Lesson 9 - Stop-and-Goes at Renton

Flight Time: 1.1 hours
Total Time: 11.5 hours

I took a little bit of time off of work today to get in one more flight to make up for the last one that didn’t go so well. Bremerton was clouded in with ceilings well below 1,000 feet, so we headed southwest towards Renton, where we had 4,000 ceilings.

Renton is so close to Boeing field, that when you take off to the south at Boeing and turn base in the pattern, you are instantly on the crosswind leg of the pattern at Renton. That’s how we took off today.

It's a fun airport to land out because as you’re coming in on final, you’re flying over water. The runway begins right where the water ends, so you feel like you should be in a seaplane.

We stayed in the pattern at Renton for the duration of the flight, practicing soft field, short field and emergency landing stop-and-goes. Unlike touch-and-goes, where you instantly raise flaps and push in full throttle after barely touching down, as the name implies, with stop-and-goes, you come to complete stop and prepare to take off from that point on the runway.

Stop-and-Goes at Renton

We needed the extra time because we were practicing not only the short and soft field landings, which I’d done before, but also the takeoffs, which I’d never done.

Both types of takeoffs take a little bit of getting used to. Short field landings require you to take off as soon as you can and climb out at 65 knots – almost stall speed for the takeoff configuration.

For soft field takeoffs, you take off as soon as the plane gets lift. You can do this because “ground effect” will keep you suspended at low speeds when you’re within a wingspan of the ground. You use ground affect to float above the ground and accelerate in the air, and once you hit 65 knots, you start climbing. Taking off at the slower speeds means that you’re above any bumps, rocks or ruts that might otherwise bog down or damage the plane on a soft field.

We did a total of seven stop-and-goes - with one go around because I was much too high on one of the landings. Today was a very good flight, and the repetition of different types of takeoffs and landings got me feeling much more comfortable, which left me feeling much better than I did after my past few flights.

Google Earth Map of Today's Flight