Today the weather was above my CFI’s minimums so we went up to practice more touch and go’s. The first trip around the pattern my CFI stayed quiet and let me do the flying, and I wound up focusing too much on holding altitude and let my airspeed get away from me. I was eventually too high and fast on final so I executed a go-around.
We continued working the pattern, both left and right hand traffic (the normal pattern for DXR is left hand, but we requested a right hand pattern from ATC so I could get some experience with it). I felt like some things were coming together and I was starting to get the hang of things. I’m still a far way from being able to fly this without coaching, but I’m getting closer.
We had a bit of excitement towards the end of the lesson when another plane suddenly floated into view from the right as we were on downwind. This guy totally cut us off, floated off to the left across our path of flight, then veered back to the right out of sight. I’m sure he wasn’t as close as it looked, but to my student eyes he seemed really close, definitely the closest I’ve seen any traffic while in flight!
My instructor was pretty pissed off… he took control of the plane until the traffic was clear and I asked him if I had done anything wrong. I couldn’t imagine he would’ve let me steer us somewhere we weren’t supposed to be, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t mess something up! No, he assured me, that other pilot was in the wrong. Just like driving, it is very important to always maintain situational awareness and keep an eye out for other pilots. Even if you do everything right, one idiot in the air can ruin your day real quick.
I logged a total of 7 takeoffs and 7 landings before heading back to the FBO and calling it a day.
Flight time today: 1.5 hours
Total flight time to date: 14.3 hours
Total takeoffs to date: 21
Total landings to date: 17