Lesson #2 - Plane vs. Wind

This lesson was a lot of review from the first. The biggest difference was the weather. Winds were 15 knots gusting to 20 or so. The type of wind you have to lean in to in order to walk. I was able to do all of the pre-flight checklist on my own, which was a nice step forward. Learned about positioning the flight controls into the wind so the plane doesn't get flipped on the ground. Due to the wind, my instructor handled the take off. I handled the actual turn out of the traffic pattern and climb to altitude. It was alot of work. The wind kept trying to push us off course, and it was extremely bumpy. Not fun.

Things smoothed out around 5,000 feet, and we practiced basic turns again. We also went over the basics of how and why you trim the airplane. In short, the plane has small flaps on the tail that you can set so you aren't always pulling up or pushing down on the stick. It makes flying much easier. I'm so wrapped up on keeping the plane straight, I tend to forget to use trim. One new thing we tried was basic slow flight. This is where you bring the plane to a slow speed using the pitch of the nose to control the speed, and the power from the engine controls altitude. This needs to be mastered because every single landing uses slow flight.

After an hour or so, we turned around and headed back in. Due to the strong winds, my instructor handled the landing. Totally uneventful.