Windows of Opportunity

Wow, the atmosphere in western Washington is really unstable this time of year. We have had troughs and low pressure systems move through on a regular basis for the past couple of weeks, and next week won't be much better.

I did solo last Sunday, and it was terrific. This was my first solo in 75898, and my first flight in two weeks, so I decided just to stay in the pattern at KOLM for a bit and practice landings. Things went well, so I headed south to work on ground reference maneuvers. I found a nice bright red barn south of Tenino, descended to 1000 feet, and performed "turns around a point", the goal of which is to make a circle with the selected object (the barn) at the center, while maintaining airspeed and altitude. I did okay, but certainly need more practice. I climbed back up to 2500 feet and worked on steep turns more--these, I am getting the hang of, especially to the left. A little more work and I think I'll be ready for that part of the test.

I continued south to Chehalis (KCLS) and did two touch-and-gos, then back to Olympia to land.

My landings are much better now that I am really stabilizing my approaches and keeping the airspeed at 65 knots on final, then slowing to 60 over the numbers.

I have time scheduled in the aircraft tomorrow morning, but we'll see if the weather cooperates. These windows of opportunity are only about 12 hours long when they open, so I have to hit them just right. Hopefully the weather starts to improve, as I really want to move on to my cross-country flights while I continue fine-tuning maneuvers.