Today I was supposed to do my first solo cross country flight, but the weather (read: wind) was a little out of my range. So, instead, I went to do a local solo. I noticed, on my drive to the airport, that the ginormous flag at the Perkins restaurant was snapping briskly in the wind; that’s a really big flag.

Huh. Windy.

Originally I planned on flying to the northeast of Bismarck and practicing some maneuvers.However, by the time I finished pre-flighting the plane (I’m really slow with that), the wind was a little stronger than I had anticipated. I called my instructor and asked if it would be alright if I changed plans and just practiced landings and takeoffs in the pattern.

“Sure,” he said. “Just try to finish up by 11. That’s when the winds will be picking up. Right now they’re at 8.”

I got in the plane and got set up for the short flight. ATIS said the winds were 150 at 15.

That should be OK, I thought.

I took off from runway 13. I was bumping around and airborne after just a short time. I could really feel the wind from the southwest, and my traffic pattern (right traffic) was no beauty.


You definitely need to adjust your crab angle better next time, Julie, I thought. I call myself by name just so I know who I’m talking to.

As I’m trying to adjust my crab angle to avoid being blown too close to the runway, I hear on the radio that a regional jet is coming in. Tower instructed me to continue downwind. This would take me over the city and I was feeling a little apprehensive about it due to the wind, bumpiness, and the recollection of past conversations with my instructor as to why he preferred to not do that if possible.

I asked Tower if I could do circles “off to the left.” That was not a great technical use of phraseology on the radio.

360. Say 360.

Tower then switched and had me turn and come in, cleared for the touch-and-go.

Needless to say, this wasn’t a great-looking pattern. It wasn’t squared, and I just felt that things weren’t set up all nice and neat as I would want them to be. Plus, I had to shift gears quickly from the idea of extended downwind to “turn now and land.”

This is great practice, I thought. I knew this was true because it wasn’t easy and wasn’t what I’d have liked. I worked to get the crab angle and throttle (which seemed to require different settings because of the wind?) in order to maintain the right airspeed. Flaps down, get things straightened out on final…it was a beautiful landing.

How did you pull that landing out of that crapfest? I wondered, because the pattern and set up and all else was a real dog. I was feeling a bit uneasy about the wind for some reason, so I decided to do at least one more and not let the day end on that or such a rotten traffic pattern.

I pushed in the throttle to get going; I knew the regional jet was behind me somewhere. I was airborne without much trouble. Then Tower came on with an instruction I couldn’t make out exactly, so I asked him to repeat. He wanted me to edge off to the left side of the runway and then make left traffic.

This pattern was better; I was paying more attention to the crab angle. Frankly, I’ve never crabbed that much to keep a straight track. I was almost sideways, which was a new experience.

So there’s some wind up here, I thought, getting set up for the next landing. Sudden bumps and gusts caught me as I was turning base, which made me work at correcting and getting things lined up for the landing. I would so like to land and stop on this one.

The landing, however, was gorgeous. I have no idea how that happened. I tipped the right wing down a bit, worked the left rudder to get the nose down the runway…just a light tap on the pavement. Then I was off, since this was a touch-and-go.

The third pattern was tighter still, and I decided to stop on this one. The third and final landing was…fabulous.

Wow. Where’d those landings come from? Certainly not Mandan…

It is not in my nature to say good things about anything I do, so if I say the landing was good, you can believe me.

After parking and shutting down the airplane, I got to talking with a friendly guy who was working this morning. We’d already talked briefly¹ before I’d taken off, just a half hour earlier, when he’d told me that he was starting ground school² this next week. He’s actually the second guy who’s told me that, who works there.

“I was watching you today. Nice landings,” he said.

You have no idea how long it’s taken me to get to the place where a person would even say that, I thought. “Thanks. I had a hard time with my landings. They don’t always look that neat and tidy. I still need a lot of work on them…but thanks. I’ve done a few of them… “

A few?

Today, with those three, brings my total landings up to 160. I guess I don’t know the “average” for students, but that sure seems like a lot. There was a chunk of time where all I was doing was takeoffs and landings. My instructor, looking at my logbook one evening after a lesson, joked that I’d “get hired in Europe” since, because they have to pay for landings there and so wouldn’t have that many, I would have impressive “experience.” I imagine there had to have been a point where my instructor was reaching some serious exasperation over my inability to even come close to understanding landings.

“Well, the landings looked really nice,” he said. He talked a bit about the takeoffs. “The first takeoff I saw the wing dip just a bit to the right but you corrected that right away.”

I actually found it interesting to talk to someone who had been watching from the ground, so I talked to him for a while.

“Your patterns looked pretty good,” he said.

“The first one was less a pattern and more a sloppy loop,” I said. “I was a little off on that in many ways. The next two were better.”

“I thought you’d do one more takeoff and landing,” he said.

“Um…I decided to stop after the three. The wind. I wasn’t sure about it,” I said, a little red-faced. I am, by nature, very cautious. And possibly, to some, I might seem like a chicken.

I may be a chicken, but I guess I don’t care so much. The plane is in one piece, and so am I. And I have the same number of landings under my belt as my running number from yesterday’s 5K. I don’t know what that means, but surely it’s a sign.

Anyway, being a chicken is better than being a crab (even if the wind calls for it), and after those three lovely landings, I’m in a fine mood today.

¹“Are you coming to the open house here?” he asked.
“I didn’t know anything about it. Will there be free cookies?”
He laughed. “There will probably be several free things.”
“Hmm. Maybe I will.”

² “It shouldn’t be too hard to learn,” he said.
(Sniff. Sob.)
Unless you’re me.