Lessons Learned this Weekend

Another weekend, another pair of lessons. After two weeks off, it took a little to shake the rust off. Saturday we had a strong wind, but coming almost straight down the runway. Sunday, almost no wind, but I flew in a new plane. Here are the lessons learned. I'd say it was the most learning I've had in a lesson. A lot of things that I'd read, or sort of knew were presented and experienced first hand.

• Every single tip about landings and flairs are 100% spot on. Especially the ones about nailing your airspeeds. And how to visualize being on the centerline.
• When nailing said airspeeds, don't be wishy-washy with them. It makes less work for you in the long run.
• You can do pattern work without a attitude indicator. In fact, it gives you one less thing to glance at as a crutch.
• Particularly during the engine-out landings, you get a great feel for what flaps really do. Dump them in, feel that initial push in the butt as the plane lifts a little.
• A 10 knot gust straight on the nose feels like an increase of a few RPMs on the throttle. - I really, really don't like forward slips.
• Different planes, even of the same make/model can feel very different. 228NH was down, and it took awhile to get the feel for the "stiffer" 40SE, both DA20 C1s.
• At some point, you can't focus on one more thing. On one loop, I had an extended downwind, other traffic using me as a reference, a plane on base on a parallel runway, and then a jet taking off on my runway while I was on final. "Be advised of jet wash". CFI jumped in and said "You fly the plane, I'll worry about the jetwash."
• I'm taking my pre-solo written test this week. I'm having a blast. My CFI is the personification of all of those "Make sure you and your CFI mesh" discussions.