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Jerry's 49th LessonThe last lesson had been plagued with really squirelly winds. So we'd planned this one a bit later: 11:30 in the morning "when the winds will have stabilized". Hah. It was one of those days when you can get a sunburn and never see the sun. I'd brought a camera, and even though the sky was overcast, the exposure meter was right off the scale. Wind was reported as "variable 220@10 with low-level shear advisory". The runway of the day was 12, the one with no VASI. We took off with a bit of a tailwind. The airplane was really reluctant to take off. I didn't push it, and saw the prop eat up half the runway before the nose pulled up. It was definitely one of those days where you aim the airplane HERE, but it goes THERE. Upwind was especially "interesting", nose way up in the air, slogging up at Vy, with that variable wind bouncing us here and there over the sloughs. There's something about a way-nose-high attitude that just makes me nervous... must be the stall training :-). The first time, a strong prevailing wind blew me way out over the bay on the crosswind leg. Oops. On the plus side, we literally had the pattern to ourselves. During the whole lesson, there was maybe one departure and two or three arrivals. Judging glideslope remains a problem. Remember, there's no VASI! I kept remembering the advice in Stick and Rudder: to consider slope as an angle under the horizon, to figure out where the airplane is going: the bit of runway that's not moving up or down in the windshield... to try to figure it out while there's still time to handle it gracefully :-). The wind was high enough that I had to crab down on approach, then decrab it and slip into the flare. Crabbing was easy; decrabbing, and slipping, without a whole lot of approach time to set up the slip, was harder. One time I brought it in way to low. Instead of just trundling the A/C up to the glideslope at low altitude, I decided to do a definite climb up to it. It's easy to overshoot and get high when you do that! When I asked him to show me a good one, he slipped it in, came in too low, and added power to dog it over the berm :-). Towards the end of the lesson, my landings got better. I nailed the very last one just right. Finally got the hang of slipping *right* into the wind ( three 300+ landings at HWD all had the wind from the *left*. ) Also, it was a direct crosswind of about 10 knots. I'm going to be out of town for three weeks and will probably be unable to fly during that time. So if there's no noise from me, rest assured that I haven't given up. Maybe a rest will let stuff congeal in my miserable excuse for a brain :-). - Jerry Kaidor |