Lesson #8 - Crosswind, pattern & ground reference work

The weather wasn't great today, windy, cloudy, and a little rainy. After checking it out, Dave thought it looked good enough to get some crosswind practice in. Preflight, taxi, and runup went pretty well in 739TW, although I'd learn later that I missed one important step during runup. Runway 13 was in use again today, my second experience taking off to the SE from Palo Alto. We took off and stayed in the pattern for one trip back around, made a low approach and practiced crosswind correction technique. The wind was pretty strong, somewhere around 12-16 knots. Palo Alto's runway is relatively short, so we decided to head over to KSJC since the 4000+ foot runway would give more time to practice on each trip around the pattern. This was my first time flying into KSJC. We made a transition through Moffett Field's class D airspace and were given clearance straight in to runway 11 at KSJC. I thought it was pretty cool to fly right over the top of Moffett for the first time. It still amazes me how close together these airports seem from the air. Taking off from Palo Alto, it only takes a minute or two before you're over Moffett and another minute or two before you get to San Jose.

The wind was blowing pretty steadily from about 160 or 170 degrees, so we had a pretty good right crosswind. Dave did one approach as a demonstration and then it was my turn to practice, each time trying to work the rudder and ailerons to hold a sideslip while Dave handled pitch and throttle to keep us off the ground. I did OK, but got blown left off the centerline a couple times and had some trouble keeping things lined up. It really is difficult to keep everything coordinated. We did several trips around the pattern, and I started to do a little better. I tend to get nervous during approach and in the pattern, which doesn't help here. Dave thinks once I figure out how to overcome the nerves, I'll do a lot better. 

The weather was interesting from the air. We could see rain shafts all over, and we got rained on a couple different times in our trips around the pattern. I can't remember how many times we went around the pattern at San Jose, but we finally decided we'd head out and go do some ground reference work before heading home. This is where I found that I had forgotten one important step during the preflight runup: I forgot to set the heading indicator to match the magnetic compass. This became important when the tower at KSJC asked us to fly a heading of 020 departing the area, and we had to make an educated guess at it. We managed to overcome this little obstacle and got out of the area without getting yelled at by ATC.

After leaving San Jose, we spent a few more minutes flying around our favorite salt ponds practicing turns around a point and S-turns before heading back to Palo Alto. Dave thought that I seemed more relaxed and I was flying much better. The strong winds definitely added some additional challenge to the ground reference work. It takes a lot of skill and planning to properly complete these maneuvers with a strong wind blowing the aircraft around. After a couple practice runs on each kind of maneuver, we headed back across the bay to Palo Alto and called it a day.

Aircraft: 739TW

Lesson #8: 1.6 hours

Total time: 12.1 hours