The practice area north of Pearson field was socked in with clouds, but with a 4,000 ft ceiling over the field and low to moderate winds, we were able to spend the flight in the pattern and conduct 6 landings.
Having been three weeks since my last flight, I had lost some of the "feel" for the plane in flight and was not flying very smoothly at first and was very tense. This resulted in two flubbed landings, where Theresa needed to take over and land cause my approach was so off. The next two times around were not much better, but instead of taking over, Theresa had me perform the go-around maneuver. Now we've been up almost an hour and I had yet to land the plane by myself...and I'm feeling frustrated and nervous. So I willed myself to be calm and tried again.
The fifth attempt went great...set up went well, feeling in control the whole time, not too fast, not too high. A nice, main wheels first landing, on target and short enough to leave the runway at the first taxi way. We taxied around for one last take-off and landing in the pattern. Now that I had done something right...my confidence was way up and the my final approach for the day was really good and the landing was even better than the previous attempt.
This is when the Top Gun sound track starts playing in my head "...highway to the danger zone!"
In our debrief, we concluded that it would be better (after a long break) for me to fly out of the pattern at least once after take-off, so I can get acclimatized to flying again, before jumping into complicated maneuvers like landing in the pattern.
Looking forward to getting up again next week.
Hours of flight logged this lesson: 1.2 Dual Received (DR)
Cost of this lesson: $149.81
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