A Little Touch Up

I have been trying to make the second part of my cross country happen for about 2 weeks now. It looks like I have to wait again for a shot. Our weather here has been so wacky that it is hard to plan anything more than a couple of days out and even that is a big risk. I had scheduled this coming Sunday (Feb 17) for my next attempt. Unfortunately I have to fly this on a weekend because that job thing gets in the way. Now it looks like Sunday is going to be a wash because of the weather.

With that in mind, I also need a little brush up on cross wind landings (can you ever get enough?). So as a birthday present to myself, I went up for an afternoon of flying the pattern. I had just enough wind and direction to make for a nice little crab to stay tracking the runway on my final. My first landing was a little off the centerline but very smooth. It was funny to hear Richard tell me that I was off center but smooth. My next one was a little off too but just as smooth then I finally got into the swing. I could tell Richard was getting bored when he asks me what are we going to do next. I did get a lot of challenges thrown at me because we had such a busy pattern that day which made every one of my approaches different and unique. I got to make right hand traffic, extend my downwind leg for instrument traffic, land behind a departing Citation (caution wake turbulence) and even get vectored because I couldn't see traffic because of the sun. Finally, during one of our last passes, Richard just pulled power and said "You just lost your engine. Put it down." I had plenty of altitude and was close enough to the airport that I just put the airplane into it's best glide speed, made a very high approach, added flaps and put it down just past the numbers. I was feeling better about landings that I have felt in a long time but I only spent .6 hours flying today (it's still better than no flying).

After getting finished, I deviated from my normal post flight because I didn't do my normal pre flight. When I got to the airport, I was late but so was the guy who had the plane before me. When I got there and walked out to the ramp he left the keys in for me. So I didn't have to go to the key locker or remove the gust lock from the yoke. This screwed up my post flight because I didn't replace the gust lock and about an hour later I discovered I had the keys to the airplane in my pocket. So before we went out for the usual family birthday tradition, I had to go back to the airport, replace the gusset lock and put the keys back in the key locker. Happy birthday to me.

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