One step ahead.

I think I’m managing this “staying ahead of the plane” stuff a little better now; however now I’ve got to keep one step in front of Bob! I’ve gotten to the stage where I can figure out something is not right but Bob still beats me to the solution. A couple of examples from today’s lesson illustrate this beautifully

I was climbing out from my overshoot after a forced approach, we started to encounter more than average turbulence. For some reason the updrafts always get bad around the SW corner of Claremont) but this was worse than previously encountered. I could feel that the plane was doing all kinds of mildly funky stuff without my say so. As I looked around I could see that we had a little local pocket of weather, some cloud (maybe a little snow?) I pointed this out to Bob and he suggested that we level off our climb a little earlier than planned to remain clear. I’d have figured that out eventually. I know not to climb into cloud.

Also coming back into the city, ATC pulled a “change of plan” number on me, switching me from a left to right downwind on 33. The instruction I got was basically to turn south to pick up the right downwind. I’ve moved beyond blindly following ATC instructions now and looked around realising that making a 90 degree turn would put me very close to some very tall buildings. I knew enough not to make the turn but was obviously floundering for a solution, Bob pointed out that we should make a 270 instead. I would have gotten there eventually, just not quite as quickly as he did.

Couple this the fact that he’s warned me he’s going to start “mixing it up a bit”, It’s like I’m back in the circuit again wondering what he’s going to break next! I’m ahead of the plane but not ahead of the instructor !