Finally...
It has been over a month since my last lesson. A very frustrating month. A month which saw lessons canceled because of medical issues (the first week after my eye surgery), scheduling issues (other people having the plane rented), maintenance issues (the aircraft was in for it's regular 100 hour maintenance for 5 days), and weather (either too windy or IFR conditions prevailed). Finally, the stars aligned and I was able to fly.
That isn't to say that I did not learn anything during that month. On the contrary, I have been taking a ground school class to help with passing the FAA written test, I have also attended some club functions that involved learning about landing and weather and other important topics. Finally, even when your CFI cancel a lesson due to weather, you're learning something... that is, you're being taught good decision making with regard to when it's safe to fly and when it isn't.
Anyway, we started out doing landings and had a pretty good crosswind going. There was, however, a twist. we had a passenger in the back seat along for the ride who was getting a demo flight. This changed the CG (center of gravity) in the plane enough to make landing different. Pulling back on the yoke cause the nose to go up much more easily than when it's just me and my instructor, so when I came down and started my flare, I tended to float up a bit and travel further down the runway than I wanted to. Eventually, I started made several good landings in a row and we went off and did some turns about a point and some a couple of stalls (both power on stalls and power off stalls). After that, we returned for my finally landing, which, after several good landings earlier, I royally screwed up.... I didn't carry enough power on final approach and dropped down too much then over corrected in trying to make the runway and my instructor had to help me. It was a disappointing way to end the lesson, but I learned something from it... these sorts of experiences get stored in your memory so that you remember them and don't repeat the problem. Overall, the lesson served its purpose, I was able to shake a lot of rust off and get used to being in the left seat again.
Next lesson: Wednesday, February 20.
Time logged this lesson: 1.2 hrs
Total Time: 14.4 hrs
