{"id":971,"date":"2005-09-30T09:22:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-30T14:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=971"},"modified":"2005-09-30T09:22:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-30T14:22:00","slug":"jumbo-jet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=971","title":{"rendered":"jumbo jet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tragic. Just…tragic.<\/a><\/p>\n

“My” airport<\/a>. Note where it says “RY 20 HAS 55 FT TREES 50 FT FM THLD ON CNTRLN.” Translation: Runway 20 (landing from the north) has 55-foot-high trees 50 feet from the runway threshold, centered on the runway. Which is correct. Except that the trees are more like 5 feet from the end of the runway. <\/p>\n

I practiced landings yesterday and encountered that very issue, having to land from the north due to the wind. It meant that I was able to fly a left-hand traffic pattern, which is preferable since I can see more easily the direction that I’m turning, but landing was interesting. And not only because of the trees–there was a low ceiling and we had a 6 knot (~8 mph) quartering headwind (combination headwind and crosswind) gusting to 15 knots. The challenge in that kind of situation, or indeed any landing in general, but more so when the winds are dicey, is to fly the airplane by feel, referring to the instruments as little as possible. And on my fourth landing of the day (we did five, just circling around in the pattern), I got it. Came down over the trees perfectly, power off, just gliding with full flaps, dead on the centerline, wing dipped a little into the wind, flared out at just the right time and heard the stall horn come on just as we touched down. Gosh that was satisfying, even if I did get a little lucky. <\/p>\n

The fifth and last landing was more interesting. We caught an updraft coming off the trees just as we were crossing the runway threshold a hundred feet or so above. Power was off, flaps full down and the nose was angled down so I was expecting us to sink like a stone once we got over the trees–but we didn’t… Until a couple hundred feet farther down the runway. Then, *whooomp* down we came until we were in ground effect and flaring out all of a sudden. We were past the cones (orange cones placed at a certain point alongside the runway with the understanding that if we’re not on the ground by the time we reach them, we do an immediate go-around) but the instructor was in the airplane so I landed anyway. And braked<\/i>. More landings on Tuesday! Hoping for smoother air then…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tragic. Just…tragic. “My” airport. Note where it says “RY 20 HAS 55 FT TREES 50 FT FM THLD ON CNTRLN.” Translation: Runway 20 (landing from the north) has 55-foot-high trees 50 feet from the runway threshold, centered on the runway. Which is correct. Except that the trees are more like 5 feet from the end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}