N291DR 1.3 short flight with Lisa

Went for a flight with my friend Lisa. We went to E16 and did 2 landings, then back to KRHV and landed. She gave me some good tips.

On my first landing at E16, I was wiggling too hard on the rudders. This is because I am trying to "loosen" myself so I am mentally prepared to make whatever corrections I need to stay on centerline and pointed forwards, but I was over-doing it. I ballooned a little, and Lisa said it was due to my own stick input not due to a gust.

On my second landing I did better with the rudder.

Lisa then showed me a real short approach with an aggressive slip. I was scared that we would stall/spin but she explained how this was not a problem -- keep the nose down and slip (outside rudder) rather than skid (inside rudder). She also pointed out that my "short approach" was not a short approach at all, given that I was puttering around at glide speed making a huge arc over and back again.

On our landing at KRHV, I got a straight-in approach, and I did a reasonably executed "chop and drop". I also did a decent flare. However I flared a bit high, which led to a bit of a wallop when we came down.

Today was rather bumpy under a lot of cumulus clouds, so this was a chance to fly with an experienced pilot and get over some of my anxieties about turbulence and bumps.

N291DR 1.7 Flight to the coast with Rick

My father-in-law Rick is visiting so we went for a flight in N291DR!

3 full-stop landings.

Wx was cloudy with ceilings around 4,000 feet, and bumpy due to lots of cumulus clouds, but definitely flyable for a local VFR flight.

We flew to E16 and did a couple practice landings, then stopped to use the port-a-pottie. Then we climbed up again and flew to Moss Landing, then up the coast to Santa Cruz, then up Hwy 17 to the Lexington Reservoir, across midfield KSJC, then back to KRHV.

As I noted, it was quite bumpy, but a blast, and that's why we fly LSAs -- to feel like we're flying! Rick is an instrument rated pilot himself and he flew for a while. It was great!

The landings at E16 were short approaches, both okay, but sort of bumpy bouncy landings since I was focused on making the runway and less on landing technique. The landing at KRHV was a longer approach but I was too high and ended up having to hit the flaps and burn energy like crazy, and doing a passable wheel landing.