Lesson 24 - Monday April 26th

Right Rudder!

I feel like I'm in a long slog.   Today we took a break from the pattern practice, and instead flew out to Point Dume to refresh a few procedures, and to practice using the rudder.

Tanya took out all the rudder trim, and then for the course of the flight she kept telling me to "step on the ball", and asking me "where's your ball", meaning I had to keep the ball in the turn indicator centered at all times.

Without rudder trim there is a lot of adverse yaw when taking off (and just flying around), so I pretty much had a to hold the right rudder down most of the time, and adjust the pressure for doing various turns.

We practiced slow flight, and 30 degree turns for a while, focusing on the rudder control.  As part of the lesson I also had to contact SoCal approach, which was reasonably straightforward.

Then we flew back to the airport.  I did not really feel like I'd really entirely got the hang of the rudder, but we then did three landings, which were slightly better than last week.

So, slow progress, but it's moving us in the right direction.

I'm writing this on Wednesday April 28th, today's lesson was cancelled due to weather (it's now 900ft overcast at SMO), so next lesson is on Friday.