Lesson 19 - Mini Solo Cross Country!

Wow, I am building confidence in leaps and bounds. Today's weather was dreadful all day, but about 1 hour before my scheduled lesson, the clouds lifted just enough and the winds were slight out of the southeast. Got to the airport, and talked it over with Jack. Conditions were good, although we were uncertain how well they would hold, so we thought a short hop over to Menomonie would work nicely. Jack asked me if I wanted to go solo or have a passenger, I elected to go solo, alright!! The plan was pretty simple, fly over to KLUM, a short 15 miles, and do so practice take-offs and landings, and then return. I called Laura and let her know, she thought she might go down to the terminal building and watch. So, did the preflight, checklists, taxi to runway 4, which was a bit strange, it was giving me a 90* crosswind, but on takeoffs I can handle those nicely.

Depart the traffic pattern on crosswind, 5 miles out, frequency change approved, and I was on my own navigation to Menomonie. I immediately got my radios set, checked Menomonie weather, watched Hwy 29 below me, and within a few minutes, I was making my calls on Menonomine frequency, and landed on runway 18. My entry to the pattern was a bit sloppy, made my turn to downwind a bit late, so I was closer to the runway than normal. No problem, extended my downwind a touch to give me more room to correct on final. On final, I quickly realized how much shorter this runway was compared to any in Eau Claire (3000 ft), and narrower too (75 ft), I knew I couldn't make a sloppy landing, because I would run out of runway quick! But, nice touch down, made the high-speed taxi exit, I then noticed Laura by the terminal building, and taxied over to her, shut down and chatted for a bit. We were both couldn't believe I just flew myself over here in an airplane all by myself, landed safely, and talking about it. Amazing! Anyway, after a quick bathroom break and some water, we said our "Love ya, see you soon!" I said I was going to practice some takeoffs and landings, and then fly back to Eau Claire, I probably wouldn't shut down again. So, I proceeded to have 1 short field takeoff, 3 touch-and-gos, 1 go around (on purpose for practice), and 1 landing with a taxi back (on purpose again so I could wave goodbye to Laura). All my landings were fairly good, all I could have easily made the high-speed taxi exit, which means I am landing the plan where I want, and at a slow enough speed, excellent! That also meant I had low stress touch-and-gos, since I had limited runway to work with as I indicated earlier. So, off I went, departing the pattern towards Eau Claire on the crosswind leg. Get radios all set, checked weather for Eau Claire, winds were 150@6, practically straight down the runway. Contact tower 10 miles out, they said to report 5 mile final on runway 14. And then I make my first mistake. I immediately started to plan for runway 4, as I am within 5 miles of final I make my call, and tower says I am second for landing behind a Mooney, but I couldn't make out the traffic at all. About 3 mile final, I say I couldn't locate the Mooney in front, and checking if they had landed, and they indicated they did, and I was number 1 for landing. Then about 1 mile final, I realize, I look at the runway number below, hey! There ain't no '1' in front of that '4', crap, I am about to land on the wrong runway!! I immediately call, "8BR lined up for the wrong runway, going around on runway 4." Eau Claire tower responded, "No problem, turn to the left downwind for runway 14." This is where I let myself panic, very slightly, I felt rushed, and I executed a poor go around. I put full throttle in, started to pitch up, I was now climbing, but not great, my speed was dogging around 70 kts, I then realized, ah crap! I need to bring up flaps slowly. I felt myself getting flusterd, calmed down, and told myself, "You are fine, Fly the Airplane!!" Fortunately, I only had 20* flaps in, retract 10*, adjust, the final 10*, adjust, accelerated, and flew around and made an ok landing. In retrospect, I am probably being a bit hard on myself, but it showed two things I need to work on: (1) double check earlier, my plan for pattern entry. I know who runway 4, 14 can be easily mistaken by even pros, but I needed to double check my plan earlier in my descent. (2) More practice on the go-arounds, my weakness here is that I just haven't practiced enough, and my reactions were not automatic.

So, had a quick debrief with Jack, told him about my mistake on approach into Eau Claire. It didn't seem to bother him too much, especially when I told him of my go around, and subsequent safe landing. Honestly, he first asked, "Did tower give you any grief? I said no, they were fine and helpful." We talked that next is going to be another cross country, probably to LaCrosse, we need to get in at least another hour of cross country training before I am officially qualified to do my long cross countries. During this next flight, we plan to do some instrument training, which involved me putting on a view limiting device, and flying the plane by instruments only.

What a great 1.4 hours to add to the log book, I can't believe they trust me enough to go take a plane flying all by myself, what a great time!