Saturday morning I woke up to overcast skies, with the lowest clouds around 1,200 feet. Fortunately the sky started to clear shortly before my lesson scheduled for noon. Melodie and I got to Riverside airport several minutes early, she had come to watch if I soloed. I had just started the pre-flight inspection of the 152 when my dad arrived for the same reason. I finished the pre-flight, as Bob finished the previous students lesson.
Today's lesson would be traffic pattern practice, the wind was variable, swinging from west to north at about nine knots on the ground. We got the clearance to take off to the north and headed to Tulsa International, the wind was a little rough on the ground, but as we climbed it got rougher. We bounced and jostled our way north and east to Tulsa International where we were given clearance for a landing on runway 1 left, "with the option" which means that we can do whatever we want, go-around, touch and go, full stop or pretty much anything, and we don't have to contact the tower for any extra permission.
We ran through the traffic pattern several times, working on getting everything just right, but the wind was still misbehaving, which wasn't very helpful when I was trying to maintain a perfect heading or airspeed. We did get to watch another Southwest jet land though, it came in on runway 8, passing below and behind us as we were on a downwind leg.
I was pretty consistently high on my approach onto final, so we practiced some forward slips and a go-around as well. After a couple more landings, we headed back to Riverside.
I was given clearance to land number two behind a Beechcraft Bonanza that was coming straight in from the other direction, he landed while we were on the beginning of our downwind leg, so the tower requested a short turn onto base and final. As we were coming down on our final approach, they gave another Cessna permission to taxi across the end of the runway we were about to land on, we had plenty of room to get over it, or perform a go-around if necessary, but it was disconcerting to see him pull out in front of us.
I extended the approach a little further down the runway, just to be sure, but I forgot to add power to keep my airspeed at 60 knots, so by the time I was easing back on the controls in the flare, we dropped faster than Bob or I would like, and landed pretty hard. I am not sure if we bounced or not, but if we did, it wasn't far. We had already decided that I wasn't going to solo today due to the weather, but as we taxied back to the parking area, it felt like everyone was watching me after that horrible landing.
We got the 152 parked and tied down, and went back inside to go over the days events. Wednesdays lesson will be from eight to ten again, so I should get some more night landings taken care of, and we'll probably practice turns and stalls again. If the weather cooperates, maybe I will solo next saturday.
I went to meet Dad and Melodie at the viewing area on the other side of the airport, I hadn't been over there yet, it's pretty nice, a large covered gazebo with a fireplace in the center, but it's open to the air, and not cooled other than with shade, so they were sitting in the air conditioned car taking pictures of the different planes that were flying in and out that day.
We headed to our respective homes for lunch.
Next lesson - More Night Flying!
-Gareth
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