Lesson #13 The Circuit IV

Another breezy day in the circuit, what's a student pilot got to do to get a calm day around here?

The wind at the beginning of the lesson was 11 kts, 10 degrees off runway's heading, by the end of my lesson it was 50 degrees of the runway's heading -to our right, at a constant 12-15 kts.

This lesson actually went pretty well, the wind made us crab a bit on final but it wasn't too bad until until the last couple of landings. This lesson was good practise and most of the landings were made without any assistance from Dave -- four nice ones. I'm still making some little mistakes here and there, nothing critical, just forgetting the occasional call to tower.

I don't know what it is with my last landing of the day, but I always find a way to mess it up. It certainly didn't help that the wind had shifted around to our right and cause us to crab pretty good. Dave showed me one way to correct for this, it was by using the rudder to keep us straight with the runway and then use the ailerons to keeps us from turning... this is also known as a forward slip.

I did this during the last part of final but it, surprise... surprise... increased my glide-slope as it enduces additional drag on the aircraft. (Actually this meneuvor is also commonly used to scrub off altitude without increasing ones forward speed). Correcting for the crosswind using the forward slip caused my sinkrate to be too high and I had to get on the power late, Dave helped out with the controls.

Watching me mess up my last landing of the day, (Dave had pointed out the fact that I'd have an audience for this landing earlier to me as we turned final), were a couple of pilots and about half the passengers of a regional jet, which was holding on the Alpha taxiway for 03. Just great...

The winds have now become my enemy... and my flight instructor gets a kick out watching me crumble under pressure...