Windy Windy Windy

Another windy day. My instructor is beginning to vocalize his observations of my knack of picking not just windy days, but straight-out sideways crosswinds of 15 knots or so. (Honestly, it's not on purpose). One must also realize that due to T.I.'s workload (he doesn't even know how many students he has right now), it is rare that he remembers what we did on the prior lesson (true of most of his students, so he says). So, when it stands out that I tend to be the one who attracts the crosswinds, that's saying something...what it's saying, I don't want to know. But all in all, I have to say it's good practice, but it does get old after a while.

With the wind (and the bumps) that go along with the leading edge of a low pressure cold front, we ventured out, and as soon as we were near the edge of the airspace, I donned the hood (no Foggles today) for a good 30 minutes of bouncy, wind-corrected course-and altitude-holding maneuvers. For the record, I have read up on practicing without the attitude indicator (the gyroscopic "artificial horizon) in order to be ready if (when) it happens to fail. I think I would have been all over the sky if that had been on the agenda today. It was hard enough to watch speed, altitude, heading, course, and maintain some rough idea of "up" -- but on top of that was more fiddling with the GPS, VOR, and switching courses -- all while bouncing around in a 40-mph wind aloft. Yeehaw. My little tag that says "hood on" should have probably said "hold on".

When it was all done (which seemed like a full hour), I actually had managed to keep it together, and I don't think we were ever inverted...

After we were back in VFR conditions, we played with the wind a bit, and did a turn around a point. The two groundspeed extremes were 98 mph to 156 mph. Wheee. But I stuck it pretty well, and I made a nearly perfect circle. Then it was back to the pattern, for some "interesting" landings in the wind.

If you look closely, you can see that my steep turn entry and exit is oriented almost exactly perpendicular to the runway, about 8 miles away. Yeah, it was like that all the way down, too. I'd like to say that my wide turn into the straight-in approach was due to the wind...no, I just couldn't find the runway...

In we came, nearly sideways, and as we came over the runway, the gusts were, shall we say, "noticeable"? The first landing was a bit wonky, and I just about got blown off the runway, but away we went, for another go. We made left traffic first, and I was turned about 15 degrees into the wind, which you can see was maybe a bit much, but manageable. The left turns (into the wind on base) also made the plane easier to line up on the runway. Never mind, though, because it got away from me in the flare, and I drifted too far over - Go Around

Up we went, this time making right traffic to allow another plane into the pattern. Now, I was really asking for it. My turn toward the runway would be greatly accelerated by the wind, and so we angled out a bit from the field. While not apparent on the track, I was banked as far over as I felt safe doing, a bit low, and with the runway quickly approaching. I was probably barely a thousand feet out as I finally got lined up, and I was almost ready to abandon the approach, but it came together, and the wind allowed me to get down fairly gracefully, considering the alternative.

One more time around, this time for a landing a bit more into the wind, but on a significantly shorter and narrower runway, with no VASI to guide the approach. Still, even with a bit of crosswind (now more like a couple of knots rather than a bunch) I managed to stick it pretty well, and it ended up being a good day.

One of these days, I might solo again...