This morning was an absolutely beautiful flying day — 40 degrees, high pressure, 5 knot winds out of the North, and turbulence-free air. The only downside was that visibility was right at student solo minimums (5 miles), due to fog that formed after last night’s rain. Thankfully, the visibility remained on the right side of the 5 mile limit, so I never got in trouble with the visibility. But it was kind of spooky looking as the sun was coming over the horizon.

Flew out to the west for 15-20 miles, both to enjoy flying in the brilliantly smooth air and to get far away from Bloomington airspace so that there was minimal chance of traffic while I was working on steep turns. The haze was sitting fairly low to the ground, but I climbed to 3500′ to make sure that I was well clear of the haze and could see anyone pulling out of the haze and into my flight path (again, steep turns, as people don’t expect a plane to do that). The steep turns when much better than the first time i worked on them alone. I still had some trouble controlling speed, but it was overall much improved. I’ll probably work on one or two more turns the next time I”m out, then back to other fun things to work on (like turns about a point and rectangular ground tracks). It’s amazing how far I’ve managed to come since I started flying — I remember when controlling altitude and speed was difficult and trimming was near impossible. Now, I don’t even think about any of the three.

Four more hours of solo flight around Bloomington and it’s on to cross country flights!