I watched a few more arrivals after my flight, and was happy to see others in similar ships having difficulty as I did.
But when this student and instructor went up in "Casper", the friendly old 152, I was ashamed. Not sure who was on the controls, but they did very well. The key, I realized, is to be prepared to sacrifice a little runway. I was trying too hard to be precise, and a tricky crosswind will not let you do that sometimes. Been too long for me, I guess... I needed a reminder.

Everybody was doing this today- crabbing like mad all the way down, then rocking and rolling to stay aligned before rounding out.

     

They rolled almost all the way down after this one, but it was no problem. Allowed a little fine-tuning in the flare, which is helpful when the gusts are trying to get the plane flying again.



I felt humiliated, so I went back up and tried again. Got batted around like a cat toy on my second short final and had to abort, but the other two landings were fair... let it float a bit, let it settle down as I figured out the drift correction. But I managed on every landing today to stop and exit before the very end.

Mobius wrote on Apr 29^th, 2007 at 5:41pm:


I meant before the very last exit point...
On one, I managed to stop before the midfield taxiway... pretty good.