Flight Lesson № 10

It's been about a month since my last flight lesson, but I got back to it tonight and it was good to be back flying. As usual, I forgot less in the hiatus than I feared and was pleasantly surprised how much of this stuff sticks. I also had a different instructor tonight. My previous one is away on training of some sort. It's unfortunate that it takes some time to build up a relationship with a new person, but it's not that bad and I think it's helpful to get perspectives from different instructors.

Tonight, like most lessons between now and solo will be, focused on landings. We did four circuits in the pattern at N51, but one of which was demoed completely by the instructor. There was a bit of wind, almost directly abeam the runway, which meant that I had to be careful to keep my pattern the shape I wanted and that I had to do a slip on final for crosswind correction. The first landing was surprisingly gentle, the second one I misjudged our height and we hit the ground hard and bounced, and the last one was not that bad.

I continue to be haunted by my failures in X-Plane, thinking in my flares that it's not going to end well, but flying in real life is much easier; I wish I had never played the game.

• Flight Hours: 9.2
• METAR N51 082130Z 14005KT 10SM FEW060 20/13 A3009