Iain Hosking - Flying Training - Lesson 25

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Lesson 25: Solo circuits

Saturday 20 May 2006, 7.00am with Jim Drinnan in Citabria VH-RRW

Weather: calm, cloudy, rain showers.

Arrived 6.20am. Took RRW round for refuelling (remember to slide the card in with the magnetic strip to the back) and did the preflight there. Taxiied for runway 06 and took off. Discovered we were sharing the circuit with a balloon from Balloons Aloft. Two circuits with Jim, then taxiied clear of the runway to let Jim out before carrying on solo (a fact which didn't escape the balloon pilot).

The agreement was that if I didn't feel comfortable on the tarmac then I would change to runway 10 (grass), but I didn't have any problems, and the landings were all reasonably smooth (see pictures below). The balloon pilot called me up to inform me of his intentions, and its presence certainly made the circuits more interesting. It would have been nice to have been able to photograph it but this just wouldn't have been practical as aviating, communicating and keeping track of other traffic still demand my full attention.

I had quite a sharp shower of rain on the second-last circuit, but not sufficient to affect the visibility, so I chose to do one more. By this time it was getting quite crowded in the circuit with two Citabrias, a Cessna 172, a Tomahawk and the balloon, so I was quite happy to call it a day at exactly one hour. I visited Balloons Aloft and met Glen and Justin who had taken some photos and video of RRW, so we exchanged email addresses and so far this has resulted in a video clip and the pictures/video frames shown below. Note that my 5am start is put into perspective by the 4am start that some of the balloon passengers had!

Photos and Videos

Glen (a passenger in the hot air balloon) sent me a 1-minute video clip showing one of my landings and an Airborne Aviation Tiger Moths doing a tight turn around the balloon. The original file is a 13Mb MP4 file, and I've converted it to a 1.9Mb Real Media file. If you have the bandwidth, the original MP4 is much sharper and clearer. All but the first of the photos below are taken from the video.

Click thumbnails to enlarge.

Downwind	Final approach	Final approach	Final approach	Final approach
Short final	Short final	Short final	Short final	Flare
Hold off	Touch down	Roll out	Roll out	Roll out
Tiger Moth	Tiger Moth	Tiger Moth	Tiger Moth	Tiger Moth