Debrief 20081226

Well today as stated, I went up. The weather held out and still is rather nice out. Calm, but enough wind to warrant a crab correction depending on the heading. Well I ascended to 3,000 feet and did some approach stalls. I worked with the trim some during slow flight trying to keep her at 65 knots. After working on approach stalls and glides for awhile I decided to pick a heading 150 which took me directly over my house. I did a couple turns and circled around the house. I did an ascending 180 degree turn to head back toward Towanda where I practice my turns, level, descending, and steep. I made the steep turns, steep. That was fun.
Then I decided to head back cause it was almost an hour since I took off, I had one tenth to go before it was an hour. There was one guy in the pattern, a Cessna 182 Skylane with passengers, including a dog. He entered the pattern on "left" base for runway 5, but went all the way around the pattern. Maybe he didn't like the way he had the pattern set up, it could've been any number of things including that the pilot just felt like taking a trip around. He called the left crosswind and then downwind. I could see him as he went by, that thing was bookin! Haha, but I fell in behind him and called out that I was entering the pattern downwind for 5. I did a lazy 360 to get some spacing between me and the skylane. As I exited the 360, he called out that he was on final. I called that I was on base. He cleared the runway and called that he was clear of the active, so I called out final as turned and headed toward the runway. (Little did I know someone was waiting for me to get done to go flying!) I taxied back to the end of runway 5, I wanted to do the last thing on my list for the day, a slip. I called out that I was taking off. Man did she climb well today!!!!!! Oh man she was working real well today. Skipping the xwind>>>> On downwind as I approached the end of the runway I pulled the throttle, the I called out that I was on base for runway 5 and put her into a nice slip. I held her at 65 knots for the duration and kept correcting the amount of aileron as was needed. As I closed in close to the runway, I recovered from the slip floated over the runway at about seventy-some knots and slowed her down to 65 by raising the nose a little. Then I pulled right into my flare as I felt the plane sink and touchdown. I got on the binders and taxied back to the FBO. As I shut the plane off and exited, I realized I forgot to fill her up. DAMN!!!!! I went in the briefing room where I met Lee. We talked for a bit while I filled out my logbook and such, then Jerry came in. They were going up to do dutch rolls, another fun thing I did earlier! So I was happy with today. 1.0 hours on the nose.
Preflight 20081227 coming later tonight... over and out