*** Today's (Monday) lesson material was nothing special; we did more taxi practice. Well, there was one first: we actually flew to ANOTHER ( HWD, across the Bay ) airport and landed there to do it. HWD is much bigger than PAO: the taxiways over there are wider than PAO's runway!
Weather was "interesting". Clouds, rain, wind - but still VFR. Wind was gusting up to 15 knots. We took off, I pointed the airplane over THIS WAY, but it flew THAT WAY :-). Then it started to rain - horizontally. The airplane bucked like a bronco. One especially interesting moment was during a turn, when the wind blew against the underside of the raised wing - made me feel like it was just going to blow us right over. Today would not be a good day for a demo flight :-).
At HWD, we taxied back & forth. Back & forth. Back & forth. The wind was so strong that at one point we were weathervaning to the right, even though I was holding full left rudder!
The last few ones were pretty good, he said. He'd been varying the throttle up & down so I'd have a varied job to do, keeping the airplane straight. Because the less power he fed in, the stronger the crosswind looked.
Then we asked for clearance to go home, did one high-speed taxi, and just took off at the end of it.
My neck hurts. I thought it was swollen glands or something, like getting sick; now I realize it's just sore muscles, from stretching and peering over the upraised cowl for an hour. Taxiing taildraggers is good for your posture!
It's a good thing I got my lesson in the morning, becuase later in the day, the winds picked up even more. Driving home, even my car got buffeted. I looked up, saw one cloud moving right, and the one behind it moving *left*. Can you say "wind shear"? According to the news, in some parts of California they had wind gusting up to 70 miles per hour. And up at Tahoe they'd had wind up to 145MPH!
- Jerry "14.4 Hours" Kaidor