Did the requisite 3 landings with Willis, then it was off to the wild blue yonder. The wind was from the south, so I needed some nice east-west lines on the ground to practice s-turns. On Willis’ advice, I went west for about 10 miles, where the hills level out a bit and farm country starts up again. Farm country has very nice squares on the land, dividing up the various fields. Great for doing work close to the ground — nice markers and not a lot of people to get annoyed / worried. The wind was reasonable — probably 10 or 15 knots aloft, so it was perfect for working on s-turns. The first attempt went pretty ugly, but with a couple of practices, I feel comfortable with how they looked. With a bit more practice right before my checkride, I don’t think they will present any problem. I need to remember to roll out shallow when heading into the wind. For some reason, I roll out of the shallow turn into the wind, then make the next turn off the line as a steeper turn.

Steep turns, however, presented a definite challenge. The plane was much more responsive in the steep turns than when Willis was in the plane, so I had to adjust by adding much less power than normally needed. The turns were super ugly and I missed the checkride requirements on two counts: I picked up more than 10 knots speed and lost more than 100′ altitude. Definitely need to spend another day working on these bloody turns.