I thought I was getting good at landings, for 45 hours the worst landings I had were just hard landings, there was no sweat, no puffed cheeks, and the aircraft never really ballooned. i.e. bounced off once the wheels touched the ground.

My 45th hour became very memorable - its my 4th time flying away from a my own airfield, solo — a triangular route from Sibson to overhead Sywell, then overhead Leicester for the turn back to Sibson. All went fairly acceptably, whilst its obvious my navigation skills still need much practice, prophetically one would think having made it back to Sibson’s locality “what more could go wrong?”.

It went horribly wrong.

Arriving back as I was performing a cross wind landing back at Sibson RW 15, on the round out my aircraft straffed left of centreline, and wasn’t slowing down as quickly as usual. After an attempted correction I performed a turnaround when it bounced off the ground. No panic, I thought, as cross wind landing are tricky.

On the next attempt and with a good alignment crabbing towards runway centreline, and seemingly on a good glide path, this landing somehow bounced again, this time more than a few feet and threaten to do so again on the follow up. My chest tighten, and if the yoke could scream it would have done.

Another go around, another climb up and probably only 100 ft above ground I caught a glimpse of the IAS needle strolling down past 50mph, instinctively I pushed the nose down return it to 60mph. What followed was all sorts, as my mind races thru’ a million seconds of training, holding my breath while trying to deduce why G-BAEP would not climb, and would not gain speed while holding a nose down attitude. My right palm applying full throttle so hard the dashboard must’ve flexed…. yet VSI is at -100ft/min. Time slowed down as I realise this could be a crisis, the aircraft might be shot and I may need to land on a farmers field.

As I scanned my instrument panel one more time, to my relieved surprise the flaps were fully deployed! Down at 40degrees.Quickly I raise it to 20 for a positive climb, then 10, and climbed back to circuit level on the crosswind leg.

For seasoned pilots you might well be aware how dangerous my situation could’ve been. At 50mph IAS at only a 100ft altitude, any stall kills. A later check of POH did not soothe my post-event trauma - G-BAEP stalls at 47mph with flaps fully extended.

My CFI having watched this from the control room had realised I’m having significant challenge, announced to the traffic we’re switching circuits to RW06. Due to having constant traffic, we were earlier established on Runway 15 with a tail-cum-cross wind of 050/10kt. Again, likely only an issue for students.

Changiing to Runway 06 should be more favourable as we traded tail-crosswind for cross-headwinds. With a longer 06 circuit I too found time to compose myself on the downwind, performed landing checks and then onto final approach with not issues.

Or so I thought.

I bounced 3 times.

On the last bounce, it was so hard I pushed into the throttle causing another long bounce.

“turn off the throttle!” crackled the radio, Yikes, I have managed to break his calm, it only took 45 hours.

On vacating runway I note I was well far from my usual distance. Obviously, my after landing checks were performed with a somewhat shaky set of hands. And to compound all this I had to taxi the aircraft back to the shop as “It needed to be checked”.

With the actioncam dying midway thru the prior 90 minute journey, there was no footage to verify our analysis of what went wrong. But I do need to process this is the closest I felt to danger on my journey. With consultation from my CFI, and reviewing AFE’s PPL book, I now may have an idea.

As as reminder to self, a proper landing is still always “Airspeed, Airspeed, Airspeed”, the aircraft should be setup to maintain 70mph during approached, at all times until after the threshold. No issues here.

However Once over the threshold, one should power off, flare or round out, allowing airspeed to drop. For me, my throttlewas still on and only taken off after the Runway numbers, this mean my airraft did not have enough time to bleed off its momentum - thus the wings are still generating lift when the wheels touched the ground. It should’ve been a gradual lost of airspeed leading to gentle lowering of aircraft became a violent rush to ground.

All the while I let my lack of finesse bother me, I should’ve been able to use Rudders to maintain aircraft on runway centreline, and airelons to correct for cross wind throughtout, but overcorrected on occasions.

On the final landing, after ballooning for the 3rd time, losing my cool and decided to force the landing instead of going around.

Obviously, some may say that the wind conditions didn’t help, what was a crosswind with headwind component became a gusty crosswind with tailwind components, sure. But, if I were to be trusted to fly on my own, I should learn to work with those conditions- a tail wind of 10-12kts with some cross wind element, I’d prefer it if that was within my skills envelope.

In the end, what could’ve been a regular landing, became a bad one because I did not manage my airspeed. The result of that exposure was compounded by my lost of cool, that led to more errors. So, in the end, its airspeed, airspeed, and airspeed.

P/S ts now more than a week, to ensure I’m haven’t completely lost my mojo, I returned to performing circuits with my CFI guiding me for the full hour. All in we performed 6 Attempts to land and if not removing the wrinkles, we smoothed a few. And I’ve learned of a few more issues with my techniques. For unknown Reasons, I had subconsciously developed a habit to never allow the throttle to idle. This had caused my descends to be quite ‘hot’, I’ve maintained the glidepath at 80mph+, leading to about 2 go-arounds with the wheels touching well into the middle of the runway length. Once that was pointed out to me, I was able to land again without ballooning, although not as gracefully as desired.

I hope you find this a good read, and to my future self, here’s to hoping we had perfected our landings since.