There was an opening today at lunch at the flight school so I took it to get some landings in and try to reverse the negative performance from yesterday.
Conditions were marginal VFR with overcast at 1,900 feet and a 9 knot crosswind from 300.
We were flying from 27R and the tower had us do consistent right patterns.
I was teamed up with Will as a flight instructor for today. I did the pre-flight and all looked good on N73455.
We had a little sprinkle of rain that cleared up. We got clearance to taxi and then to takeoff.
My first takeoff was just right, and I'm getting better applying more right rudder than I think I need.
The wind from the right was pushing us toward the airport pretty consistently. We were actually crabbed into the wind and flying sideways at times on the climb out to maintain the runway heading, which was kinda fun. I also needed to then crab away from the airport on the downwind
My landings on this day were excellent. I did much better patterns and had much better control and was a lot smoother, although all my finals were consistently high but that beats being consistently low.
Today the flares were right on and quite a few of the landings were greasers. I remembered to look to the side during the landing, fly the plane all the way down, and everything was clicking nicely.
Crosswind landings were fun - I had to have right aileron and left rudder in at landing to counter the wind, and we landed with the right main wheel typically touching first, then on the touch and goes I had to keep the right aileron in on the takeoff roll and level out during the climb.
Will was impressed with my landings in a crosswind and aside from some guidance and confirmation he stated I was doing all the work on my own.
He also had me do two go-arounds not due to a bad landing setup on my part but because he wanted to make sure I knew how to do them and would not hesitate to do a go-round if necessary. The go rounds were fun and they re pretty easy to do and he liked how I did them, so all was well.
Will also demonstrated a simulated loss of engine on the downwind and a tightened base to make the runway if that occurs. It's a maneuver you need to have down for you Commercial Pilot's license but he wanted to show me it can be done now.
If the weather holds there will be a lesson tomorrow and I'm going to work to make the landings even better.
That's 1.5 more hours and 14 landings.
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