Some more solo time. 2/06/09

.9hrs solo time in the pattern.

The clouds have descended upon us again, and prevented my solo trip from Twin Oaks to McMinnville, but the ceiling was high enough at Twin Oaks to spend some time in the pattern, and the practice area to work on some turns around a point.

This was my first solo where I would not see my CFI at all. Really seemed like I was missing something... Kind of like having your t-shirt on backwards or something.

Given the weather, I planned to do about 5 trips around the pattern, and then would head a little east to practice some turns around a point. I felt surprisingly relaxed.

The pattern was all but empty, my first four landings were nice, the wind was right down the runway, and I thought one more and I'd head off to practice some turns around a point and S-turns across a road.

On the fifth trip around, I noticed that I now needed to correct for the wind the downwind, instead the crosswind. A little crosswind, this should be interesting... My crosswind training has been limited to only a few landings early in my training. When the weather has been nice enough to fly, there's been no wind.

The first with a crosswind landing ended relatively smoothly, considering. As I passed the windsock, it looked to be about a 45 degree crosswind, but not more than about 5 knots.

The sixth time around I noticed that I needed a bit more crosswind correction on downwind, and base went by a little fast. Final was a bit of struggle. I kept telling myself "left aileron to stop the drift, right rudder to stay aligned with the runway", and managed okay down to about the numbers. From there on I probably looked more like an intoxicated turkey landing. Not my worst landing, but not so good. As I passed the windsock , it was now 90 degrees to the runway, and filled out a little more.

I knew I was passed my skill level at this point, so I was time to taxi off and end for the day.

By the the time I'd wrapped everything up and headed for my car, the wind was back to a slight breeze directly down the runway, but I was done.

Boy, do my crosswind landing skills need work!