I had an interesting experience today. I went to the club field this morning to fly my plane for the first time since... September I think. I've been practicing my landing technique using the Phoenix simulator for a little while now, so I thought it was time to try it out in real life. I made the requisite repairs to my USAircore (SPAD) trainer and headed out to the field. Everything was great. The wind was calm, it was somewhat overcast so I wasn't fighting with sun glare, and I had the field all to myself... almost. When I arrived, there was a half dozen horses congregated right in front of the club shed. I'd guess they hang out there a lot, judging by the amount of manure they had collected there. Within minutes of my arrival, the equine had joined me by the side of my Jeep and began to lick the fenders and hood of all things. It was becoming quite a nuisance and despite my (sadly comical) efforts to clear the area of them, they remained. It wasn't until I had my engine firing and I made a few final attempts to shew them away that they left me alone. Flying was great. I took off and made some trim adjustments, then began circling to practice my landings. Landing in the simulator had begun to feel somewhat easy and I was a bit skeptical about how that would relate to real life. Despite those concerns, I brought my plane in level, nice and easy... until it touched the ground. Due to a combination of my plane's excess weight, the soft runway, an easily bent nose-wheel strut, and my particular style of "landing", during this and almost every subsequent landing, my prop hit the ground and I had to retrieve my plane to restart it. That was a little frustrating, but in spite of that, I had fun and made a dozen or so "good" landings. I had been flying for almost two hours and decided to make one final landing and call it a day... Well, those were some famous last words. As I made that final touchdown, everything looked good, then a second or so later, I realized that my nose wheel had become disconnected from the control rod so I had no steering control. The wind was blowing south and I was landing heading east, so as my plane rolled past my position and beyond the east end of the orange fence, it veered right and went straight across the road, off the embankment and into the green depths of the ditch. It nosed in and flipped on its back, then began to drift downstream and towards the opposite bank. After sprinting about 20 yards toward my not-so-seaworthy SPAD, I realized I needed to get to the other side. So, I about faced and sprinted to the shed, shimmied my way across the narrow gangplank and then sprinted down the opposite bank to retrieve my newly christened submarine. All's well that ends well I suppose, the engine fired up after I removed the mud and drained the water. There is still a bit of moisture in the fuse and wing, but it should dry without any consequence; that's one nice thing about a SPAD.
This was my first visit to the club field since becoming a club member and receiving a key. I noticed the light tan colored modules on the front and back of the shed. They look like some sort of transponder, does anyone know what they do?
Hopefully my running, jumping, and swimming can be limited to when I'm at the gym, and not at the field. I've got to figure out some way to lock in my nose wheel and keep my prop from hitting while landing. The simulator doesn't seem to replicate these types of details, but I'm definitely sold on the efficacy of simulator training.