Yesterday I was programmed to fly GH8, the last dual GH sortie. Hmmm, the instructor decided to use the one hour sortie to fly IF (Instrument Flying) instead since I already know how to do the GH air exercise. I only need to perfect them when I go for solo GH next time. Flying by instrument again wasn't a problem to me. Climbing, descending, turning, straight&level were easy. Instructor demonstrated to me how to recover from stall by just looking at the instrument panel. Slowly reduce the power to idle, put more and more back pressure at the control column, and then you will see the airspeed starts to washout until a certain point you can feel the control stick is buffeting and hear the stall horn warning getting louder and louder. The recovery method was very similar to the normal stall recovery I used to do last time. With the Attitude Indicator as your 'horizon', put the nose down little by little and slowly power is increased to Full Power. As airspeed comes alive, put the take-off flaps and climb back to regain the loss altitude (due to stall).

After the air exercise, when we were rejoining back to land, we requested to rejoin for runway 21 (not the usual runway 03). I wanted to get the feel to land on runway 21 because I had never landed using the runway before. There is no extension from the threshold for runway 21, only paddy fields before the threshold. So, if I approach too low, I could crash into the fields and then the fences surrounding the airfield.

My short finals approach was like shit, as what my instructor said to me. I THOUGHT that I came in low. By the time I realised, I put too much power, from 10% to 70% and then reduced to idle and then put 45% power again before finally touchdown. So the aircraft was like going up and down, up and down.

According to my instructor, I did not came in low on approach because it was the wind effect from the flat plantation (paddy fields) and trees that caused me to THINK that I was low. Another point to take note is, I should learn to relax more and thus I will be able to control the power throttle in a smoother way. =D




After landed, I was told to fly the same aircraft for my solo GH sortie and finish my solo Circuit 4 sortie. So, I did the pre-flight check again on exterior of the aircraft. For your info, it is the responsibility of the pilot in command to make sure the aircraft is fit to fly before his/her sortie.

This time, there was fuel leaking from the center tank. I already noticed stains below the aircraft when I landed with instructor just now. I did not think much about it because I thought the stain might be from other aircraft that parked there before me. Little did I expect that the stain was actually the fuel dripping from the aircraft I was gonna fly. Another knowledge to share here, we are also required to drain the fuel from each tank (left tank, right tank, center tank) to check for contamination. So as I was about to drain fuel from the center tank, the leak became heavier. Should I continue or cancel my sortie? I called an engineer to come and check the problem.

The fuel valve was not screwed in properly, a little not in-line with the socket. According to my instructor, the valve could burst anytime. And this leads to no fuel and hence engine gonna fail. Quite funny though, before I went flying with my instructor just now, I did the same pre-flight check on the aircraft and found no fuel leak.

Lucky me I made the right decision to cancel the sortie and prevent any unwanted accidents to happen. Unlucky me too because I had to delay the sortie to other days. Haha.