Eblo

Lesson Number 5

Today's lesson was very much the same as yesterday's with one exception - the wind. I mentioned it being pretty strong yesterday. Well, today it was stronger and pretty much straight out of the south. This means the takeoff and landings were done in a crosswind. That was quite interesting. I needed a bit of help on the landing due to it. Ailerons into the wind, rudder opposite. Strange. And I goofed once on the radio - said we were inbound for Runway 6, when it was really the opposite, 24. They knew what I meant.

I made a realization today. In the past, I've noticed a few times when my intuition has lead me to step on the wrong rudder pedal while taxiing. I did that on the takeoff today, too. It wasn't good. See, while on the ground, you step on the left pedal to go left, or the right pedal to go right. Just like in the air - the right pedal will yaw the nose to the right. But I switch 'em. And I think I know why. I grew up water skiing and later took up snow skiing. In both of those, you put the pressure on the leg that is on the outside of the turn. So that's my habit. I'll have to break it. I guess I'll have to get rudder pedals and a yoke for Flight Simulator. . . .

Today was windy/bumpy enough that the seatbelt was actually used a few times. And even now, if I look down at my keyboard, my body feels like it's still rocking and swaying. I've experienced this before after spending the day on rollers in Lake Michigan. Inneresting.

After my post last night, I loaded up the GPS plots from my flights. They start on the second one - I didn't have the GPS for the first lesson. The thumbnails are tiny and the images themselves are quite large, but if I presented them smaller, they lost a lot of sharpness. To me, the interesting ones are the turns around a point from yesterday and today. You can see where I did well and where I goofed. For some reason, today's plot is very sketchy. The GPS must have been in a bad spot in the plane. Hopefully others will be better. I'll go back and put in links to the plot in my previous entries.

That's all for now. Blue skies.

Posted by oblivion at September 17, 2003 08:58 PM | Technorati Tags: