flight 9 in N2407N, 1.1 hours (12.9 total) take off and landing, go-around and slip

Wind at 31 kts at 3000 feet today, so we didn't go to the practice area as planned, since the turbulence behind the mountains would be quite bad. In fact, there were two pilot reports, one from an A319 reporting moderate chop, another from a Beechcraft B55 reporting severe turbulence. The A319 is a big Jet, even the B55 is twice in weight to my Cessna. If they think it's bad, it'll be a lot worse for me.

So the decision was to stay in close traffic and practice more take off and landing. Even near ground there's a 15 kts wind gusting to 21kts. Mostly headwind, though, so not a big concern for me (the Cessna can only take 15kts crosswind). I'll also get a taste with slips, which I had seen Mark demonstrating, and felt awkward even watching him doing it. We'll see how that goes.

Taking off in the wind wan't a problem at all. Climbing felt normal but the wind was quite evident. When I turned crosswind at my normal altitude I was significantly closer to the runway than I normal was. I also didn't reduce power fast enough and got 100 feet above pattern altitude. I made adjustments and brought the plane down for a landing, then did a go-around at about 10 feet above the ground. The 2nd time Mark asked me to fly in high, and demonstrated another slip: so you give full rudder in one direction, then bank in the opposite direction to compensate, in the meanwhile reduce power to idle while pushing down. Another go-around and now it's my turn. I did pretty much everything wrong my first try: didn't give enough rudder, didn't bank a lot, did reduce much power, and didn't push down enough :P. I didn't feel the plane was slipping and losing altitude much, and I ended up being 10 feed above the ground, and completely off to the right side of the runway, another go-around ensued... :P

Next we practiced normal landings. I did mostly OK, a bit rough but brought the plane down all but once. The wind didn't cause much trouble on final, but did push the plane around a little for the the last 10-20 feet. In the one failed attempt I got too much off center than I liked and was too close to the ground so I decided to go-around. Before my final landing I tried another slip. Not much better than the first one. The biggest problem was that I wasn't pushing down enough. I admit I was a bit scared to do it. It is counter-intuitive to push the plane down when you are already close to ground. Next time I'll have to forget about the fear and trust physics, as I always do :) The final landing was a bit rough, too. I believe I landing on one gear first :P. But hey, I walked away from the landing. Plus I didn't feel any sickness at all today. So another great day of flying for me :)