So, what happened? Well, after a rather uneventful flight from ENKJ to ENRK (Rakkestad, a small general aviation airport about 25 minutes south of Kjeller) we started practicing circuits as planned. I botched the first approach and performed a go-around, but as we reached pattern altitude and I pulled the throttle back to cruise power, the engine started to run rough. The instructor took over and landed, we performed some engine checks on the ground and then shut it down. The instructor called the technical manager of our flying club to discuss the issue.
(Initially we thought this was related to fuel contamination problems that had both our training aircraft grounded for two weeks, they were released for use
today and I though "fuck it, it's gonna be grounded for another two weeks"). But the tech man told my instructor to do a short test flight and so he did (I stayed on the ground and had a chat with a flight mechanic who was hanging around. This mechanic is the guy who is also servicing our aircraft ...)
After the instructor landed and concluded that the engine was performing well, he called again and we decided that we could go on with business as usual. As we prepared to start up again and continue the lesson, I happened to ask the name of this mechanic and realized he is a long time acquaintance of my father (from an R/C model flying club). He blamed the 25-30 years since last time for not recognizing me earlier
But we started up the aircraft, completed plenty of landings and headed back to ENKJ with one simulated emergency landing en route, and landed with the sun from behind. The sister aircraft landed five minutes later, we heard them several times both when we were both in contact with Oslo Approach and later on when reporting positions on the local frequency for ENKJ.
And while writing this, I have finished my beer. Good night!
