The Easter Bunny

I used to forget which day the easter bunny brought the eggs, when your children are very little that's not a big deal, but as they get older it's not a good idea to get caught out. When they got to around 4 or so, Walter and I used to hide the eggs and make little bunnypaw tracks from the front door with flour.(Note: this only works if you do it early in the morning - otherwise the dew makes them congeal into nondescript white blobs of paper glue). But a memorable Easter Sunday a few years back when I was still flying changed all that.

My instructor checked me out for a solo circuit at Lanseria and I set off stoksielalleen* to practise landings and take-offs. He then rushed off with Walter - I had arranged an intro flight for his birthday, so he was in the general flying area quite far away from the airport.
Things were going well until around the 3rd circuit. I was halfway back (in the downwind leg) when I had a thought: "what if I can't land?" Instant freeze, cold fear. I tried to rationalise. Clearly I could land - they are quite fussy about this - I'd done it many, many times before. It wasn't working. What to do?

This was a big problem. Lanseria is a busy airport with scheduled flights coming and going all the time so you need to have your wits about you. I was planning on extending the downwind leg to get my act together but the tower was having none of that; a jet was approaching so I needed to get down. (Jets are faster than Cessnas, you don't need much science to understand what will happen if you take your time) So I turned onto the base leg and prepared myself for finals. At this stage I was acutely aware of my heart hammering away in my ears, much faster than it should be and took a few deep breaths to try and calm myself and mentally ran through the procedures.

(These are pictures of my friend Margie, on finals here, we learned to fly together - sometimes I rode shotgun)

The thing about landing is, you need to slow down, descend, then gently "stall" the aircraft just above the runway so it touches down in a way that doesn't a) kill you, b) damage the aircraft or c) loosen the fillings in your teeth. The theory is fairly simple: change the angle of attack of the wings to cancel out lift when you're just about to touch down. The problem was that I was overthinking and the more I tried to calm myself, the more I overthought.
I hit the runway hard, with too much speed - which resulted in "hopping" down the runway. I bounced. High. Once, twice, three times. This is very dangerous - and often has a really bad outcome. It felt like forever, I just couldn't get the plane to stick. Fortunately for me the hours of training took over, I remembered the instructor telling me what to do if this happened.  I took control again by getting back up into the sky and flew the circuit exactly how it's meant to be done. I nailed the landing too; but decided to taxi back to the hangar rather than risking more bounces. The tower checked I was OK then thanked me for the "Easter bunny display" and asked me to drop in when I was done - with easter eggs.
So now I remember the eggs are for Sunday and you shouldn't buy them from the airport gift store; they are always more expensive there.

 Happier days - post Easter Bunny display, before grounding (on medical grounds).

*Stoksielalleen - all by myself