This morning my CFI for the upcoming instrument training, Mark Lush, fellow ForeFlighter, and I went up for a second refresher flight. The intention was to knock off some more dust. We got in a set of steep turns, which were better and easier than last week's pair, and did three touch-and-gos at Smithville (84R) before returning to Austin-Bergstrom where Above & Beyond Aviation is based.
My pattern work was much more finely tuned this time, and I made all the radio calls at Smithville (felt totally natural), coordinating with the other KAUS-based trainer that was also doing touch-and-gos at 84R. My flares were kind of all over the place today; one was far too high (resulting in a hard touchdown), and one had a big ballooning that I haven't figured out yet other than too much backpressure at the wrong time.
I felt I had more mental cycles today, enough to actually open ForeFlight and use it get back to KAUS for a left base for 17L.
For the next flight (hopefully Wednesday morning), we're going to stay closer to Austin and do the last flight review maneuvers to sign me off for solo VFR flights again -- slow flight, stalls, maybe turns around a point. Wish us calm winds for Wednesday!
Next week we'll start instrument training.
