Flying Lesson #109 - Polishing Maneuvers

For this lesson the winds were 11-13 out of 290-300 so not a major crosswind.

However, instead of pattern work we headed out to the practice are and flew there by pilotage and looking at landmarks instead of any GPS or maps. I'm getting better at it.

Quite a few aircraft were in the practice area so we let them know we would be on the north end near Lapeer.

Then we got to dance around some clouds and then did slow flight, power off and power on stalls and steep turns. The slow flight was a pain this time and didn't feel great but was acceptable. Half the fun is keeping it slow but above the stall horn in the rather choppy conditions.

The steep turns still need some work but by the end of the lesson they were getting better. They just feel off in an Archer for some reason. We then climbed to 5,500 to get out of some chop and we above the clouds and did more steep turns and they came out ok, including hitting my wake on the last one which is a good thing.

Then we went down through a clear area to get under the clouds and did turns around a point. I did that very well - holding position relative to the point all around the circle even with the 13 knot wind pushing against me around the circle and did it all well within standards. Funny, it used to be my steep turns were much better than my turns around a point.

At the end of the lesson I didn't have much trouble figuring out how to get back to the airport though my initial instinct on where to turn was off a bit, not a big surprise considering all the turns and maneuvers we had made but my visual check of landmarks fixed it. After calling the tower I did a right base entry to runway 25R and did a forward slip to lose some altitude (we deliberately came in high as he wanted me to demonstrate a forward slip) then did a nice landing, touching down just as the stall horn went off, with a bit of crosswind correction as the wind had kicked to 13 at 300. Still keeping a little too much power into the landing that I need to quit doing, otherwise its ok.

Overall not bad.