Thursday was a bust. By the time I got to the club there was a nice black cloud just to the north of the airport. Brad said flying was a no go, so we did a ground briefing on safety procedures (fires, etc) instead.
I did go flying on Friday though. It was quite a bit more breezy than it was on Wednesday. Things didn’t go quite as smoothly, but I still managed to land the plane quite a few times. No overshoots this time.
Had an ‘interesting’ landing. Was coming in ok, but just before we touched down the plane kind of twisted on me and we came down on one of the main wheels and kind of bounced. At this point Brad says, “I’ve got control” followed by “I’ve got control!”. He gave her full power and took off right away so we didn’t touch down again. He asked me if I was scared, but to be honest I wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t a good thing, what was happening, but I didn’t think it was life threatening or anything. Perhaps ignorance is bliss. :)
Anyways, just like on Wednesday, my last landing of the day was my best landing, which is nice. I mentioned that the winds were quite a bit stronger, specifically they were 10 KTs gusting to 20KTs, but they were still pretty much coming right down the pipe.
I’m kind of anxious about crosswind landings. I haven’t had much luck with them so far but I guess it’s all about experience so the sooner I get up there and start doing more, the better.
No flying today, weather was kind of iffy for my 9:30 booking. I’ve taken the time to study up for the PSTAR exam. I told Brad that I would write it tomorrow. After that, I’ve got a booking at 1400. Assuming I pass the PSTAR I should be in a pretty good mood for the flight.
http://www.buteoskyservice.ca offers an on-line version of the PSTAR Exam that you can practice over and over. It’s completely interactive and will save you loads of time trying to find the correct answers. It was free for a while but I think there’s a small fee now that they’ve upgrade the site. Good luck on the exam and the crosswind landings!
I’ll check that site out, although I’ve already written the PSTAR and got 100% on it. :) Kind of hard not to when you know the questions before you write the test.
You know, the more I think about it, the more I’m not sure that having immediate access to the answers is necessarily a good thing. It could lead to people just memorizing the answers rather than understanding the question. I really think that the time I spent looking up the answers was time well spent. Just my opinion.
As for the crosswind landings, as I mentioned in a more recent post, I think I’ve got them figured out. Now it’s just one more booking with an instructor to get signed off on Stalls, Spins and Spirals and I think I’ll be solo in the circuit! Yee Haw!