11/04/03 Tired of this Weather - It has been cloudy most of the time for two weeks. It's been raining for at least the past four days. The weather has been too poor for flying. I put the 150 in a big hangar here in Dubuque to keep it out of the weather. I really want to fly! I have a lesson scheduled tomorrow but will have to see if the sun decides to come out.

11/19/03 Round and Round the Patch - I made eight trips around Dubuque's busy traffic pattern today with my instructor in the 152. I did different types of landings including a simulated forced landing and a no-flap landing. I practiced a go-around, which is a good skill to have in Dubuque.

To give you an idea of how busy the airport is during the afternoons, here's what it was like to spend about 45 minutes in the pattern today. Before my first takeoff, I sat at the end of the runway for about five minutes as planes landed. The tower controller was landing planes on two runways. A King Air nearly had to do a go-around because a Cessna ahead almost didn't make it onto the taxiway in time. I had to zoom onto the runway and pull up to let another plane taxi and hold behind me. Once another plane cleared the runway in front of me, I took off, and when I was not too far from the end of the runway, the other plane behind me was cleared to take off. After nearly every trip around the pattern, the tower instructed me to switch sides (turning to the right instead of left or vice versa). Once I had to extend my downwind to allow a fast twin to enter final approach in front of me. Another time, I had to do a 360-degree turn on downwind for spacing. Often I closely followed a plane on final approach with another plane quickly gaining on me from behind. Sometimes I couldn't talk on the radio until I was well past the point I was supposed to talk at. After my last landing, I found myself head-on with a regional jet at a taxiway intersection and had to wait for it to pass (where was my camera, darn it!). This is a typical day in the busy Dubuque traffic pattern, and it's all good experience! This is also why I don't generally do touch-and-goes here during my lessons.

11/20/03 Greetings, Dusty Plane - After tonight's monthly flight safety meeting, I went to the airport to greet the 150, which had been collecting dust for almost a month. I hadn't flown it lately because the weather had been bad, or when it hadn't been bad my priority was to do a lesson at school instead. Finally I got to have a nice solo ride with Spunky again. I flew around the edges of the city of Dubuque while enjoying the northern lights and a meteor shower. If I wouldn't have needed to do homework, I would have stayed up there for a lot longer than 50 minutes.

11/21/03 Solo Maneuvers Practice - During my flight block today, I practiced the commercial maneuvers I've learned so far. I flew the 152 solo as the sun was setting. It was very windy, and the wind direction was unusual-- almost straight out of the east, even aloft, which I'm not sure I've ever seen. The strong winds aloft created interesting ground tracks during my steep turns, chandelles, and lazy eights. Cars on highway 20 were passing me on my way back to the airport. I faced a nerve-wracking crosswind during my landing approach, plus pretty constant turbulence, so I was happy when all three wheels were on the ground. Luckily the air above 3,000 feet was smooth during my maneuvers.

11/26/03 Blaze Orange Everywhere - I flew in my 36th type of aircraft today: a Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser. That's a high-wing, fabric taildragger with an odd seating configuration. The pilot sits alone up front, while two people can sit in the back if they're skinny enough. A former co-worker gave me a ride. The stick was gone from the back seat so I didn't get to fly, but I still loved the ride. We flew low over the area between Clintonville and Shawano. No matter where we were, I could always see at least one hunter. People dressed in blaze orange were scattered everywhere for gun deer hunting season. We saw three deer, one of which safely ran past some hunters because she was a doe and they were apparently looking for a buck!

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