Lesson 26 - Back up in heavy winds!

I did it, and I am darn excited to finish my journey! Yesterday, I took a day off of work to get myself back in the air. I was somewhat concerned that weather was going to bump right out of the gates, conditions called for winds at 18 kts, gusting to almost 30. The wind was close to right down the runway, but I did have some swirling crosswind components. These are conditions I would right now never fly on my own, and honestly I don't recall ever flying in this stuff with a instructor before either. At first I wondered if this was the best condition to get back into flying with, but it turned out to be one of the best learning experiences.

I was a little slow and rusty on the checklists, plus I was flying with a new instructor. My old instructor Jack has moved full-time jet operation, congrats to him. I will be completing my training with two instructors, Paul, who has a TON of experience, he retired from the DNR after flying for them for 24 years, before that he spent time flying freight and for the airlines. Wow, he knows his stuff, and has a much more disciplined approach than Jack, I like him! I will also be flying with Chris, who first introduced me to flying. His hours are little more limited, but we'll be doing some nighttime flying to button up those requirements.

So, we do a preflight, my usual checklist and memory helped me well here, no problems. Once in the cockpit, I needed a few moments to re-familiarize myself with the instrument stack and startup checklist. Paul has some specific expectations, and they are all geared towards readiness for the checkride, he expected me to give him a passenger briefing! This was cool! Even though I got very far before, this was the first time I felt I was really getting trained on being ready for the test. So, off we went, winds were at 15, so we were going to be doing touch and gos on runway 14, but its taxiway is under construction, so we had to cross 4/22, then back taxi on 14. Had a great refresher lesson on proper aileron input during ground operations. Did our runup, all checks in the green, off we go! We did 9 takes offs and landings, the first few were a bit rough. Although I don't recall Paul wrestling for control back for any of them, but he did ask for control on just 1 take off. The wind was quite fun, and on the first take off as we got bounced around I started thinking... "oh boy, this is nuts," but it took only 1 pass for me to get accustomed to the bouncing and it was fun after that. The last 2-3 landings were quite good. Since I had such a strong wind on the downwind leg, I barely had time to run my checklist and start the landing descent since the wind was pushing me so fast. This resulted in most my approaches being high, which is fine, so I got a lot more comfortable doing slips to bleed off the extra altitude.

In the debrief, Paul seemed pretty comfortable with my skills. Sounds like I would only need a few more refresher lessons before I was received me solo-endorsement back. We talked about the next few flights will be to the practice area to brush up on manuevers and the expected standards, plus we'll spend some time under the hood finishing up just a little more instrument time. So, another 1.0 hours in the log book, and I have a few flights schedule over the next week. I am going to make this happen!