Steep Turns may be my nemesis

Last night Joel and I had a lesson in beautiful weather. The aircraft thermometer in TP read 85 degrees when we departed. That's pretty warm for April in Olympia. High pressure, calm winds, sky clear--just beautiful.

Joel is more or less having me set my own goals for lessons now, which is terrific. Just another confirmation that his style and my preferences align very well. I really had two objectives last night: get signed off for landings at two more airports within 25 miles (Chehalis, KCLS, a non-towered airport about 20 miles south of Olympia, and Tacoma Narrows, KTIW, a towered airport about 20 miles northeast), and, practice maneuvers.

We took off and headed south for Chehalis. Chehalis is the airport where I took my radio back in January and sat in the airport office parking lot for 30 minutes or so, and during that time decided to become a private pilot. So it's a special place for me, and landing there was a bigger moment than the modesty of the field would imply.

I cut the first approach too short and had to go around, but my next two circuits were good. We departed to the north, flew over the Olympia airspace, and contacted the Tacoma tower about seven miles out. I completely botched the clearance request with KTIW, which gave Joel a little chuckle and probably the controller too. I am finding it difficult to estimate distances from the air, and so I usually figure that out before I call up, but I forgot to do so this time. So it went something like this:

Me: "Tacoma tower, Cessna 40TP about...uh...um..."

Joel: (visual hand signals of the number nine, in an animated fashion)

Me: "Sorry, tower, 40TP is um, about nine miles out...uh...to the southwest...inbound for..." [unkey mike]

Me: "For touch-and-goes"

KTIW Tower: "Cessna 40TP, Tacoma tower, enter a right downwind for runway 17 and report the downwind"

Me: "Right downwind 17, we'll call the downwind, 0TP"

Me (off frequency, on intercom to Joel): "That was really, really lame"

Joel: "Yeah, but I've heard much worse from students"

After that things got better, and I did three nice landings.

We departed to the southwest and practiced maneuvers. The first was steep turns, in which the pilot maintains a bank angle of 45 degrees through a full circle, while keeping altitude within 100 feet and airspeed within 10 knots. 45 degrees is a substantial bank, and the back pressure on the yoke is enough to pull about 1.5 Gs. I wouldn't say my performance was horrible for a beginner, but it was well below standards, so this is something I'll need to work on. We moved on to turns about a point, which is a much more "gentle" turn around a farmhouse, water tower, or other feature. I did quite well at that.

The good news is, I'm signed off to operate at four airports now, and to practice maneuvers on my own. Hopefully we'll have more of this nice weather in between business trips the next few weeks, and I'll continue making progress. I have 15 hours of the 40 minimum required. Plenty of time left to practice!