Back again today to East Hills station. It has been raining and there is a fine wind blowing. I called Chieftain from the station and this time another CFI called Peter came to pick me up. On the drive to the airport we went over yesterday’s flight in particular the landing and my experience in the USA. He assured me he “knew what I was doing wrong” and would help me fix it. I know I’m still a low time pilot, but with more than 200 landings some of which were actually good enough to earn a PPL, I was a bit taken aback being talked to like a pre-solo student. Still, he is the teacher, so I might as well let him teach and see what happens. We drove straight over to the CASA office to pick up my CoV, as predicted it required a flight review from an Australian CFI to be valid. Peter told me he could do the review. We would do pattern work and depending on that would decide if any other airwork was needed.
Back at Chieftain I did the preflight on VH-TUR, the lone Cessna 172. On the outside it looked great, new paint and pretty clean. It had the big oversize tires you see on planes that spend a lot of time on soft runways. The inside was pretty nice too, except for the instrument panel which was a mess (cosmetically) all the required switches and dials worked, well almost all, the primer was INOP and the Tach was fine as long as you only wanted to know your RPM +/- 200 (it bounced all over the place). The avionics was old, an ADF and a single NAVCOM radio. The flaps are operated with a toggle switch, up for flaps up, center to stop and down for flaps down. So for 10 degrees of flaps you flip the switch down and count for 3 seconds then flip it back to center (and repeat for each additional 10 degrees you want). There was a little dial that indicates the current angle of the flaps.
A cold start without a primer by pumping the throttle three times, I not quite sure what this does, but the engine started right up. Then another taxi across the grass and over to the 11C/11R run-up area. No problems with the run-up and other than the tach the plane was running fine. We called up the tower at the hold-short line for 11R, “Bankstown Tower, Cessna Tango Uniform Romeo holding short 11R, ready for takeoff, closed circuit training, information Tango”. Then a normal takeoff and into the right traffic pattern at Bankstown.
Well its been a while since I did any pattern work and that coupled with a crosswind from the left of about 8~10 knots made for some interesting landings. Actually none of them were terrible, but I never really felt that I got the side slip stable on final and there was more sideways movement on touch down than I’d like. The radio work is a little different, you report to the tower on downwind, “Cessna Tango Uniform Romeo, downwind for touch & go”. They just reply “Tango Uniform Romeo, Roger”. Then when you are on final you get your clearance to land, sometimes this doesn’t come until short final and it was a real distraction at that point. I much prefer teh way the US controllers work, get your clearance on or before downwind, then you don’t need to talk to them again until your down. On the second time around Peter says, “Let me show you an Aussie landing”. So I gave him the controls to see what he would do different. I’ll try and be charitable, maybe it was a while since he flew the Skyhawk, but the landing and go around he performed were crap. I really think he was trying to show off by doing everything at the same time. He waited until starting to turn base before dropping any flaps, then did it as we were making the turn. He never flew the base leg, just a big 180 turn dropping in the 30 degrees of flaps on the way. We were low on long final and he had to compensate for that. Just before the flare he initiated a go-around, but took the flaps out too quickly so we bobbed along in and out of ground effect before finally starting to climb. I seriously doubt that is the way Australians land planes and I decided I’d just stick with the way I’d been taught in California. We did six loops around the pattern and the last couple of landings were really quite passable considering the crosswind. I not sure Peter was a whole lot of help, but he did catch me pushing the throttle in a bit fast on takeoff (instead of a nice steady 3 seconds) and he did suggest putting in the rudder control first when getting into the side slip which helped. After we got back to the club house he subjected me to about 30 minutes of really patronizing “training” on the most basic elements of landing as he went through the checklist for the flight review. I listened politely but I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know and after his performance in the air I really didn’t trust his advice. He final shut up and wrote the flight review endorsement in my log book – so now I’m legal to fly PIC in Australia, but not with this guy again!