Flight Four - Ground Reference Maneuvers (cont.)

The weather decided to cooperate and more flight training was possible this morning. Our cloud ceiling today was over 4,000 ft. (my instructor won't let us go up if the ceiling is under 1,500 ft.) and the winds were not too bad (4-7 knots, gusts up to 12 kts). We spent a bit more time on the weather during pre-flight and used the animated radar maps to make sure there weren't any columns of bad weather moving in that could affect visibility when we approached to land later this morning.

Duct tape? Really?

Pre-flight walk around is going much faster. The left wing tip light housing apparently hit something...the maintenance crew duct taped it...cool. I'm flying a plane that is actually held together with tape...why this amuses me more than it disturbs me? No idea.

My taxiing is also improving. I'm still not comfortable with talking to ATC at PDX, so I still let Theresa handle all the radio calls. She is drilling me on it every call though. "Location and action". Where am I? What to I want to do? Apparently there is a section during ground school that will help me feel more comfortable with getting the format right.

Take-off was from runway 08, with enough wind to make it much more interesting than the first few flights. The aircraft really bounced around...really felt like flying now! Headed north to the fair grounds and started with todays lesson - more ground reference maneuvers, this time flying a 1/2 mile radius circle around a fixed point at 1,000 ft. AGL. Theresa was really pleased we had some wind for these maneuvers. Flying a level circle in the wind is kinda hard. The wind is pushing you places you don't want to go and it's varying constantly as the bearing to the wind changes.

Theresa demonstrated this once and then I was in control and did real well as the turns were counter clockwise - or rather on the pilots side of the plane. Not easy, but manageable. Then we started the circle in the other direction and it was much more difficult. On my first attempt I lost sight of my ground reference point before I started my first turn. It got better, but was really challenging.

Over Ridgefield, WA

On the way back to Pearson, Theresa showed me how to perform 180 s-turns over I-5. I finally had more than a brief few seconds of non-busy time and actually took another picture (the camera in my phone sucks). By this time we were getting close to our time limit, so I took the controls and headed us southwest towards Vancouver Lake and started descending for our approach. Theresa let me land this time (sort-of, she really has a her hands and feet on the controls and corrects any lame flying I attempt in the process).

After we landed, Theresa asked me if I was really as calm as I seemed during the flight. I am. This feels so natural to me. Anyways, she's so pleased with my progress/demeanor that we're going to get into more complex maneuvers involving more radical power changes next time...as a prep to really landing by myself.

It was good to get back in the air again after missing out last month. Maybe Santa will pay for a another lesson before the year is out.

Hours of flight logged this lesson: 1.0 Dual Received (DR)
Cost of this lesson and down payment for class: $202.41