Lessons 51 and 52 - Crosswind Control

I was still flying pretty high when I showed up at the field for this lesson. I had flown 6 takeoffs and landings without my primary instructor doing anything the previous day, and he put me in for my pre-solo stage check. I was pretty stoked. Today's lesson was with my secondary instructor. He tends to be a bit more picky than my primary instructor, and I was admittedly a bit worried that I'd totally botch things up. I told him my primary instructor had put me in for stage check, so he suggested we go out and brush up on maneuvers then do some touch-and-goes in preparation for that. Sounded reasonable to me. 

My maneuvers were fine, though I was definitely rusty on steep turns. I hadn't done maneuvers by themselves as an exercise in a while, but in reality I had been doing them every time I flew in the pattern. We just didn't specifically call them "ground reference maneuvers," and the biggest mental roadblock seemed to be getting into them from straight-and-level. We also did some power-on stalls, which I had not done in forever (and--thankfully--have not done during pattern work). The Grumman can get quite nose-high before it stalls, which for a mere 150hp engine surprised me. 

After a short bit of that, we headed back to Centennial for touch-and-goes. My landings today were not as smooth as the previous day. That last few feet kept throwing me sideways and I'd be trying to correct and lose sight of my airspeed. They weren't "bad" landings, but after the previous day, I was hoping they'd be smoother. Midway through, ATC changed the direction of flow on the runways. Ordinarily, they'll just have us extend and loop around. This time, they kicked everyone out of the airspace for 10 minutes while they made this change. We flew west and did some more ground reference maneuvers while waiting for them to change runways. We came back, flew a few more touch-and-goes, and--still--things weren't where I wanted them to be. Off just that little bit to be annoying.

It wasn't until after we tied down that it dawned on me as to why. Crosswinds. They didn't enter my mind. I wasn't compensating for them. They were definitely there as evidenced by ATC changing runway directions midway through our lesson because they were shifting. But for whatever reason, my mind just totally ignored the crosswind component of landings because the wind speed wasn't all that high. Dumb. Totally dumb. Totally correctable, but that would have to wait until the next lesson. The day previous, the wind was pretty much straight down the runway so I didn't have to think about it. Of course, that's not the right attitude either. I should always be thinking about it, just that my compensation for it needs to adjust based on how much of a crosswind there is. Again--lesson learned. Always figure a crosswind component. 

Crosswind Landings, take 2:

A week later, my secondary instructor and I were back at it again. After my previous lesson, my instructor and I decided that I should work on better crosswind control, and today's winds favored this well. We decided to fly down to Meadow Lake, which is a small field just north of Colorado Springs. This would be a narrower runway, only 60' wide, so I'd have a smaller target to hit. The winds were gusty and out of the northeast, so I'd have a fairly significant crosswind component to contend with, about 6 to 8 knots we figured. I was a little unsure about the narrower runway, but my instructor had faith in me. Given that after our first few lessons together I was worried he thought I was hopeless, his faith that I could hit a 60' wide runway with a fairly hefty crosswind definitely boosted my confidence. 

It's about a 25 minute flight from Centennial to Meadow Lake, so I decided not to waste that time just looking at the scenery. Rather, I suggested we do just the opposite--put me "under the hood" and have me fly down there based solely on the instruments. You need 3 hours simulated instrument flying to qualify for your private license, so I figured this was a good chance to get my feet wet. We took off, got to cruise altitude, and I put on the "hood" which is essentially an oversized golf visor which shields your eyes from what's outside the window. "This'll be duck soup!" I thought. Just dial in the VOR frequency and track it. How hard could that possibly be? 

Yeah, I ain't ever made duck soup, so I don't really know if it's easy or not. This was a whole lot harder than it looks on paper. My ability to hold altitude and heading based solely on instruments made my first time taxiing a plane using rudder pedals look straight-up sober. Here's the thing. Airplane instruments are slow to respond to what's going on. They tell you what the plane was doing a few seconds ago. Some, like the vertical speed indicator are particularly laggy. When you're flying solely by the instruments, you have to make very small, very slow changes so the gauges can keep up with what you're doing. I didn't do that. I was flying "normally." When I'd turn to a given heading, I'd stop when the heading indicator showed I was there, but really I was about 5 - 10 degrees past it because it was lagging behind just that much. So I'd turn back the other way and get 5 - 10 degrees off the opposite direction. Same for altitude. Somehow, in spite of myself, I managed to get us to where we wanted to be to set up a visual approach to Meadow Lake. I was reassured after our flight that this was perfectly normal for a student's first time flying by instruments. I'm looking forward (pardon the pun) to my next time under the hood. 

Anyway, we turned west towards Meadow Lake. This is an untowered airport, so there's no air traffic controller telling us where to fly. You basically announce your position and intentions at various stages in the process and hope other planes in the area are listening and staying the heck out of your way. It's similar to what we do in our practice areas, except in this case we're taking off and landing, not just flying in literal circles in the sky. 

The purpose of this exercise was to get me used to compensating for crosswinds in landings. I've written in the past, ailerons into the wind, a bit of opposite rudder to keep the nose aligned with the runway. I've done it to varying degrees and with varying degrees of success in the past, but this was the first time I was dedicating a lesson specifically to somewhat crosswind correction. I have set up crosswind scenarios on my simulator to help with this, so even in practice this isn't a foreign concept. It's just that I have to work on the mental memory to remember to take it into account. To be truthful, I surprised myself at how well I did. I asked my instructor how much he was assisting, he said "not much." Given my experience with him on previous lessons where I felt like I was fighting him on the controls, I rarely (ever?) felt any control input on his part when getting things lined up for the runway. I felt pretty good about that.

In retrospect, however, I realize there was still plenty of room for improvement. When looking back on the tracks of my patterns, one thing is obvious. I did a pretty decent job of compensating for the crosswind on the final approach to the runway. That final approach is one of four legs of a good traffic pattern. My crosswind compensation on the other three left a whole lot to be desired. On the downwind leg, I'd be letting myself get blown sideways closer to the runway. This would shorten my base leg and I'd either overshoot or be too high making that turn to final because I hadn't given myself enough time to descend on the base leg. Same thing on the upwind leg. Once off the ground after landing, I'd be blown sideways and struggle to stay lined up with runway centerline. 

The solution to all of this is to pick a point on the ground that you can use to reference your traffic pattern points and fly to them, compensating for the wind while in the air. This was my first time flying to this airport, so I'm not going to beat myself up too much for not being familiar with it, but it's definitely something you want to make mental checks to do. 

We did a half dozen or so touch-and-goes, then decided to call it a day and head back home. We did a simulated emergency engine out on the way, then decided that was enough teaching for one day. The air was smooth and the sun was shining. It was a good chance to just fly for the sake of flying--a reminder of why it is I'm doing this. It's good to have those moments in the air where you can just sit back, relax, take it all in, and realize how unique this experience is.