Piper PA 28 161 Warrior cockpit

Wednesday, 4 May 2011

Crosswind circuits

On Saturday 30th April (the day after the Royal Wedding), I flew set of southerly circuits off runway 08 with my instructor Dan in pretty tricky crosswind of 15kts gusting to 20.

On the whole, my circuits were good (once I'd found Bentley Priory as a reference on the downwind leg). Quite a lot of crabbing to stay on line. My radio work was not great and I was rushing my downwind checks a little.

But ... my landings just weren't happening at all. Despite pretty good approaches, in every case I fluffed the late final line up and flare: 7 times out of 7! Dan was just shaking his head. He said I was panicking but I didn't and still don't think that - I was just f*&^ing it up! When we (he) finally landed, we had a good talk about what is going wrong. He reckons that I am pulling the nose up too early with the consequent drop in lift and almost stalling in. I'm also drifting left just at the last moment which i just don't get (it was v windy though). Back to the text book and more practice .... sigh ... who said flying was easy... :(

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