Today was absolutely beautiful – clear skies, visibility of 10 miles, winds from 290 degrees at 10 knots. I was a little worried about the wind, as it’s close to the envelope of what Willis set as the wind maximums for my solo flights. I tracked down Willis and he said it sounded within reason to him, so off I went. I headed out to the west, where there are some good fields for doing ground reference maneuvers.

Once about 20 miles out, I worked on turns about a point. The wind was a little weird, but I think I made reasonable enough circles. On the trip back, I worked on power-on stalls some more. Much more comfortable with them than when I first started working on stalls. I think most of it has to do with my better use of the rudder and much more coordinated turning. Yay me! Worked in three touch-and-goes and the final full stop landing on runway 24, which were much smoother than my previous cross-wind landings.

I took my hand held GPS up with me today to record my flight and make perdy pictures. It reads altitude by pressure rather than 3 dimensional fix, so it isn’t as accurate as the properly installed GPS in 66591. However, it does have the nice property of making it easy to download tracks onto my laptop.

Flight profile from the top. The airport is on the right, the field with the turns about the point on the left.
Flight profile from the side. This view is from the North, so the airport is on the left and my ground reference work on the right.

[update:] A couple people have asked what the colors mean. They signify the current rate of climb. Positive climb is blue, negative climb is red, and level flight is white. The color intensity is stronger with increasing rates of climb.