If at first you don't succeed, fly, fly again

If yesterday felt like a lesson in what not to do when learning to fly tailwheel aircraft, today felt like how to fix all of those errors and get it right. I woke up this morning determined to get to the airport, get back in the groove and flow of tailwheel flying, and most of all to have fun. 1.9 training hours and 17 grass strip landings later I can say that not only did I accomplish that list of goals but also that I did it while dealing with a crosswind.

Crosswinds and gusts have intimidated me since I began flying in 2012, and my intimidation hasn't diminished simply because I passed my checkride and have my ticket. And yet I had much more flying around today than I did yesterday when the winds were calm. We certainly worked on crosswind landings, but also crosswind takeoffs, nudging the plane to lean on the left or right tire during takeoff depending on wind direction - something that you can and should do in a tri-gear plane like our Skylane but that felt more extreme to me in the Super Cub. I was nervous to do that but with the big bush tires on the Super Cub it was so much fun!

Today's fixes for yesterday's problems included:

1) Remembering to sit up straight in my seat rather than crouching down as I descended, a habit I had formed as if I had to bodily land the same way as the plane.

2) Envisioning the glide path of my plane properly when on downwind in order to turn base at the right time, remembering that it is less about a squared-off pattern and more about setting myself up at the right angle and height to land well, and being reminded that this will change depending on airports, terrain, wind, and aircraft.

3) Being mindful of the terrain below me. For example, on a windy day like today, my instructor's suggestion to extend my crosswind to avoid turning and flying downwind over a ridge was extremely helpful in terms of avoiding getting bumped around. And he did the right thing by letting me make the mistake of flying downwind over the ridge myself and experiencing those jolts before suggesting an easy way to avoid it on the next pattern.

4) Not giving up when I didn't like something that was happening on short final approach or as I was over the runway, and realizing that I could make small corrections to revise and improve my landings that were in the moment, intuitive, and effective.

When I woke up this morning I really did not want to go flying because I was feeling so discouraged about yesterday's flying but then I remembered something that I learned from my CFI in Lakeland that seems pretty simple to say and think but can be difficult to put into practice when you feel like you're failing: If at first you don't succeed, fly, fly again!

Stalling the Aviatrix

In aviation, one way to think of a stall is as an event caused by a lack of air flowing over the wings of an airplane, which leads to a deficit in the amount of lift needed to keep the airplane flying. Today I felt like I stalled - like a number of things got to me while I was flying, resulting in a lack of airflow and thus a lack of lift. Please note that this was not at all the case in my actual flying, but more in the way the act of flying and learning felt. All of this is to say that I feel disappointed in my tailwheel flying today.

I logged two hours and sixteen landings in the Super Cub today between Andover Aeroflex Airport's and Trinca Airport's grass strips in the service of my ongoing quest for my tailwheel endorsement. By the end of the time, the landings were fine, but just that and not good, great, excellent, or perfect (not terrible, poor, or dangerous thankfully but not what I wanted, either). So they were fine but could use some work to attain a solid assessment of "good".

Weather, work, family obligations, illness, and lack of funds are the kinds of things that get in the way of heading to the airport to go flying. But what about the things that hinder flying once you've pre-flighted and are taxiing to the runway to take off? The things that get into your brain and won't get out no matter how vigorously you try to shake them out? What about the things that come up during the flight that might throw you off? I'm thinking of examples like:

- not getting enough sleep the night before and deciding to fly anyway

- engaging in the typical 24/7 work lifestyle that so many people have adopted out of necessity so that there are always emails pinging and files to work on over the weekend

- having a conflict with a friend, spouse, partner, co-worker, or family member that nags at you

- worry about something, ranging from waiting to hear about medical test results to wondering if your dog is okay at home without you to hoping you get that home loan to hoping you don't hit too much traffic on the way home to just about anything people typically worry about

- differences in pattern etiquette (e.g., "We're using runway 1." vs. "Well, we're using runway 19!") [For the non-aviators/aviatrices reading this, runways can usually be utilized in either direction so the runway number depends on which direction you're taking off and landing. These directions always differ by 180 degrees as they are based on a magnetic compass, just as North refers to 0 degrees and South refers to 180 degrees on a compass. Thus, pilots need to agree on which runway they are taking because they cannot arrange to meet in the middle to admire each other's aircraft.]

- the wind picking up

- lack of confidence

- needing to use the bathroom (Just as your car does not have a toilet, neither does my small plane which seats the same number of people, if not sometimes fewer.)

I have some hypotheses about what happened with my flying today and it's two or three of the above, all of which resulted in distractions and a negative mindset leading my proverbial Aviatrix wings to stall. I'm going up again tomorrow and I'm going to try to bring a better attitude about whatever comes my way. Mr. Aviatrix picked me up in our Skylane, so here is a photo of us flying away from Andover (in the upper quarter of the image):