I cancelled yesterday’s lesson because the weather was terrible — heavy rain and low overcast ceilings. Plus, it was April Fool’s Day!
Most of the clouds were blown out overnight and it was a bright, clear day out. High ceilings and good visibility. However, it was windy — not crazy windy, but enough that I knew I wouldn’t be soloing today.
I got to the airport and my CFI decided we’d head up and do a bit more practice. As I was preflighting I caught this pic of a cool helicopter being moved out of the hangar. I’d love to fly one of these some day!
Today’s lesson was good — I had a few hiccups in the pattern but nothing too bad. My flares are getting better and better, I had a couple today that felt great. Then I had one where I flared way too high, as if I was doing a full stall landing, which is a no-no on a windy day. We had another simulated engine out and I got the plane down safely.
I paid much more attention to wind direction today — I was putting the proper wind correction in during taxi and takeoff, and I was mindful to crab into the wind around the pattern. Still not perfect, as my crab angles weren’t quite right, but at least the concept is starting to stick. However, I’m still not putting in the proper wind correction after landing — they say you have to keep flying the plane after touching down, and I’m so focused on getting on the ground that I relax and forget that I’m not done yet!
We got a bunch of crosswind landing practice in and it felt easier than last time… it wasn’t much of a crosswind, but I still feel like the experience was helpful and I’m getting more comfortable flying in windy conditions instead of crossing my fingers for a dead calm day every lesson.
My CFI wrote all of my solo endorsements in my logbook — they aren’t signed yet, that will happen in the plane once we get an appropriate weather day. So, literally the only thing standing in my way now is Mother Nature! It’s too early in the week to get an idea of what next weekend will look like, but with a little luck I’ll have a big milestone under my belt.
Oh, and I (once again) forgot to turn on CloudAhoy today, so no track for this flight.
Flight time today: 1.3 hours
Total flight time to date: 36.2 hours
Total takeoffs to date: 124
Total landings to date: 120