So my pilot friend Stephanie and I went flying last night to maintain our night currency. It is a simple thing to do. In order to take passengers with you, you must have made 3 takeoffs and landings to a complete stop within the past 90 days (in an aircraft of the same category). Typically you can do this in an hour including pre-flight and everything. Well, we did it in about an hour, but there were some bumps along the way…

The AWOS was reporting winds from 280 @ 9 knots when we were ready to depart from runway 25. No problem with these winds, just a slight slight crosswind to watch out for and we’ve both flown in way worse conditions. Well, little did we know that just a few hundred feet above the ground winds were from 310 @ 29 knots…

It was crazy flying around the pattern. By the time we figured out what the winds were doing, it was too late. Our crosswind and downwind legs had been pushed out so far that it took us FOREVER to get back to the runway center line on the base leg. I was wondering if we were ever going to get there. The whole time we’re getting tossed around in our tiny little plane.

By my third time around, I had pretty much figured out what was going to happen, and was able to put in enough wind correction to fly a normal pattern. Still fighting that wind on base and final was rough. We were both ready to call it quits after fighting those kind of winds.

It was a good experience and now I’m current day and night until 2/2/2010.

Who wants to go flying with me?