When I showed up for my lesson on Thursday D. sent me up with Ed.

I’m not sure if he said something that helped, but my landings were much, much better. I made several good landings and no bad landings. I’m not sure if it was Ed that helped because even my first landing with Ed was better than I had been doing. Maybe it was the time off.

I still need practice, lots of practice, but I can land with a crosswind just fine.

On Friday, I took D. on a cross-country. I plotted a course to Paul’s Valley and flew down there solely by reference to landmarks, flying my predetermined heading. My predetermined heading seemed to be fairly accurate, but it’s hard to tell since I don’t tend to hold a heading all that well. Finding Paul’s Valley is quite easy, since both I-35 AND a set of railroad tracks go right to it. I’m supposed to be able to time the distance between checkpoints and come up with estimated groundspeed, fuel burn, time to arrival, fuel remaining, etc, etc. Such calculations really seem pointless when you’re flying somewhere 30 minutes away and you’ve got 4 hours of fuel. 6 gallons of fuel per hour.

I found Paul’s Valley, though I probably should have seen it long before I did. It’s an uncontrolled airport, so I made the appropriate radio calls. I entered the pattern downwind at a 45 degree angle and did a decent touch and go. As I was climbing out, D. was like, “What are they waving at?” There were a couple of golfers waving their arms over their heads at us.

“Uhm. Do you suppose they realized that we just flew right traffic for a left-hand pattern field?”

“Oh. Maybe.”

So now the two of us have managed to screw the same thing up twice. I guess it’s good there was no one else in the pattern; that could have gotten somewhat messy.

As we were climbing out, D. said, “Okay, now divert to Lindsay.”

For my next check ride, I’ll have to plan out a cross country and start flying it. Before I get very far, the check airman is going to divert me somewhere, anywhere. And after he tells me where, I have to tell him what heading it’s at, how far away it is, how long it’s going to take me to get there, how much fuel I’m going to burn getting there, and so on. I’m a bit worried about being able to do that satisfactorily AND fly a plane at the same time. It’s hard to do.

This time I had a railroad to follow, supposedly. Only, it became rather obvious that the railroad didn’t really exist after awhile. There was what looked like a line through a field where it seemed like it ought to have been. But there was no railroad. I did find a road and kept a pretty good idea of where I was.

Which is why I was getting quite frustrated when I realized I was nearly over the town of Lindsay and STILL couldn’t see the associated airport. D. was thoroughly amused.

“It’s… rinky-dink,” he said. “First time I got diverted to Lindsay I thought I was never going to find it.”

“It’s not THAT LITTLE ROAD is it?”

“You tell me.”

It was. I could tell, in fact, that you could just barely read “19” painted on the “road”. I’ve seen roads in much better condition. I’m not sure how wide the runway is, but it couldn’t be wider than 30 feet. And however wide it once was, it seems to be shrinking. It’s weed covered. It’s also really short.

“Lose the centerline, and you’re in the grass,” D. cautioned.

After coming in a little high, I decided that while I could put the plane DOWN on the end of the runway, I certainly couldn’t do a whole touch and go. So I went around. As I was climbing out I screamed, “WE DID IT AGAIN!!!”

“Huh?”

“I JUST FLEW ANOTHER RIGHT PATTERN.”

“This is pathetic.”

I mean, I’m supposed to make mistakes. But not the same one over and over again. AND MY INSTRUCTOR IS SUPPOSED TO CATCH THEM! We were both feeling frustrated as I flew the correct pattern to try for another touch and go.

I ended up making a pretty good landing. But then the crosswind picked up right about the time I gave it full power to take off again. I started drifting left, and I applied right rudder, but I really needed more aileron correction. The plane felt way too squirrelly for any more right rudder than I was giving it, skipping across the runway a bit, and I was nearly at rotation speed. And I did, indeed, have one wheel in the grass. And couldn’t get it back on the runway. So I took off.

“That was… interesting,” D. said with a queer expression.

“Well, you warned me,” I told him.

“Yeah, but I’ve never seen anyone actually do it! Well… not unintentionally anyway…”

I got vaguely lost on the way back to Norman, although not really lost. I knew I was flying toward Norman somewhere north of Lindsay. Also, the ADF was pointing right at the OUN NDB, so I had a pretty good idea. But there was absolutely NOTHING on the map to identify where I was with a landmark. So I tuned up the nav radios to find out exactly.

Hopefully I’ve got the traffic pattern thing straightened out.