More landing practice

Several firsts today: longest flight (3 hrs), most airports visited in one flight (five), and most credited landings (12). As usual, my luck with the weather is bad. The wind was blowing about 13 knots at KPAO, so we only did one trip around the pattern there before heading off to Tracy Muni (KTCY) in search of better winds. Tracy was better, but not great, so we headed off to New Jerusalem (1Q4), a little strip in the middle of nowhere. We made several landings there before heading to Byron (C83) then to Livermore (KLVK) and then home.

The good: 

- I'm getting pretty decent at radio comms with the tower. I'm getting more onfident talking to ground and the tower at Palo Alto. On the way back I contacted Palo Alto with a nearly flawless landing request: "Palo Alto tower, Cessna six-six-nine-tango-whiskey descending through two-thousand one hundred over Leslie Salt with information Uniform."  The only thing I always do wrong is that I forget to use "niner" instead of "nine".  Oh well, I'll get that one of these days.

- Landings are getting better. Although I had a couple rough patches, by the end of the day while we were working the pattern at Livermore, I was doing a much better job at controlling airspeed and altitude in pattern and making stable approaches.  

The bad:

- Sometimes feel like I just can't do anything right for landing. It was pretty bumpy, and it is really hard to keep my approach point stable when I'm getting bounced around on final.

- Just staying ahead of the airplane and being able to plan ahead and keep all the parameters in control is a challenge. If you concentrate too hard on one parameter, the others get all out of whack. Definitely a learning curve there in trying to keep everything balanced.

- I feel like I am taking forever and will never get the skills or confidence to solo.  Dave says he's seen people do it quicker, and people take much longer, so I guess that's OK, but I still feel like I'm not doing a good job. 

No flying next weekend, Dave is out of town, so we'll see if I can hold onto these skills for two weeks without much regression. 

Aircraft: 669TW

Landings today: 12

Total landings: 44

Today's flight: 3.0 hours

Total hours: 35.1

In search of good winds

So far in my flight training, one thing I can count on is that the wind and/or other weather will not cooperate when I go for a lesson. Today was the great search for good wind.  It was just blowing too hard at Palo Alto to be able to make good landing attempts. I really need to learn how to make good landings in favorable wind conditions if I'm ever going to solo. So far, every time we've been out, Mother Nature just hasn't cooperated.

In the search for the proper wind conditions, Dave decided we'd head over the hill toward the central valley. Two more airports to add to my tally: Tracy Muni and New Jerusalem.  Both are in Tracy, both uncontrolled. New Jerusalem (1Q4) is leftover from WWII, where it was apparently a training airfield. Not much left there now but a strip of asphalt in the middle of some fields. Not even a shed standing. It seems to get the most use from radio-controlled aircraft enthusiasts, who have their own little runway laid out on what looks like a former taxiway. The main runway is pretty rough and bumpy. On the plus side, there's nothing around, and no other planes anywhere nearby. The taxiway is separated from the runway by just a stripe of paint. After landing, we basically made a hard U-turn off the runway and taxied back slowly to the approach end, avoiding weeds, loose rocks, gravel, and the broken pavement. Definitely the roughest runway I've flown in/out of yet.

My pattern and approach work is getting a little better each time, but I still don't feel like I've quite got the hang of it yet. I think I concentrate on doing one thing right, and everything else regresses. As bad as I think I'm doing, Dave seems to think I'm getting a notch better every time. It just drives me crazy... I'm always a quick learner and I've read all this stuff about the pattern and landings, but going from theoretical stuff in a book to actually doing it is so much harder than it seems on paper.  I guess it'll just take a lot of practice, concentration, time, and money to get the hang of it.

Aircraft: 669TW

Today's landings: 8

Total landings: 32

Today's flight: 2.4 hours

Total hours: 32.1 hours

2.4 in pattern at KPAO

Never left the pattern at KPAO today. Just 2.4 hours of flying right traffic on runway 31 doing touch-and-goes.  Man, landing is hard.  I don't know when I'm ever going to get the hang of this.

Aircraft: 669TW

Landings today: 8

Total landings: 24

Today's flight: 2.4 hours

Total hours: 29.7 hours

Pattern, pattern, pattern

Longest flight so far, and more pattern work.  We spent most of the day at Reid-Hillview doing pattern work. Nothing more to say I guess. I'm in that phase of training where we mostly fly around and around and around doing touch-and-goes. It's just a lot of work. 

Aircraft: 669TW

Landings today: 3

Total landings: 16

Today's flight: 2.6 hours

Total hours: 27.3