Finally Getting It

After a close call with the weather, I finally got a chance to go flying on Sunday afternoon. Saturday was beautiful but I had a date with a hedge trimmer and a tree trimmer. We started by doing the same thing, flying the pattern and doing touch and goes. Since runway 17 uses a left traffic pattern, I like to call it aerobatic NASCAR. The takeoffs have become fairly routine and the climb out too. Where I have been having problems is keeping the plane centered on the runway during the landing phase. I have been setting up properly but as I get closer to the runway, I would start drifting and fight to control it. I finally settled down and started making my landings on the center stripe. If I could just get everything to tome together the next time I go up (which won't be for a while), I may be ready for the next phase of training, which means not as much NASCAR.

I did get to do something different this time. During the climb out phase we had a big jet coming in on the downwind side of the airport so I was asked to make right traffic. So we did the usual climb to 1000 feet and made our right turn towards town and another right over Highway 5 to go north. We were cleared number 2 behind the large jet when I heard the tower say "Caution for wake turbulence." I remembered from my ground school that with wake turbulence you want to stay above the path and touchdown beyond his touchdown point because the vortex sinks. Which means that you never want to take a path below the path taken by the large airplane and you never want to touch down short of where he landed. So we extended our downwind leg way past where we normally turn for base and stayed higher than normal, even when we turned for a long final. I kept the plane higher than normal because I wanted to land past where he did. And that's what we did.

All in all, I had a very good day and I made progress in the one area that I have been fretting about excessively. I just wished I had more time to fly but the weather made us start late and Richard had another student behind me so I wasn't able to extend my time any more.

Total flying this time - 1.0 hours
Total hours - 9.2
(One other Item: Total landings to date - 77)