Pilot Life: Saturday Flying

After being mostly bed-ridden this week, I finally felt better today to get some flying in! With my checkride in a few days, I want to squeeze in some reasonable last-minute practice in. It has also been a while since I flew and logged time on a Saturday; since resuming flight training at Spanish Fork, I haven't flown on the weekends. But given that I've been sick most of the week and having been unfit to fly while I was down, flying today to make up for lost time was justified. I did my usual routines and got airborne.

Flew in N802CT today.
(I snapped this picture while I was waiting for this plane to become available. At the controls is my flight instructor and one of his other students!)

After taking off, I remained in the pattern and performed one touch-and-go before heading south to practice some maneuvers in the valley. I headed down towards Payson and started by practicing some turns around a point with the Payson LDS Temple as my ground reference. My sister said she saw me circling the Temple after we met back up! I followed up with S-turns across a road. After doing ground reference maneuvers, I climbed about a thousand feet in altitude for some performance maneuvers. I started with steep turns and I practiced a few of those. I then did a couple of stalls before I turned back towards the airport; my sister was waiting there!

I entered the pattern and performed a few circuits in order practice a few landing techniques, knowing that I can be asked to do any, if not, all of them on the day of the checkride. My sister was already waiting for me when I made my full-stop landing and taxied back to the ramp.

I gotta say though, I forgot how fun (and relaxing!) flying on weekends can be!