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THUD.....THUD....THUD....

Flying I'm not dead.... The plane isnt broken.... I suppose we can call that a success. Today's lesson was steep turns and landings. Steep turns are basically 45-degree constant-bank & constant altitude turns. I did OK on the first turn, but I'm chalking that up to a fluke, since the rest of them were pretty lousy. My first turn I nailed the bank and held altitude easily. Then we went the other way, and things started getting funky (couldn't make the plane stay at a 45-degree bank, which then made the altitude go all over the place). I started getting the hang of it again toward the end, but steep turns are on the top of the list list for next weekend (along with a bunch of other stuff that I want to work on to get closer to PTS). Then we headed back to the airport to work landings... hence the THUDs. First landing was OK. I flared a little high, but we landed pretty decently. This was my first touch-and-go at FRG, and the pace is definitely fast-and-furious, no sooner does the nosewheel touch the ground than you need to yank the flaps up and firewall the throttle (before someone lands on your slow ass). The other two landings.... not so much with the smoothness. They were definitely safe landings, bud they were definitely THUD landings - the main gear pretty much banged into the ground. Apparently I'm entering the flare too high, so that's going to need some work next lesson too. And of course, the next problem - Apparently at some point my brain and my feet stopped speaking. Because of the left-turning tendencies of properller-driven aircraft, you need to pretty much STOMP on the right rudder pedal whenever you're moving slow with lots of power on. My brain knows this. It's known this for a while. It has made my feet do this on climbout every single time I've gone up. Unfortunately my brain or my feet werent paying attention during the touch-and-go's. We were constantly drifting left on the "go" portion. I kept us on the runway, but well off the centerline. I'll need to figure out some way to keep my brain and feet on speaking terms for the next lesson. That's it - short cuz I'm tired :) I'll write something tomorrow about the next lesson, and maybe a more thorough review of this one.

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