I was back at the airport today for another flight. If yesterday found me leaving the airport with a sense of accomplishment, today was the opposite.
The plan was to stay in the pattern at DXR and practice pattern work and landings again. Unlike yesterday, today there was a bit of wind that had to be compensated for. When you are dealing with wind, your heading has to be adjusted to compensate so you keep a straight ground track. This is especially important in busy airspace like an airport pattern, where not being where others expect you to be can create a very dangerous situation.
From the first takeoff, I felt like I was behind the plane the entire time. I was banking my turns too much for the wind, so my turns wound up being too early or too late. I had trouble keeping the nose on the right point during final — my instructor tries to help me out by giving me visual cues, but I think his sight picture is a bit different than mine so they aren’t helping very much. I’m just going to have to get used to my own visual references. This is one reason using a consistent seat position is important — you don’t want the sight picture changing every time you fly. Luckily, I find the best seat position is fully-raised and as far forward as it will go — this makes it easy to adjust things to be the same for each flight.
We were also doing touch and go’s today, so it was a pretty intense, rapid fire lesson. If my instructor saw I was getting overwhelmed we would do a full stop to give me a chance to collect myself. We also practiced some go-arounds and even a simulated engine-out landing where my instructor killed the throttle while we were on base and I had to glide into an approach to the runway (I actually think this was my best landing of the day!)
We logged six takeoffs and landings before returning to the ramp and shutting down. My instructor told me not to worry, that this takes practice and it will come in time, but I still left the airport feeling very melancholy. In hindsight, my flying wasn’t as bad as I felt it was at the time, but it was incredibly frustrating to keep forgetting when to do certain steps, to keep messing my turns up, and to feel like I was letting my instructor down.
On a positive note, this flight filled up the first page of my logbook!
Flight time today: 1.5 hours
Total flight time to date: 12.8 hours
Total takeoffs to date: 14
Total landings to date: 10