Flying Lesson #20 - Landings At Livingston

So this morning's flight lesson began with IFR weather at Pontiac due to low ceilings and fog that turned in marginal VFR as we were taking off.

We headed west towards Livingston airfield to go somewhere different and get more practice at pilot controlled fields and some naviguessing along the way. We did have to go off course as requested by Pontiac control for a bit to get out of the way of a King Air coming in IFR to Pontiac, but once that was done we settled back on course.

Overall naviguessing was easy - just follow highway M59 west until you see the airport.

Of course, Sean then asked me where I was at a certain point, so I had to say in an airplane.

The ground reference he pointed to was of course at the fold of the map which made it fun to find. I need to work on navigation some more.

Livingston has its own AWOS station so I turned that in on COM 2 and listened to the report. Based on the winds we would be using runway 13. It was a bit of a pain figuring out where I had to go to line up for the downwind for 13 based on where I was, but I got it entered the pattern and announced my presence.

I then did a touch and go which had a bit of a lousy setup due to being disoriented as to where the fargin' runway was during the pattern so it was an ok landing but nothing great.

Then for the second pattern which was better, when I had announced on final and was set for what promised to be a darn good landing, a twin Cessna came in IFR announcing that he was on final and that he didn't have us in sight. Discretion being the best part of noise abatement, we did a go-around to get out of his way. Since he was clearly behind us and faster it made sense to get out of his way and avoid any issues. Then we did three more landings and overall they weren't great but ok.

Then we headed back to Pontiac and the controller originally put us on 27L, changing us to 27R when we were abeam of the tower with a left pattern which was kinda weird but I did it and landed ok even though my final approach was kinda low and from too far out. Taxi on back and done.

I need to fly more of a stabilized approach, not get behind the aircraft, and make very tiny adjustments on final. This is all easier typed than done.

At least my flares are getting better, and my takeoffs are still excellent so I've got that going for me.

That's 1.4 more hours and 5 more landings, and now contemplating collecting bottle caps.