Flight 6 - Shake off the rust

8/19/09

Flight Hours: 1.5
Cumulative Hours: 6.7
Takeoffs: 4
Landing: 4

Plane: Cessna N1408F

Hard to believe that it's been almost one month since I last flew. Between being out of town and freak rain storms in Tucson, I had some rust to shake off. My pre-flight got off to a rocking start when the plane I was getting ready to fly had a dead battery. Seems like the person who last flew it left the master power switch on, thus completely draining the battery. Went back in and picked up a new set of keys and pre-flighted another plane.

Today, I had a slight crosswind and my instructor introduced cross wind take off procedures. I've got the takeoff thing down and was able to maintain good runway alignment after lift-off. We flew south to the practice area and worked on steep turns and slow flight. My instructor pulled out the simulated IFR goggles and had me fly .5 hours under simulated instrument conditions. All that Microsoft Flight Simulator work must have paid off because I had no issues with flying blind. I was able to make turns, maintain altitude and all of that.

We flew back to the Tucson airport and I made 4 landings. To my delight, each one got progressively better and the final one was all mine. On the previous 3 landings, my instructor had to provide some input correction right at touchdown, but not on the last one. You may recall that my previous attempts at landing were a disaster, especially the last one. Since time was getting short, we taxied back to parking and called it a day. My next flight is scheduled for Friday, but the weather may not cooperate. It may not rain much in the desert, but it sure seems to rain on my parade.