Pilot Life: Practicing Landings at Corvallis and Albany

I got some good flying weather today so I decided to go do some local solo flying to stay sharp since I haven't flown in a little over a week at this point.

Keeping my pilot skills sharp and running N5174E through her paces!

After pre-flight, I hopped in the airplane, got the engine started, and taxied over to the fuel pumps to top off my fuel tanks. After re-fueling, I taxied over to Runway 16, did my engine run-ups, and got airborne. During my previous flight, my landings have gotten a little sloppy, so today's flight was to knock off some rust, go back to the basics, and sharpen up my landing skills! And I started out by flying over to Corvallis and use the longer, wider runway to do just that! After picking up the weather, I monitored the airport's CTAF and entered the left-downwind for Runway 17.

I did three touch-and-go landings in Corvallis before I felt good about it and headed back up to Albany. But before heading back to Albany, I decided to fly up north towards Independence to check out where some of the surrounding cloud layers were. Let's just say I didn't like what I was seeing in front of me at the altitude I was flying at so I made a one-eighty and headed back to Albany! Several aircraft were using Runway 34 at this point, so I did the same.

I entered the left-downwind, and followed a Piper Cherokee in and did one more touch-and-go before getting airborne again for one last lap to beat up the pattern. I flew the pattern, following that same Piper Cherokee in, and made an uneventful landing on Runway 34. After clearing off the runway, I taxied over to the self-serve fuel pumps for the second time today and topped off the fuel tanks back to full, just in case either my uncle or I were to take the plane up again in the coming days; plus, on the last couple of flights I did, I've neglected to refuel because it was either dark outside upon my return or I had to debrief with a flight instructor following a flight, so I thought I'd better bring the plane back with a full tank this time around!

After taxiing the plane back to the hangar following the refueling, I put the airplane away, did some local plane-spotting, and called it a successful flight.