Two more practice flights

I got back into an airplane on Thursday, which was a lot less of a bizarre feeling than I thought it was going to be. The weather in the morning was nice; winds were calm (actually very slight tailwind on 31, which was active until they decided to switch it around). One cool thing was that my co-worker Vinay was in the pattern with me, though he didn't know it. So, I decided to do my 5 landings, and...well, I wound up doing 6, and none of them were particularly good. But I got my work in, so I was happy. Nothing particularly eventful happened; I think I half-heartedly tried a couple of soft-field landings, but they were unconvincing at best, given that apparently I didn't even convince myself.

Today was much better. I was out for 1.4 hours, and did 8 landings. Among those were 2 short field takeoffs, 2 good short field landings, 2 soft field takeoffs, and 2 soft field landings (one of which was brilliant). My normal landings still aren't great; I'm still not consistent on my flare height, but I think I'm getting it.

After the second one, I started to remember to time my laps, and was consistent after that. After the third one, I made myself do my checklists each time. After the seventh one, I decided I should go out and try some steep turns, so I requested a left 270 departure from runway 13, which I'd never done before. This is where I kind of went to pieces. Not lots of pieces..maybe let's say that there were a couple of cracks in my otherwise luminescent veneer. I forgot to shut off my carb heat after landing and before takeoff, so as I'm climbing, I'm not quite climbing like I should...and then I look down and see the carb heat out and jam it back in. Ugh. I marked my time off, though, and went out over SLAC. There were scattered clouds above me, so I didn't go too high; I stayed around 3000'. I did a nice left steep turn, then a nice right steep turn, then two crappy left steep turns. But I started getting the hang of the quick corrections. I still need to make sure I roll out in a timely fashion; I'm inconsistent, and that's one thing I can't correct for.

Then came the inbound; I was told to make left base for 13, which I expected. So that I did well, and actually lined up the approach very well -- EXCEPT I forgot to do my prelanding checklist! Will I ever learn??! My landing was alright; it was long and a little .. unsmooth? It wasn't rough, I just had a little bit of up-down action going during the flare. The touchdown itself was fine, though.

I'm scheduled for a phase check (the flight portion) tomorrow. I guess we'll see if that happens; I have my doubts.