is, is that you need to trim the aircraft at a certain attitude to maintain the selected airspeed. This extremely useful on approaches and climb outs, where you need to fly the aircraft at its decent, approach and climb speed. The decent and climb out speeds of the HR200:

Climb: 75kts

Decent: 70kts/75kts

Approach: 75kts, though it is advisable to be flying at 70kts when coming over the runway threshold.

The aircraft I was flying, G-DT, had many stories underneath her wings. Stories of forced landings and wheel barrowing landing rolls. One of which, a student was flying DT on an approach to runway 14 at Leeds and instead of pulling out the carb-heat for the approach, he pulled out the mixture; which shut-off the engine and the instructor was forced to land a few hundred meters short of 14 in a field. That’s where we got the nickname “Dirt Tracker” from, as her initials are DT. Another story, was about a student on his qualifying cross-country flight, wheel borrowed (landed on the nose wheel instead of the wing wheels) on his landing at Teeside and struck the propeller (prop) nose ward onto the runway surface. He then continued to bounce until coming to stop half way down the runway.

Entering the zone again, via Harrogate we were put into a holding orbit while the controller separated the IFR traffic and the VFR traffic, a service provided in “Class D” airspace. An orbit is a simple continuous 360° turn around a fixed datum, for instance a large building below you. It is mandatory that you follow orders from AT controllers in controlled airspace.

Arriving at back at Leeds at 10:35UTC I was to start practicing more straight and level flight at a selected airspeed before moving onto the next exercise; cruising with flap extended.

Invoice Total: £185.82

TAX: £27.67

Log Entry: 04