Revelation!

Date: 07.Jul.2017
Flight Number: 20
Flight Hours: 1.2
Solo Hours: 0.0
Instructor Hours: 1.6
Landings: 9
Solo Landings: 0

What we did today:

• We had some nice cross-winds and gusts today so we did landings.
• We worked on the overall landing flow; crab into the wind until entering ground effect (10' above the runway), drop the upwind wing down to turn into the wind and opposite rudder to align with the runway, touchdown on the upwind wheel, downwind wheel down, nose down.
• Discuss the future. Seems I should be cleared to do flights in the practice area solo soon and we're going to take one of the bad weather days to do a two hour cross country planning session. Dang...I'm actually closing in on a check ride!

What went well:

• Today, the clouds parted, the sun shown down from heaven, Zeus Gibbs slapped my head, and the angels sang. I'm short. Because I'm short, I can't see the actual front of the plane; what I see is the instrument panel and the top of the glare shield. Because of my view, if the plane is lined up straight on the runway, I feel like the nose is pointed to the right. Because of that, when I'm doing landings, I tend to have the plane pointed left which leads to side loads on the gear. Today during one of our landings, I shifted in my seat and happened to catch a glimpse of the front of the plane. Holy CRAP...lookie, i can tell which direction the nose is pointed. I forced myself to sit taller in the seat and every landing after that was better. First thing I did after completing the lesson was go buy a seat cushion.
• I definitely have a better grasp of the whole landing thing, now I just need to get it more consistent.
• I think I manged my altitude better this flight. I have a tendency to balloon up when I turn downwind and I think I managed to stay closer to 2300' today. We had to drop altitude below pattern in order to stay below some clouds so that'll affect the track log analysis but I'm mainly trying to see that I didn't bump up to 2400' (or even 2500'). <addendum> Just looked at the KML file and altitude management was more consistent today. Still ballooning up after turns but I am getting ahead of the problem so...better!
• Winds and gusts. Today was a bumpy ride. Lots of thunderstorms just north of us and we had winds from everywhere. Cross winds were, in fact, outside of my allowed limits but, because I was with my CFI, we flew. Luckily, I didn't get hit with anything from behind while on final today. It's still a bit unnerving to be shoved around as you're approaching the ground. The Skycatcher is wicked light and takes the brunt of whatever hits it. The good news is that I never felt out of control today.

What didn't go so well:

• I felt better in the pattern even with the winds pushing me around quite a bit. Looking at the track log, meh...still not at right angles on crosswind and still drifting toward the runway on downwind.

What I need to work on:

• Every landing better than the one before.
• Every pattern better than the one before.
• Radio calls. This time I got the 'two nine' thing down but blew one turn call (called base when I was on downwind) and mis-identified a runway I'd cleared after landing.

Prep for next flight:

• Cross country ground school. I spoke to Rick today and it seems that cross country flights can start any time now. I have two lessons I need to complete before Monday's flight.