Flying: A Short Fun Practice Flight

Beautiful day today, but it was rather bumpy and gusty once airborne. A few clouds just above 3500 made 3000 all sorts of bumpy.

Runway 27R was closed today for FAA inspection of the work they had done on it, so had fun doing a taxi around to 27L.

With the wind gusting 16-20 out of 310-330 I decided to give KVLL a try rather than Flint since when 27 side is in use the examiner tends to do the exam with VLL as a destination.

So I got VFR flight following and headed to Troy,

Troy pattern was rather busy today with quite a few pleanes there, but everyone was paying attention and communicating, so it worked out well.  Of course while doing so I needed to avoid some traffic taking off so I stayed a tad high above the glideslope,  and then had to drop down quick before starting the circle.

Did the circle and stayed above minimums which was good, didn't overshoot the 100 foot maximum either which was pretty darn nice too.  Was pretty high on final due to the recommended late descent but I believe I could have landed if I wanted to, even with the rather unpleasant gusty situation and all that, but went missed and headed back to Pontiac.

Then for the Localizer BC 27L.  Got vectored in, all established and had to break off the approach due to a Citation jet overtaking me without any effort on their part. So, broke off and was vectored to fly out 360 degrees and got turned back in to 180 degrees to reestablish.  Heavy wind from 330 at that point made that turn a pain.

But got back in, established perfectly on the localizer and flew the approach using the NAV2 VOR with reverse sensing and did the procedures, and was nice and lined up with gusting winds.  Still I managed just about one of my best landings ever.

Then off at Juliet, crossed the closed 27R and parked the plane.

Not a bad way to end it.

Overall I felt some improvement.  I want to get the altitude a bit more under control, but at least it's getting closer to acceptable and within that 100 foot range.

Friday I'm trying to find a safety sucker pilot willing to tag along and if its good I might return to DCT to do the pre-pre-checkride ride ride.  We will see.

That's 1.0 solo, 2 practice non-logged approaches, and 1 excellent landing. Not bad for a lunchtime practice flight.