Today was a day to work on the landing so no special lessons and just landing after landing for two hours around the Bentonville Municipal airport (KVBT). The day started pretty quietly with a wind at 3 knots, which is almost nothing, and with only 20 degrees spread from the axis of the runway. It was favoring runway 36.

I have done now so many take off and landing on this runway that I'm becoming extremely familiar with the take off procedure, going through the traffic pattern and making the calls for the different phases and approaching the runway! It is incredible how in less than 16 hours of flight over only 10 days, you can develop some reflex.

But as I have yet to make a completely correct landing on my own. For whatever reasons, I keep messing it up on the round off and flare. My instructor keeps telling me: it's all about timing! Well, my timing is just off but I'm confident we are going to make it and allow me to finally master this art of landing.

Let's hope my progress are not asymptotic!

So here we go starting some landings. But before we get too go for a complete stop, we are going to repeat the same maneuvers several time consisting in doing a low approach. I told Michael that in a way I was needing a trigger for starting to "think" about the round off. I kept asking him if the threshold of the runway might be a good point to shift my attention from the descent to rounding off. His answer was no, of course, the threshold is not a good point because it is not about being vertical of a point but more a height issue. If you come high, you should starting rounding off later than the threshold and the other way around. If you are low on approach, you will slam the runway if you wait for the threshold. So it what is it about? It's height from the runway in fact. So getting the good feel for the height is not obvious. It's one thing when Michael is doing it and I'm watching or holding the yoke while he is performing the landing, it's a totally different experience when you have to do it. So to get a better feel, we did an interesting exercise. After a normal approach, we started the round off but instead of letting the plane bleed the speed, we put the gas back and actually flight above the runway at the round off altitude. It's not too challenging but when you think about it! You are flying the plane for the entire length of the runway at 60 knots 5 feet above the ground!!! The exercise paid off, I had a better feeling where I should round off. Now my problem was somewhere else : the flare!

Encounter of another kind

For most of the time, we have been alone in the pattern and did not have to pay extra  attention to traffic but we got a call that just got my attention. I had just made the following announcement: "Bentonville Traffic, Cessna 733 Victor Romeo, turning left downwind for runway 36 Bentonville". Standard! But 10 seconds later, I can hear the following call on the radio: "Bentonville, Cessna Citation 5 miles south of Bentonville for runway 36 Bentonville". At that moment, I understand that we are both going for the same runway but he is making a direct approach and I'm following the pattern. I understand also that this is not a small airplane: It's a Citation! For those of you who don't know what a Citation is, this is a small jet with room for 10 people. I've talked to Michael about that call and ask him if we have enough time to land. Answer: yes! But I was a little skeptic so we called the pilot of the Citation to better understand his position and intention. Then Michael ask me if I wanted to watch it land! Answer: Of course!

So Michael took the control of the plane, did a very short and tight base and final and landed our plane. I then grabbed the camcorder usually just running in the background and was able to capture on video the landing of the Citation. It reminded me how much monitoring the radio is important because that plane was completely invisible to us and we would have started to see it only after turning base or with luck at the end of the downwind leg!

This was a nice distraction but as soon as the Citation had finished its landing, we started our back taxiing for taking off and do more landings.

More better, yet incomplete, landings...

Today was going to be a very intensive days of landings. And we would end up doing a total of 22 landings.

During one of the landings attempt, Michael was talking about being able to see the runway above the nose of the plane and then realize something that would change everything. My seat was very low in fact for my height. The result is that I did not have a proper visibility of the runway !!!

We changed the setting on the seat and then suddenly everything became different. My take off became smoother and my round off was improving significantly.

It was now close to 2 hours and Michael did the last landing because I was getting tired and started to make some mistakes in the communications. So we decided to call it a day. Michael landed the plane one last time and brought it to a stop on the runway. I took the control to go park but before leaving the runway, Michael asked me if I wanted to do one last landing.

… when suddenly!

After a second of hesitation, I agreed. I've made some improvement during the previous 2 hours and I will not get into an airplane for the next 4 days, I can give it a last chance.

So here we go for round around the airport. Everything is going smooth. The wind had picked up in the last 30 minutes. It is now at 7 and a little gusted but nothing too bad. The air was getting rougher and we were a little shaken. Before entering base, I remember something, each time I was able to track the center line of the runway and didn't have to make correction at the end, I went pretty close to landing the plane by myself. So turning left base, I was determined to pay a lot of attention on keeping the plane on the centerline for as long as possible. Now turning final and the alignment is good. I'm doing a pretty good approach with a good tracking and there everything went smooth! The round off happen at the right time, the flare happen also at the right time and I had little to no correction. The wheels then touched the runway and I was started to slow down. I did have to think about it that I had actually landed the plane entirely by myself! Wow! It was so "easy"! I mean, on all the previous landings, I had to fight the airplane to try to get it where I wanted and I invariably ended with a mistake or another that was endangering the plane! But this time, it went very smooth. No fight, no struggling, no correction, just the right moves!

I had just completed my first complete and correct landing without Michael touching anything! What a feeling! I know now that I just have to repeat that landing and I'm on my way to solo.Michael was, of course, very prompt to congratulate me and to of course ready to throw me another challenge! Now we will learn to land with a cross wind!

But that will be for another time because by now, I'm ready to park the plane, close the flight and call it a day! The Hobbs meter (that reports the official flying time) reads 2.3 hours and it is getting late. I had started my day at 2:00am to attend a meeting with France and it was nearly 6:00pm local. It was a thought and long day but I'm happy and all the frustration from the butchered landings, from the work at the office not going as smoothly as it should is totally gone. I'm looking forward stepping back in the plane and do it again … and again!