Today’s flight was stressful to say the least.

First, good ole’ 70739 is having engine trouble, and might need a new one. I will miss her! The pitch wheel on the other C152 has a different range, so while worrying about that and combined with the strangely everpresent 90 degree crosswind, my takeoff was less than [...]

Today was beautiful! And for a change the wind was blowing right down the runway from the SSE. I went up with Mike and did two landings, then he got out and told me to practice full-stop landings for the next half hour.

I was much less nervous this time around. I did four trips through [...]

Yesterday I did a bunch of crosswind landing practice at home base. As usual, winds were out of the south and quite strong. But I need more practice with them so up we went.

Takeoff was to the east on runway 10. This required the controls to be rolled to the right and then gradually rolled [...]

I did it!

More south winds so we flew up to Sauk Prairie for their N/S runway. This is the first time it really hit me that I really was doing the whole thing, from takeoff at Morey to landing at Sauk, all communication, and frequency changes.

We did a trip around the pattern, then another with [...]

I figured out after my last lesson that I wasn’t coming into final straight with a crab angle. Today the wind was a bit more gusty from the north, and Mike suggested we could fly up to Sauk Praire to their N/S runway, but I need crosswind practice so I opted to stay at home [...]

Argh. Crosswind landings are tough. I did one pretty good one out of six landings. Landing on one wheel just feels counter-intuitive. I’m still managing to get the plane to the right speed and lined up over the runway, so it’s just a matter of the finessing needed at the end to get the wheels [...]