now with cross-winds

Today was a bit of a surprise. First of all, the extended forecasts on DUATS were predicting IFR due to rain, mist, and low ceilings. But I kept following it, and -- surprise! -- blue skies with just a bit of scud off to the north by an hour before flight time. New England is like that.

I flew with another instructor this time, Shaun. There was some sort of mix-up about the scheduling; I'm not too sure what happened, and I was beat after last week's adventure, so it could well be my fault. This turned out to be a good thing, though. Shaun and Tim (my regular instructor) teach in different ways, so I picked up some more hints about holding my heading and my ground track, and I think I'm better for it.

Winds were a pretty consistent 270 at 10kts or so, and that gives me around 6kts crosswind on runway 23 (233.2). It might have increased a bit as we were up there.

One of the challenges turned out to be that my base leg ended up too short. The tower put me into right traffic (so he could keep track of me visually), and that meant the wind was blowing me towards the field, and shortening my base, and thus (with too little distance to descend) I came in too high. Once the instructor explained that, I figured out how to crab into the wind on the downwind, and I got a bit better at holding the descent. The last two were right on the glide slope.

Unlike Tim, he had me hold the plane about 6 feet off the ground (rather than touching down) and go down the runway before taking off again. I got a good feel for how to control the pitch and obviously saved some wear-and-tear on the gear. It takes a lot less power control than I'd guessed to affect my altitude.

Another challenge was that with the storms moving through, there was some turbulence on final. A couple of times, I found myself in unusual attitudes and not really headed towards what one might technically call a "runway" -- more like "the grass." Good thing this is all slow speed in the 172!

I'm set up for a more regular lesson next time, and it'll probably be yet more of the landing practice. At least I feel now like I'm getting better at it.

Posted at 11:19AM Sep 28, 2007 by carlson in Aviation  |  Comments[2]