General Handling Skills and Pattern Work at Moorabbin YMMB

TODAY I WENT OUT TO THE MOORABBIN training area with pilot "nephew" Samuel. Sam is the eldest of Darren's and he was introduced to flying by me and he's now an accomplished GA pilot. In fact he is much more current than me in terms of flying Piper Arrows. I asked him to critique my General Handling skills and to hold my camera to take some shots for this blog post.

See that aircraft on climb from opposite runway? What a view!

Taking off Rwy 17 Left

Leaving Terra Firma

Setting runway heading on DG

Power controls rate of descent

Concentrating before turning base

Turning base 17 Left

Just before turning long final

Scanning for traffic and judging height and distance

Happy Pilots

One for the memory

Ready for steep turn?

Just turned final, 600 ft from runway threshold

On short final, 400 ft from runway threshold

Crossing over the fence in a few seconds

Final approach on Piper Arrow VH-HAB on Rwy 17 Left, 200 ft above ground

Flaring the aircraft..... hold, hold, hold! Rewarded with a great greaser of a landing!

Turning from runway to taxiway

After landing for the last time and turning off to the taxiway. Tower was in view in the foreground

Taxiing back to Aero Club

Turning VH-HAB into our park bay

We flew out to the training area in our aero club's T-tail, retractable PA28R Piper Arrow call sign VH-HAB from Rwy 17 Left at around 11.05am. I first did a power-off clean stall then a few power-on dirty stalls. With help from Sam I was able to manage the maneuver.

Power-on with flaps = simulating a landing configuration at 75 Kts

Power-off with flaps = simulating a landing configuration at 75 Kts

Next I did a few steep turns at 60 deg AOB. Again I was rusty and had trouble maintaining height on my left hand turns. One right turn I did was perfect. More practice needed for sure!

We then returned to Moorabbin from the training area o shoot some circuits and landings. From GAAP reporting point GMH I was given base 17 Left and was also told to report at Sandown.

We eased into the traffic pattern having sighted my traffic which was a Cessna that turned base earlier. There was another traffic ahead on final and 2 more aircraft behind me. All relatively easy when I could see the aircraft.

I did 5 circuits and came in to land the 6th and last time. There was some head wind today but other than that the landings were benign and I was happy with the flight review progress. I shut down HAB at 12.35pm and clocked 1.5 hours on the VDO. Another beautiful day for pilots.....

YMMB - Landing On The Piano Keys