Wind Practice

Today was a gusty day, with the threat of thunderstorms, or at least a bit of rain. On the deck, it was about 68, and the wind was just a 'breezy' 10-15 knots. Since it was a bit of a crosswind, but strong enough to get some good practice with ground reference, that's what we did. The solo would have to wait.

Takeoff was smooth, but there were some decent gusts that bounced us around a bit. We climbed up and went into the practice area for some turns around a point and some S-turns along a road (or irrigation ditch as the case may be). The picture of the track shows the first, rather egg-shaped turn while I figured out just what the wind was doing. Our ground speed varied from just over 90 mph to about 145 mph from the upwind to downwind sides. Once I could see the magnitude of the drift, my next two go arounds weren't too bad. The speed differential indicates that the wind was blowing about 25-30 mph.

So, on to the S-turns. Remembering that the first shot I had at these was with very little wind, I wasn't prepared (well, I was, but that didn't mean I handled the turns right). So, I fell into the common error of making the first 180 degrees about right, since I was turning into the wind. The second turn back to the right drifted lazily over the line and I just barely got the plane lined up on the roll-out of the bank. With one down, I tried another, with much better results. The key is to keep the turn very, very shallow (like 5-7 degrees) until you're ready to turn back to the line.

Then we did some steep turns. I struggled a bit with these, likely because it's been so long since I did them. But I learned to trim just before entering the turn at about 2200 rpm, then add power up to 2400 as I entered the bank. By trimming a bit nose up as you make the first 90 degrees of the turn, the plane will very nearly continue in a 45-degree bank hands-off. It just took one demonstration by T.I. to show me that I was fighting the plane too much. The last one turned out nearly perfect, but I still have trouble getting to and staying at a full 45 degrees. With the added wind, it felt like we were almost standing still on one leg of it.

It was time to land (again) and we made a few touch-and-go's in the gusty conditions. We did these with partial flaps, which was fairly new. I think I did one a couple of lessons ago, and I remember floating way down the runway. This time, with the wind, it wasn't as bad, but it does take a while to bleed off the speed. T.I. says that with full flaps in this plane, it tends to float and balloon. Maybe, but it seemed like I did that anyway.

I'm holding out hope that I'll get to solo on the first page of my logbook. Getting there.