Can anyone hear an Echo…echo..echo?

No, not flying in a cave! Practicing Engine failures in the circuit (known as an “Echo” or strictly speaking here a “practice echo”). Basically at some point Bob just pulls the power back and announces “engine failure”

Not as bad as I thought they were going to be, takes a bit of practice to figure out just exactly how much room you have. The plane glides surprisingly well, rather than falling like a brick from the sky. This means that I actually have more time to play with than I thought. In fact once you’ve set up the glide and are heading back towards the runway, there’s not actually much for you to do. It’s a little anticlimactic. The temptation to push the thing along by adding a touch of engine power is incredibly strong. The first one I tried, I was a little high. Bob and I reckon in a real situation I would have made the runway but this time we erred on the side of caution and overshot to go round for another try. We made the second one, a little long but OK.

Then I got to do something uber-cool! Back-tracking along the runway. This means a 180 on the runway and a high speed taxi back along it before lining up and taking off again. Sweet!