Flight hours: 1.5
Cumulative Hours: 5.2
Takeoffs: 4
Landings: 4
Plane: Cessna 172 N-1408F
Today was much of the same. I did all the preflight stuff, taxied to parking, did the run up and the takeoff. This time, I used more right rudder at lift off and my takeoff was perfect. I tracked the runway centerline during the climb out. We headed South to the practice area and worked on the 4 fundamentals, climbing/descending turns and steep turns. New to this session was gliding(pull the power back to idle and see how the airplane acts). The plane I'm flying has a 9 to 1 glide ratio, meaning that for every mile of altitude, you can glide 9 miles. We worked on finding a suitable place for landing if it was a real emergency. After that, Nick demonstrated slow flight. Slow flight is where you take the airplane right up to the stall speed, maintain that speed and do some shallow turns. Afterwards, you learn how to recover from slow flight. I did slow flight & turns with no issues except a little bit of white knuckle syndrome. Even though I knew the airplane would fly, it was a little disconcerting to hear the stall warning buzzing in my ear as I tried to fly the plane.
After we worked on these items, I flew us back to the airport, where the winds had shifted from our takeoff. The active runway switched and I had to set us up for that pattern. We called for clearance to work on touch/go's which is where you land and immediately set the plane back up to fly again. As I turned on to final for my first real landing, it was clear that the simulator was much easier. The wind had shifted again to a 90 degree angle to my landing heading. I had a hard time just getting the plane lined up on the runway center line due to the wind. Because of focusing so much attention on that, I was high during my approach and had a pretty hard landing. No issues came up with my takeoff and I entered the pattern for #2. This time, I lined up better and had better altitude/speed control. However, I still ended up sailing the plane up and down during the landing. It finally settled and I was off for takeoff #3.
I climbed back to the pattern altitude, ended up with a much better approach and actually had a relatively decent landing. Setup for takeoff #4 and off we went. Feeling quite confident by this point, I was sure I would nail this landing. All was going well until we were over the runway. I pulled the power and was waiting for the remaining altitude to bleed off. Mother Nature decided to take me down and notch and I experienced a nice 20-25 knot gust, 90 degrees to my right. My once stable airplane pitched up and over to the left. Thankfully my instructor was their, took control and sat the plane down. I taxied us to parking and was thankful to be getting out.
Nick said that his policy is to usually not put newer students in a situation with a 90 degree crosswind and that I handled it much better than I should have. He assured me that my next landings without a 90 degree crosswind will seem like a piece of cake after the ones I did. All I could think of was I sure hope so, because I think I saw my life flash before my eyes on landing #4.
Unfortunately I won't be able to fly for almost 2 weeks due to his time off and my being out of town for work. Hopefully I don't forget everything I've learned.
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