Today was a miserable day for anything but pattern work, as it was 45 degrees and the cloud cover was overcast at 2500 feet. Thankfully, the winds died down from the 30 knots they were hitting last night to a placid 5 knots out of the North/Northwest. We started off with a soft field takeoff, and I still wasn’t aggressive enough with the back pressure on the elevator, but I mostly got it. Did a couple of landings of a variety of setups (normal, soft, and short) and felt pretty comfortable with them. Second to last one with the instructor, we did a full stop landing and taxied off the runway and back to the takeoff end of the runway. Took off, entered pattern, came in for a normal landing (although I turned onto base way too early, so it became a short final landing…), and taxied to the ramp. Willis got out at the ramp and told me to fly 3 landings to a full stop and taxi back to takeoff. Off I went on my own. Woo hoo!

The taxi out to 35 was a little nerve racking. Since we didn’t shut down the engine at the ramp, there really wasn’t much to do on the 2 or 3 minute taxi down to the runway. Carb heat off: check, flaps up: check. Nothing else to do but admire the Cirrus SR22 as it taxis from the southwest hanger for 35 (and it is a pretty bird). Takeoff was pretty routine – lineup with the runway, one last check that everything looks ok on the instruments, and smoothly apply full throttle. The plane accelerated to rotation speed in about 300′ less than usual, and climbed much better than usual. I was at almost 750′ AGL by the end of the runway, and was at traffic pattern altitude (1000′) long before I turned onto downwind. Overshot 1800′ MSL (~1000′ AGL) by 100′ or so and carried too much speed when leveling it off, but quickly got back to 1800′ MSL and 80 MPH by the midpoint of the downwind leg. First landing was fairly reasonable, but I was a bit slow (~65) coming over the threshold. Since I was slow, it didn’t float much at all. I was unhappy with the speed, but did have a nice wind correction — probably the best yet. Thankfully, Willis wanted me to taxi off the runway to go around for the next takeoff, so I had a nice minute or two break between the landing and the next takeoff to decompress a bit.

Second flight around the pattern was pretty uneventful, as they usually are. The approach was better than the first approach at maintaining speed, but I didn’t correct for the wind drift very well until the last minute. I didn’t jolt it too bad, but it could have been smoother. I think I had too much rudder correction and was over-banked, and then corrected and got all screwy. In hind sight, it probably would not have been a bad idea to do a go-around on that particular landing –it wasn’t particularly bad, but it wasn’t exactly what I expected. Willis is a strong believer in just going around when the plane isn’t exactly how you expect. Off the runway and taxi back to the takeoff end I go.

Third takeoff was directly behind a LearJet, so I had a minute to pause while the jet wash dissipated a bit. A Cessna 150 will blow over like a cardboard box if it catches the full power of a jet wash as the pilot tries to taxi onto the runway, so it’s a good idea to hang back of the jet until it’s rolling down the runway. Once on the runway, there was no need to worry about wake turbulence, as the LearJet has a longer ground roll than the Cessna 150 (especially with the climb rates I was seeing without Willis on board) and I was going to reach traffic pattern altitude and turn off the runway heading in a shorter distance than it took the jet to reach pattern altitude. Anyway, the rest of takeoff and circling the pattern was uneventful. Did much better at controlling speed on the approach, although I was still slow coming off the turn from base to final. The landing was so-so – I thumped it a bit more than I would have liked, but well within acceptable range and handled drift much better than the second landing. Overall, it was an interesting experience, and one that I can’t wait to repeat.

Next time up, Willis will fly with me for a couple approaches and then leave me to do some more pattern work for the rest of the hour. If I’m feeling comfortable, I’ll be able to do touch and go landings instead of taxing off the runway and back to the takeoff end of the runway to do it all over again. And the flight after that, I’ll finally get to leave the pattern again and go out into the wild blue yonder, where wild blue yonder is defined as anywhere within 25NM of the airport.

For those into that kind of thing, pictures of me and the plane are at my photo gallery.