Winds are 22 knots gusting to 31 at OUN right now.

Yesterday, D. agreed to swap planes with another instructor because the one we were flying had a glideslope indicator, and the other did not. Since I wasn’t about to be shooting an ILS approach in my private training, not to mention that OUN doesn’t even HAVE an ILS approach (though, when you point this out, they scream, “We have a localizer, and the rest is being installed, we should have an ILS approach in July!) giving up our plane was no big deal. But the other instructor ended up taking his plane anyway, and then someone else took mine. They have real scheduling problems. The only 172 available was only available for an hour, so I asked D. if we could do some pattern work, and he said sure. We made 4 trips around the pattern. The first one D. demonstrated the appropriate places to turn and made a nice touch and go, then gave me the plane on the climbout. Runway 21 has a right-hand pattern, and there’s no way to see the field as you turn crosswind (the wing is in the way), which makes it difficult for me. I think I’m just going to use the DG for the crosswind turn from here on out even though I’m not supposed to be looking at the instruments. The other way to do it is to find a building that you should be headed toward, but that’s more difficult. (landmarks are hard to come by out here….) It’s funny, for this part of my training I’m not going to be looking at the instruments, and then later I won’t be allowed to look at anything else…. The nice thing about this landscape is everything is laid out on a N/S-E/W grid, so it’s really easy to fly a straight ground track.

The next couple of touch and goes were some combination of me flying the approach in and D. actually getting the plane on the ground. The last landing I did a pretty good job, I thought, and started flaring when D. kicked major right rudder to straighten the plane out so we didn’t land too much sideways.

It was only half an hour of flying, but it was a good half-hour, I thought. D. let me know that he’d be getting his wisdom teeth removed today and so he was going to schedule me to fly with Don DelFranco, a more experienced instructor, for the next three days.

He scheduled me for 11 today, which was sort of a pain since ground school doesn’t get out until 1130. Dale said that wouldn’t be a big deal, and he ended up letting the whole class out at 11. Then, I looked around, and couldn’t find Don anywhere. I finally started asking, and they said he wasn’t around. So I found his mobile phone number, called him, and he said that D. told him it was supposed to be at Noon, didn’t he call me?. No. Sooo… I got a weather briefing and after hearing the winds, got a sneaking suspicion that I wouldn’t be flying at all. With nothing better to do, I preflighted the plane and as I was finishing that up, Don arrived.

“So, does everything look good?” He asked.

“Well… other than the wind,” I replied.

“Yeah, I don’t know why the dispatcher didn’t tell you. We don’t fly privates if the wind is over 25 knots.”

I wasn’t really surprised. In fact, I didn’t untie the airplane because I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be going anywhere. He said he’d call me later today if the wind dies down enough. That’s not likely to happen until the sun’s about to set, but maybe there will be enough time to fly. I’m really looking forward to being about to fly with Don. We talked for a little while, and he seems to be a much more capable instructor. He said he started flying last February. He finished up everything in 7 months and they offered him a job instructing, and he’s been there ever since.

Bicycling in a 30mph headwind is way too hard. I thought I was never going to get home, and it’s downhill.