Back to circuits!

After one poor and a couple of ‘less than good’ landings last Saturday (albeit in gusty crosswinds) I resolved to return to the circuit for a thorough refresher. The weather was so good today that I couldn’t resist and trotted off to the airfield.

Got the plane out and for some reason, Gloucester was busy, not so much with students in the circuits, all sorts, loads of helicopters, a couple of light twins, as Cessna Caravan etc.

Anyway, booked out and started up and taxied out. They are giving runway 09 and 1013, so presumably still anti-cyclonic – excellent visibility though AND a high scattered cloudbase.

I did the power checks, all OK there then was held while a jet backtracked for take-off. While I was holding, the engine started to sound rough. So I checked the mags again and there it was – a big drop on the left mag. I did the usual ‘lean it off and run it hot’ trick to clear what I hoped was fouling – but no joy. Tower advised me that I was clear for take-off but had to tell them that I wanted taxi back to maintenance due to rough-running.

I figured that was it for the day and cancelled my booking-out. I parked up – yes, definitely a plug on the left mags gone. After shutdown, I marked up our tech log then wandered into Aeros, our maintenance organisation. Met Dave and told him the story and he offered to come straight out and fix it! Great, I was about to give up for the day!

We start up and yes, it is chugging! He tells me to leave it running on the left mag only for a couple of minutes and taxi round to their hangar – sounds odd, but OK. I get there and shut down, then he explains. By running the engine on the mag with the defective plug for a few minutes after start-up, what it means is that it is only firing on three cylinders, so once he takes the cowling off and touches the cylinders, the one that is coolest is bound to be the cylinder that was not firing and therefore the one with the defective plug – OH I SEE! Thinks ‘commit to memory and bore people to death with it later!’.

He spots what he says must be a blob of lead between the gap shorting the plug. We replace it and yes, it is much better. So I book out again and taxi out again. The airfield is quieter this time and I pay particular attention to the power checks. It all looks good, I get clearance and I am away.

I have not done a complete flight on circuits for some time, but it is all still there. First landing – hmmm. OK, not bad even, but I think I can see what I am doing wrong now. Approach is good, approach speed OK, but then on very short final, I seem to be rounding out too high, rather than just checking the rate of descent, then losing airspeed such that I have very little in the hold-off.

Second landing, yes, that is much better. Nail the airspeed on 75 all the way down, check descent, flare then a determined hold off.

Third approach and the Tower try to slot in a backtrack departure of a twin while I am on base. The twin gets to the end of the runway then says he is not ready for immediate, so I get a go-around. Oh well, only my second on in a couple of years – good practice I suppose.

The following landings are all much better, nice and smooth and I even hear the stall warner chirping as the wheels touch on the last one! In all I do 6 landings (7 approaches).

It is funny how you can suddenly have a ‘bad patch’ on things like this. Apart from when I was a student, I have not had this happen to me. I know many people say that they too go through bad patches on certain things (landing is the most common), I guess I just thought it didn’t apply to me – well now I know what they mean!

Well I am now quite happy that I have sorted that problem – it is all about accurate airspeed all the way down, don’t anticipate the flare (just check the descent) and hold-off hard!

I guess I had better get some instrument refresher training in ‘just in case’ on this Europe trip in May. I have the ADF tracking and NDB/DME approaches going well on FS2004, I guess I had better get back to the real thing with an instructor.