pilot's logbook

7/11 C-152 N89933 Lou Lou XW touch&go's, Soft Field landing, spins #lndgs:6 1.8hr instrument:0.3

Beautiful day! Sky scattered with white cumulus clouds. Plenty wind and gusts. Practiced crosswind landings on runway 32. Met my first windshear on one of those landings. Wow!

When we left the pattern, we went to the river and S. Indiana. Mostly we went up. And up. And up. It's been weeks since we've done this, and it really felt good. And smooth. And I fly a lot better than I did the last time we were here.

We took the plane up thru the cloud level, all the way to 9,000 feet. (note: altimeter read 9000. Actually it would have been 10,200 ft.) Taking pictures with the iphone, trying to figure out how to work it, also NOT drop it out of the window. I took a picture of the altimeter at 8,200, and didn't think to take another one. At some point we did some maneuvers. Slow flight was gorgeous and smooth. Doing a power-off stall, the plane was all the way at stall, but didn't buck or go anywhere. Instead of dropping it to do the recovery, I just held it, and held it, and held it. I didn't realize until Mike showed me, that it felt like we were sitting still, but we were really dropping altitude, the needle just spinning around. Eventually, we did the recovery.

Instrument work. Spin awareness. Clouds.

For soft-field landing experience, we went to Lee Bottoms. I lined her up and did the first approach, then Mike took over for the actual landing. Then he went around and did it again. We didn't intend to land, just touch the wheels and go on. Lots of wind bouncing around off the river, the hot spots and the trees. Awesome. Beautiful.

MIke says after this it's cross-country and things start to go really fast. He also knows if he ever gets the urge to barnstorm, he's supposed to let me know, and we'll go partners on it.