Flying Lesson #111 - Steep Turns, Crosswinds and Patterns

Finally the overcast cleared, the rain ceased and this almost forgotten ball in the sky came out, just in time for my lesson.

I did the pre-flight by myself and then did an excellent start and run up flow. I've now gotten used to the idea of doing the flow first and then checking off the checklist rather than going through the checklist and doing the run-up actions line by line.

We then headed to the practice area and did maneuvers - slow flight, power off stalls, power on stalls (I still need to really yank it back to force a stall on the power on stalls) and steep turns. We worked a lot on the steep turns as on the left steep turn I kept losing 200+ feet of altitude which is unsatisfactory. By the time we were done I had it to losing only 40-80 feet which is within spec. Lot of it is where I'm looking, some of it is it still looks and fees different from what I'm used to but its getting better.

Then we headed back and did some pattern work with go-rounds. The wind was a direct 10-15 knot crosswind form 360 and we were either on 27L or 27R depending on traffic and it was getting busy. We would get almost to touchdown and then go around. I worked on the power and pitch feel and again the instruments were all covered.

It kept getting all sorts of busy with lots and lots of traffic so much so that on the last pattern they went dual towers.

It was so busy that on the last one we got an extended out downwind of about 6 miles to get a learjet in and some planes off before getting to come back in. This time I had everything lined up great, a nice crosswind correction micked in and came in for a beautiful landing, did a great roundout....and a gust of wind bounced us up. I held things in place and let it come back down without over-reacting and still made a damn nice landing which Ray said I did great on.

Ray said I'm coming along well and if I get this pitch power down andthe steep turns cleaned up a bit more he'll send me on the stage check so that I can then get checked off to solo. That's some progress towards getitng where I really should have already been anyways.

1.4 and one landing.