pilot's logbook

5/11 C-152 N69011 LOU JVY LOU. Steep turns, slow flight, power-off stalls, touch-and-go's, pattern entry. #landings: 13, 2.0 hr.

I had thought about what we have been doing, and if my flight maneuvers were still as klutzy/frustrating as the last couple of times, I was ready to suggest taking a break, letting the "large motor skills" settle in by just flying somewhere heads-up (i.e. finding the farm), and then moving back into the "small motor skills" of slow flight, stalls & recovery next time.

The good news is we didn't have to. Things are starting to kick in. We did enough touch-and-go's at Clark County Airport for the sequence to smooth out so instead of concentrating so hard on WHAT I was supposed to be doing, I was able to be sensitive to HOW I was doing it.

Mike called two of the landings really good. He said the others were passable, I wasn't scaring him or anything, so I take that as a compliment.

Coming back to Bowman Field, when we were high coming up on Six-Mile Island, Mike asked me what we could do about it. I put us into a sideslip, which we've done once before. The difference this time was that, even though I ran it past Mike how it was to be done, I didn't feel uncertain about moving right into it. Great fun. "All you people down there in your cars, eat your hearts out!"

When we got back in to Air CenterOne, Mike tossed out to the others, "Guess who's landing the plane?" That felt good.

Long way to go, still, but I'm glad I didn't have to pull out plan B.