After my last two crappy flights, I was determined to take control of my destiny and turn this ship around. I read up on landings, I assembled some tips I could put into action, and I tried to have a positive attitude for my next flight. Saturday was once again scrubbed for weather (this is becoming way too frequent!), so my last hope for the week was Sunday.
I wasn’t very hopeful — the forecast was calling for rain, but it looked like it might hold off for the morning. I went to bed early so I would be fully rested for my 8am flight and crossed my fingers as I drifted off to sleep.
I woke up and checked the ATIS — it looked a bit iffy…visibility was ok, wind wasn’t bad (~5kts), but the ceilings were pretty low…around 1,900ft with our pattern altitude at KDXR being 1,700ft. I headed out to the airport and got a weather briefing on the way — there was some rain heading into the area but the briefer thought it would hold off for awhile. As I got to the airport, I spied some nasty looking clouds and figured my CFI would say it was a no go. I snapped a couple of pictures at the airport that show how low the ceilings were:
To my surprise, we were going up! We didn’t have a lot of ceiling to spare, but it was enough for some laps around the pattern. I quickly preflighted the plane and we were off.
We were using runway 26, which I have the most experience with, so I was grateful for that. I took off and immediately knew today wouldn’t be an easy day (as my instructor calls it, a “pinky day”) — the air was bumpy and the winds were considerably faster once we left the ground.
We went around the pattern and I was determined to pay close attention to my ground track. I got a bit off course on the first downwind leg, but my instructor helped me correct and I was back on course. I wasn’t quite ahead of the plane but I wasn’t behind it either, and I was taking care of all my cockpit tasks (carb heat, flap settings, radio calls, etc…) I was also taking more care to trim the aircraft after each power change, something I’ve been neglecting lately.
We came in for the first landing and I was having trouble keeping it on centerline. I have this nagging instinct that tells me I have to land the plane wings level. In a crosswind, you just can’t do that. We drifted way to the right as we were touching down, but more importantly, I didn’t plant the plane into the runway! I remembered to shift my focus down the runway, level it off, and hold it, and the touchdown was nice and gentle! This gave me a confidence boost and we were up and around for another lap.
This time I focused on keeping aileron correction in and giving the plane plenty of rudder. Another thing I’m realizing is that keeping the plane on centerline results in a slightly different sight picture than I thought keeping the plane on centerline should be. Applying all of this resulted in another fairly smooth touchdown with the plane more or less where it should have been.
I had one lousy landing where I did drop us in a bit harder than needed, but overall I was pretty happy with my performance. On our last lap, the winds were changing direction quickly as we touched down and my instructor called it a day — I just don’t have enough crosswind experience to be able to handle rapidly changing gusts like that. He thought the productive part of the lesson had been learned and anything more would be frustrating and counterproductive…I agreed and was happy to end on a high note. It was a short flight, but my confidence (and my wallet) didn’t mind one bit.
Now, my success during this lesson is probably due to the fact that you land a bit flatter in crosswinds and aren’t flaring quite as much. Be that as it may, I was still really happy to have some decent landings under my belt. Definitely a pleasant change after the last two flights, and my CFI agreed that I showed good progress keeping the plane centered and handling the roundout and (mini) flare.
I didn’t use CloudAhoy on this flight because I wanted to focus 100% on my flying, so no track to look at for today. Looking forward to getting up there again soon and hopefully proving I am ready to solo!
Flight time today: 0.8 hours
Total simulated instrument flight time to date: 0.6 hours
Total flight time to date: 40.2 hours
Total takeoffs to date: 141
Total landings to date: 137