I’m going to Virginia and, once again, am not going to see an EFO concert. They play there every other weekend–why not whenever I’m there? Oh well. “Sweet, sweet Virgina always keeps an open door…”

I flew yesterday and today. I’ve now spent the last three lessons and nearly five hours flight time doing nothing but landing. 40+ landings. And you know what? I still suck.

I very consistently make mediocre landings. My landings are all reasonably safe (at least considering that I’ve got a mile long runway to play with) and aren’t horrific. But I’m not getting much better. I’m better at crosswind landings than I was a couple of weeks ago. If the crosswind is steady, I can land straight and hold the centerline. But lately the wind has been varying about 140 degrees in direction and ranges from 5-20 knots which makes it really difficult because each landing is so unpredictable. On one hand that’s good because it’s more of a challenge. On the other hand, I suck.

And it’s not like there’s any one thing I’m getting wrong. Some times I flare too much, sometimes not enough. Sometimes I land sideways, sometimes I’m straight. Sometimes I come in fast, sometimes I come in slow. I almost always come in a little high, but that’s because D. likes approaches steep and gets twitchy otherwise. I wish they’d fix the VASI on runway 17. It’s not that I need it, it’s just that it would be nice to have some sort of reference to a 3 degree glide slope. I seem to do better when my approaches are less steep than what I generally do. D. admitted to teaching his students to come in steep, but he’s right, it’s safer that way. And in a Cessna 172 with 40 degrees of flaps, you just stick those barn doors out and point the plane at the numbers. A power off approach with 40 degrees of flaps looks like it’s about a 20 degree glide slope.

The past few lessons I’ve been supposedly working on short-field and soft-field landings. And all that does is make things more difficult. Today we did nothing but just land. I was supposed to make them as soft-fieldish as possible. I did manage to hold the nose wheel off the ground for a good long time on one of them. I think in the past few days I’ve made… 3-4 GOOD landings. I should be doing better than that.

I confessed my frustration to D., who hasn’t been terribly helpful. He’s master of pointing out the obvious. Yes, I know I was fast. Yes, I know I was too slow too high. But what am I doing WRONG? I mean, I can see the after-effects as well as he can. Mostly we just fly in circles (well, rectangles), and he doesn’t say much. I suppose there’s probably not a lot he can say.

In any case, he decided that it’s probably in everyone’s best interest to send me up with one of the gurus until I can land. Either the chief flight instructor or the instructor who they refer to as their “landing expert”. I’m all for this–especially if I get a ride with the chief. He’s got well over 10,000 hours and supposedly radiates aviation knowledge. I know who he is, but I haven’t met him yet.

So that’s supposed to happen next week. I need to be able to make good normal landings so I can make good enough short field landings to pass a check ride.

Holy cow. I just looked outside and, well, I was flying an hour ago and it was beautiful. Now it’s hailing and looks really rough. I’d estimate 50+ MPH winds.

HAH. The storm center picked it up TWENTY minutes ago. It came out of nowhere:

AT 306 PM CDT…DOPPLER RADAR DETECTED A LINE OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS
FROM 11 MILES EAST OF SPARKS TO NEAR CHOCTAW TO JUST SOUTH OF
BETHANY TO EL RENO…MOVING SOUTHEAST AT 35 MPH. THE STRONGEST
STORMS WITH THIS LINE ARE LOCATED OVER CHOCTAW AND JUST SOUTH
OF THE VILLAGE AND BETHANY. HALF DOLLAR SIZED HAIL IS POSSIBLE WITH
THESE STORMS ALONG WITH 70 MPH WINDS. ELSEWHERE WINDS OF 50 TO 60
MPH AND HAIL TO THE SIZE OF NICKELS AND QUARTERS ARE LIKELY.

Hopefully the inbound plane will actually land and we’ll get out of here tonight.

Man. It sounds like the hail is going to come through the windows…