Back in Dalton, I decided to switch planes again. I had called out to the Dalton Airport earlier in the week out of curiosity and found out that they use a Cessna 172 Skyhawk for training, which is not unusual since it's the most popular training aircraft in the world. Anyway, I hadn't flow the Skyhawk in a while (not since I purchased the larger more powerful Skylane), so I took the Microsoft "used trainer" version out for a few laps around the airport.
(click to enlarge)
On the ground, the plane was really tough to taxi around in. I kept over-correcting left and right and just zig-zagging around. Other planes don't seem to have that problem. Not sure if the Skyhawk is really that over-sensitive or just the FSX version.
In the air though, the plane handled nicely. I would take off with one notch of flaps, climb out a 75 knots or so until I hit 1000 feet (runway is a bit over 700 feet), then I'd retract the flaps and turn around, climbing to about 1500 feet and up to 80-100 knots. Then I'd level off, slow back down, extend one and then later two notches of flaps and trim out for about 75 knots for the landing approach.
Finally, about a mile down-range, I'd turn back around and reduce power to start descending to land. After landing, I'd retract back to one notch of flaps, power up and start the process all over again.
All three landings were good. None went long and all were pretty close to center, but none perfect (yet). The last one was tricky because my youngest son was literally climbing on my back while I was trying to land. I think it was the best though (see photo above).
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