11th Lesson

I had my 11th flight lesson today. Tammy and the kids followed me over to the airport to meet Jim and see the plane. I think the kids really enjoyed sitting in the plane and walking around with me helping me do the preflight inspection. We had a cold front move in from the north overnight, so the temps are back down around freezing today, and there is a strong low pressure system to the northeast, resulting in strong northerly winds, and overcast cloud ceiling at about 2500 AGL. Winds were out of 320-340 at around 15kt gusting to 20kt. This was the most wind I've flown in yet, and as I suspected, Jim would take this opportunity to work some ground reference maneuvers. Jim had me make all the CTAF calls on the radio today. We took off on runway 31, which went well, and headed out east to fly a rectangular course, circles around a point, and s-turns. I found I needed a fair amount of crab today, but I did a pretty good job with all of the maneuvers. I had a couple of altitude/speed busts on the s-turns, but I was able to maintain pretty consistent ground courses. Then, we headed back to the Forest Lake airport to practice more takeoffs and landings. Jim had me handle all the approach decisions, and on my first approach, I turned to my downwind leg too close to the runway, and I had to do a go-around. The next approach was a better pattern, and we practiced 5 landings. It really started to click today, and each landing got better. The last landing was clearly my best to date - a nice smooth, gentle touchdown right over the center of the runway. It was a great high note to end the lesson on. We went back and filled her up and put her back in the hangar. After Jim filled out my log book, he gave me a copy of the rental agreement, and my pre-solo knowledge test he wants me to work on. I'm sensing my first solo is probably getting close...

Next lesson is tomorrow afternoon, but I'm probably gonna get short-changed next week because Jim is having his roof redone, and the only lesson we have scheduled is for next Friday.