Flight Lesson № 33

Rimas's schedule opened up at the last minute so we were able to squeeze in a morning lesson again. I like morning flying because (1) I'm a morning person, (2) I'm not tired from work, (3) the winds are calmer, and (4) traffic both on the roads and in the air is less. The downside is I have to choose between having coffee before the flight and needing to pee or delaying coffee and being stupid. I've been going with the latter. Adrenaline is more than happy to step up in place of caffeine when the situation arises.

We had a short calm flight over to Hayward where we did touch-n-goes. Some inbound traffic, but we were the only aircraft doing pattern work. When air traffic is light like that, I can tell the tower controller is bored because he gives me my landing clearance when I'm exactly midfield on the downwind every time, as if his only task is following my little radar blip on his screen. I feel good about doing pattern work at times like those because if I wasn't there, then he'd be really bored.

I'm feeling better about my centerline control. I still don't have the flare down. I'm either pitching up too fast and ballooning or not fast enough and landing hard with a lot of elevator left. Better than yesterday, but still not awesome.

I finally got some no-flap landings down. The plane is really slippery without flaps and I floated a long way, but the reason we came to Hayward was for the long runway, so I just held it above the runway and tried to be patient. Asymmetrical flap failure scares me.

• Flight Hours: Δ1.0   Σ33.7
• METAR KPAO 121447Z VRB04KT 10SM SKC 18/14 A2986
• METAR KHWD 121454Z 00000KT 10SM CLR 18/13 A2986