Today's weather was great! We had relatively calm winds, and not a cloud in the sky. I did my first radio call today and didn't mess it up. We stayed in the pattern the whole time and I got some great practice in on my landings. My landings were about 50% ok and 50% good. Nothing great nothing too terribly bad. Well I take that back on my 12th landing I nailed it, it was just about perfect.
Flying the pattern starts with taking off, today we used runway 22 and stayed in a left hand pattern the whole time. We climb at least 500 feet before making our turn on to the cross wind leg. Since the airport is at 900'ASL that means we're turning at around 1400'ASL. Today, since it was so nice, was a little different. We had some traffic to deal with so as it turned out we were turning at around 1500' to 1550'. The pattern altitude for this airport is 1700' ASL so by the time I was at the cross wind turn I was almost at pattern altitude. The biggest thing I learned today was that once we were over the runway and I started to pull the nose up was to let the plane settle on it's own and not to let the nose drop once it was up. Two very big lessons that I think I finally got a grasp of by my last two landings.
Be smooth and don't jerk the controls.
8.1 hours in!! Another lesson or two and Mike say's I'll be ready to solo! We'll work on using the radio and I'll take a pre-solo written test and I'll be good to solo!
(Thanks to Wikipedia for the use of this picture.)
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