Crosswinds

June 22, 2011

I'm always looking for a challenge, and today I got one. The winds were mostly out of the west and peaked at 26 knots, gusting to 30kts. The airport was empty since all other students canceled, so Matt and I had it to ourselves. I asked him what we were going to work on today and he said it was too windy to get much out of doing maneuvers or instrument stuff. Instead, he said it would be a good day to do some crosswind landings.

Instead of taking off from the preferred runway 27, we used runway 18. After leaving the runway, we had to crab into the wind significantly to remain flying straight. As you're on the downwind, base and final legs of the pattern, you have certain speeds to keep and today made that much more difficult. Coming into land was a challenge. We're already crabbing into the wind to remain straight, but then on short final we had to add full left rudder (or just enough to line up with the centerline) and turn the ailerons into the wind (in this case, to the right). With the winds being so strong, this felt very uncomfortable. With the help from Matt, the landing was pretty decent.

We did a couple more landings, then Matt decided to change it up a little bit. He asked me to make a crosswind landing without using flaps. I've done this once for a normal landing in a different airplane, so I kind of knew what to expect. It sounds a bit complicated because normally you add 10 degrees of flaps on downwind, then 20 on base and full flaps on final if needed, but doing a no flap landing really teaches you how to use pitch and power to get the speed and altitude you want. The landing went well.

We then went back to runway 18, and after takeoff he had me do a right pattern to come in for runway 9. He wanted me to see what an extreme tailwind landing would be like. It was a mess. I was too high, too fast and we were coming in over power lines and onto a short runway. It called for a go around, so we never actually touched down. Matt had me fly straight until I got to pattern altitude, then we made a 180 degree turn and made a straight in landing for runway 27. It was still a challenge, but at least we were landing on the preferred runway based on the wind direction.

We did another takeoff and landing from runway 18, then I asked Matt if he would show me a crosswind takeoff and landing so that I could see what it should really look like. Of course he made it look perfect; like there was no wind at all. I hope to get to that level someday.

After an hour and eight landings later, I called it a day. I'm really glad we flew today, I got a lot out of it.

Flight Log to Date
Hours flown: 66.0